It’s an incredible statistic if you think about it, 1 in 5 calls have to leave the contact centre front office to resolve a customer issue.
This problem is as old as the hills but actually pretty difficult to solve. Picture this scenario:
An agent is on the phone discussing an issue with a customer The agent can’t offer a resolution so needs to ask the back office for help The agent then has to track down a back office member without leaving the customer waiting too long The agent then either has to either relay information between the customer and the back office which is slow and error prone or put them through directly With the growth in contact centre outsourcing, this problem is getting worse as often the back office is in an entirely different company running different systems and processes.
So what to do then? Several solutions have been suggested in the past:
Train agents to resolve all the issues
For basic issues this makes sense but is not practical for more complex questions that require specialist expertise. Use “online/offline” presence information to establish who in the back office is available and and have a text based conversation whilst on the phone with the customer
A real-time text based conversation makes a lot of sense but how does the agent choose who to ask? A back office person who is online may already be engaged with other front office staff or may not actually be the best person to resolve this particular query. This all adds delay and affects the customer satisfaction rating of the call.
In order to truly resolve this issue, you need to think about it as a virtual team communication problem. Click here to read part 2.
If you would like to know more about Sazneo Group Messaging, click here for the solutions page or contact us.