by Jennifer McCullough | May 25, 2020
Yes…. Another thought piece on how COVID-19 is re-shaping life as we know it and what can we learn from it going forward.
With people stuck at home and shops closed, several industries, such as e-commerce, streaming entertainment, and gaming, are experiencing hyperactivity. The influx is driving revenues but also customer support needs.
In many cases, support centers are not scaling up to the necessary headcount needed to cover the increase in volumes. It is a huge investment to hire and train agents, especially when no one had any idea how long this would last. Now consider industries that are suffering from a revenue perspective but still have customers contacting them… they cannot possibly add the additional cost at this time.
Of course, having a customer wait for hours to speak with a person is never an ideal experience, but when every day is like Black Friday for an entire quarter, how can you possibly cope?
Whether your volume is spiking from COVID, an unexpected outage, or any other factor that compels consumers to contact you, I’d recommend these specific actions:
Typically a queue will be managed on a first-in-first-out basis. While this may be a “fair” approach, it creates an equally poor experience for 100% of your customers. If you consider your CX to be a sum of everyone’s experience interacting with your brand, the goal can not be that everyone has a perfect experience. Instead, focus on limiting the number of consumers that have a less than ideal experience.
On way to achieve this: when the backlog becomes unmanageable, split the queue down the middle and have half the team work the front half in a FIFO fashion, while the other half starts in the middle and works in the same manner.
It’s not perfect, but at least you can immediately halve the number of customers having a bad time.
The front line agents did not create the backlog and they should not carry the burden of resolving it (beyond touching or solving a reasonable amount of tickets each day).
Even the most enthusiastic and engaged agent will start to burn out with not stop hits coming. While overtime may seem like a good solution at first, OT over an extended amount of time is going to impact productivity, CSAT, and the morale of your team.
Be realistic about how far they can stretch in a crisis, but don’t break them.
As previously mentioned, your IVR can be a great tool for letting your customer know that you’re aware of widespread issues or tell them about how long they’ll be waiting for.
Also, what is even more ideal than having to wait on hold, offer a callback option so the customer can simply hang up and then receive your call later.
In January, I was traveling (you remember travel, right?) to Manila and had just landed in Gaum for the last leg of my 24-hour flight. As I was about to board, the Taal Volcano erupted and I was suddenly stranded in Guam. I made my way to my hotel, exhausted and stressed, and started calling airlines to figure out my next move.
During my 3-day stay in Gaum, I spent a total of about 16 hours on hold with two airlines. However, the experience was starkly different.
With Philippine Air, I called multiple times and waited over 4 hours in a sitting. Eventually, a call was answered and just as I had hopes of finding a way home, I was told that systems were down and I would need to call back. Call back?! Why couldn’t an IVR tell me this hours ago?
I also tried changing my flight through united, which required a phone call. They had insanely high wait times too, but here’s the key difference: When I called, their IVR informed me that the wait could be hours and I could put my number on the list to be called back. I waited for nearly 3 hours. During that time I enjoyed the pool and listening to music on Spotify instead of hold music.
United was struggling to cope with volumes during a natural disaster, but they were still able to provide a painless experience.
This difference is really important. When a customer contacts a brand that is your chance to bond, engage, and to create a customer for life. Even if the customer has a complaint or problem, how you respond can completely turn around the situation. You can create fans by effectively handling problems, but you can also ensure that the customer never wants to do business with you ever again – you can guess which airline I will be flying with in the future.
Jennifer McCullough is a Key Account Manager for 5CA, based in the USA.
Gaming is the world’s #1 lifestyle choice, played by more people than any other form of entertainment. We’ve had a ringside seat for its evolution, working hand-in-hand with our clients to support their customers as they enter huge, new immersive worlds.
The times, they are a-most-definitely-changing. As seasoned CX veterans know, plenty of the received wisdoms of third-party contact center management have received something of a battering over the last few years.
If you were not able to attend “CX Strategy: What now?”, our panel debate from last week, then here it is. An insightful, thought-provoking hour with industry gurus Mark Hillary, Stephen Loynd, Peter Ryan and our own Robert Van Diem. Here are some of the themes that really stood out for us.
