12 Tips to Deliver the Best Customer Experience

Our readers share their best ideas for improving the customer experience in the contact centre.

1. Put all of your agents through a Customer Experience programme

We have invested in putting all of our agents through a Customer Experience programme.

It is made up of various modules aimed at helping staff create a connection and treat everyone as a customer.

It also gives them tools and techniques which aim to help them own and navigate the conversation and build their confidence.

This has helped our staff to connect emotionally with our customers – moving from a process mind set to an experience mind set.

With thanks to Natasha

2. Be proactive rather than reactive

Provide your customers with a great experience by being proactive rather than reactive.

For example, send text messages to your customer base alerting them of any problems – as well as regular updates about how you are resolving them – before an enquiry comes into the contact centre.

With thanks to Robin

3. Cover your channels 24/7 to reduce reply times

We are looking at moving our contact centre to a 24/7 operation in an effort to reduce reply times.

With thanks to Emma

4. Improve communication between your teams

Make an effort to improve communication between your different teams.

This should help to create a more consistent customer experience, as everyone will be “singing from the same song sheet”.

With thanks to Anna

5. Give your agents a single view of the customer

Making sure that all your agents have a single view of the customer can help them deliver a better experience.

This is especially useful when customers are contacting you for a second time in relation to an unresolved query.

With thanks to Andy

6. Train your agents in brand awareness

It is important that your contact centre experience matches the brand you are supporting, as this can help to unify the customer experience.

Incorporate brand awareness into your agent training programme to ensure you aren’t missing a trick.

With thanks to Emma

7. Post useful information onto a designated YouTube channel

We have a YouTube channel which we use to post videos on our brand, activity, news and other things our customers may find useful or tend to get in touch to ask us.

With thanks to Natasha

8. Multi-skill your agents to cope with fluctuations in demand

We are multi-skilling most advisors to deal with other services.

However, they have their main primary skill and others are secondary.

With thanks to Suzette

9. Don’t assume what your customers want

The key to delivering an improved customer experience is not to assume you always know what the customer is looking for.

With thanks to Jade

10. Don’t lose sight of traditional channels when going digital

I think it’s great to explore new methods of communicating by embracing the digital world.

It’s important, however, to ensure we don’t lose sight of every other way a customer may choose to interact with us – whether by telephone, email or letter.

With thanks to Natasha

11. Sit social media, email and webchat agents together to catch repeat contacts

We have a team that deals with webchat, Twitter, Facebook and emails.

We have found that a customer will email us, then webchat us with the same question and then send a message via social media, hoping for a different answer.

Having a team that sits together has worked in our favour here, as we are often able to catch these multiple contacts before everyone replies to them individually.

With thanks to Suki