Quick! What’s the first image that pops in your mind when you hear “customer service”?
Twenty bucks says that you just imagined a customer service agent.
What were you feeling the last time you contacted an agent? Technological capabilities have helped streamline interactions and created better customer experiences, but how can companies step it up another level? How can they differentiate themselves in the world of customer service and create even better customer experiences? Going beyond giving proper training, and maintaining cheerful disposition, there is one key thing to remember: We are all human.
In customer service, companies put a lot of focus on First Call Resolution and resolving an issue in a timely and expedited manner. However, agents must also think of the person on the other side of the line. For agents, these can be simple things like asking how their day is going with sincerity or going the extra mile to get an issue resolved.
Empathy is the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person’s feelings, a quality that should never be underestimated when it comes to fostering and maintaining customer relationships. Human nature supports the fact that customers are likely to feel more loyalty toward a company when they are feeling valued and understood as a person, not just as a customer. In fact, 66 percent of consumers agree that their experience with a brand’s customer service agents has a major impact on their impression with the brand overall.
At LiveOps we have a community of 20,000+ independent contractor agents who, through our comprehensive certification processes, are equipped to not just help customers, but to build relationships with them. Through l
ive agents, companies can achieve order values 15-34 percent higher than the industry average, and turn a single sale into a customer for life.
When all is said and done, it’s important for organizations to see customer interactions for what they really are; human interactions.
-Sanjay Popli, Senior Vice President of Agent Services
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