I’m pleased to announce that I will be participating in a debate hosted by 5CA on October 27th. The title is CX Strategy: What Now? It’s going to be particularly topical, as one of the key things we will discuss, in the midst of this pandemic, is working from home (WFH) in the CX arena.
I’m pleased to announce that I will be participating in a debate hosted by 5CA on October 27th. The title is CX Strategy: What Now? I know that there are a lot of webinars and online debates these days, but I really think you should make time for this one:
Following on from National Customer Service Week, our Chief Customer Officer Rob van Herpen reflects on the journey that customer service has undergone in the last decade, and the role it plays within the wider scope of the whole customer experience.
I’m pleased to announce that I will be moderating a webinar hosted by 5CA on October 27th. The title is CX Strategy: What Now? I know you might be thinking “another day, another webinar invitation,” but as I’m chairing the debate I want to try making this one a little different. We can’t meet at conferences right now so the very least anyone planning a new webinar can do is to ensure it’s interesting and this one should hit the ball out of the park.
Gaming has been one of the few beneficiaries of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Global quarantine and stay-at-home orders preventing people from traveling, commuting, and socializing has resulted in a boom for the gaming industry. Maximize the value of your VIP players and discover how work from home (WFH) support helps you add more value to your gaming whales.
Game launched? Check. Player hype? Check. Champagne? Crack that bottle, you deserve it! But while it bubbles on your tongue, let me ask you this: Have you considered how to respond to players who need assistance or want to provide feedback? And when your player base grows (and let's be honest it will - your game is awesome), what will you do when those interactions start exploding in languages you do not speak? How will you manage the volume of requests coming in, but still provide the best possible user experience to your fans?
Yes…. Another thought piece on how COVID-19 is re-shaping life as we know it and what can we learn from it going forward. With people stuck at home and shops closed, several industries, such as e-commerce, streaming entertainment, and gaming, are experiencing hyperactivity. The influx is driving revenues but also customer support needs.
Did anyone see that Assassins’ Creed Valhalla announcement trailer? Of course you did. Chances are you did not discover it on your own, but instead it appeared on your social media channels, most likely shared by a fan of the franchise or an influencer. At least that is how it happened to me. Game marketing truly has changed in the era of digital, community, and influencers.
In BPO, we often talk about how we deliver the best possible customer experience. We focus on training knowledgeable and empathetic agents, we run and rerun staffing simulations to ensure minimal wait times. These things are important, but, for the most part, once a customer is reaching out to us, it’s already a ding to the overall customer experience. Customers want an easy experience that works as it should and is intuitive.
Last month, Vice ran an interesting article by Jess Morrissette on how games marketing invented toxic gaming culture by promoting toxicity and harassment as value propositions for gaming. While considered perfectly reasonable at the time, games marketing has luckily taken a turn for the better.
One of the most interesting things about the gaming industry is that gamers don’t behave like customers. Sure, they have no problem spending like customers, but their devotion and passion makes them more like super-fans.
With more and more companies providing work-from-home possibilities, and children spending more time at home during school breaks, many tend to fill the time previously spent commuting or at after-school activities on picking up new or old hobbies. It comes as no surprise that playing video games is one of those favored hobbies.
The World Health Organization and almost every national government has encouraged everyone in non-essential roles to stay at home. With millions of people in self-isolation, there is a real need to ensure these people have something to do.
In this new day and age where no one spends more than 67 seconds away from a screen without at least a hint of anxiety, recruiting and engaging this new wave of job seekers is no less complicated than swiping right, get a match and then not really knowing how to open a conversation anymore (sound familiar?).
In today's business world, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who does not agree that Customer Experience is an essential aspect when building and maintaining a profitable business.
We’ve probably all heard of quality assessment (QA) before, where a quality specialist goes over agent interactions and checks to see if there are any possible areas of improvement or development...
The most successful companies make listening and understanding their customers a vital part of their business strategy. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
In this article, I’ll provide you with five tips to shape your customer service organization in such a way that you can prevent your customers from experiencing exactly this.
When you think about Customer Experience I’m willing to bet you’ll typically think about the experiences customers have when evaluating a product or service, choosing and buying it, and then actually using it.