Moment Beyond the Moment
Do you take the interaction of your staff with your customers for granted? If anything you spend a great deal of time on the topic. In the day-to-day pressures of call center operations, however, it is easy to put this to the side hoping that things happening as planned. This is the hardest part of successful call center operations.
This post may help you segment the pressures of the day to provide focus on staff interaction with customers. We call it “the moment beyond the moment”.
The Moments
What is the first moment? The first moment occurs as a result of your detailed and effective planning that results in the customer’s call arriving at your call center. This is a good thing! Hundreds of components come together to deliver the customer’s call to the call center. This all happens because you provided the right infrastructure to ensure that the call does arrive and does get answered. Why do we call it a “moment”? It only takes a moment for the customer’s call to reach your call center. The first moment happens somewhere between the speed of sound and the speed of light. Take your pick. It happens fast in our digital world. The first moment is the easiest to get right consistently.
The second moment is more important than the first but it is the hardest to do well consistently. The second moment occurs between two people – the customer and the call center agent. The second moment happens in the first few seconds of the call center representative interaction with the customer. It doesn’t happen at the speed of sound or at the speed of light. It happens at the speed of two people interacting with each other.
You can evaluate this reality from your own experience of calling someone else’s call center. How often has the initial discussion with the call center rep made it a poor experience? A recent call to a telco call center proved this out for us. It is one of those precious call center experiences where you want to unplug the headset of the call center reps. The know-it-all-not-listening-to-our-real-need attitude that made the experience one to write about!
The Moments Summarized
- The First Moment is Mental – logistical and technical – getting a customer’s call through to the call center. Enough said. You know the detail.
- The Second Moment is Relational – the basis of relationship involves a connection with the customer. It must be more than a mechanical process or transaction that leaves the customer asking “huh?” Said differently, if the second moment is nothing more than a logistical or technical interaction (i.e. the First Moment), save yourself a big expense - get rid of the agents and send the customer to your company web site to self-serve! The point of having agents is to have them develop a short-term, customer satisfying experience for the customer
For agents to be successful they must understand the need to connect with the customer through skills of listening and understanding the customer. Is this a real issue? Absolutely. Just look at some of the threads of discussion on the CallCenterOps Forum where others wrestle with being successful in this area.
Perfecting the moment beyond the moment can only occur if we pay attention to it. Remember it is hard work. Did we say it is the hardest part of call center operations? All that other “noise” in the call center can often be easier to deal with than ensuring the quality of the interaction between our agents and the customer.
Before you consider the “throw-some-technology-at-it” solution (which is more like First Moment stuff), do a few simple things.
- Survey your customers – you don’t really know how you are doing until you ask the customer to evaluate you on it.
-
Learn about agent coaching in your call center.
Most of all, have fun in the moment.
Posted: January 28th, 2007 under People.
Comments: none
Write a comment