Difficult situations with employees occur in any company, and the contact center is no exception to the rule. And as in any other profession, there are many nuances in the work of a contact center agent.
To meet all project requirements and many standards, sometimes agents can perform various manipulations that affect the result of target indicators.
This article describes only the main ones, which can be a good guide for what to consider when organizing a project and working with agents, or choosing a contact center. So, about what situations can arise, how they affect the indicators and results of the project, what to do about it, and how to fix it — learn further.
How the quality of agents’ work is controlled
Each contact center has a quality control department. The main task of the employees of this department is to check the quality of the conversation between agents and customers of the customer’s company. Specialists pay attention to everything: starting with the emotional coloring of the agent’s voice, and ending with checking the conduct of dialogue following the project script. Depending on the detected errors, work on the errors can be carried out, or the agent will have to undergo training again.
Also, the contact center has a system of incentives that can be credited for going out on a day off, as well as fines that are imposed for repeated deviations from the script regulations, etc.
And although, at first glance, the contact center looks like a well-established mechanism, in the work of each of them, sometimes there are various spikes in the number of requests that are difficult to predict. As a result, there are various situations in which agents make mistakes.
It is possible to single out general mistakes that contact center specialists make most often, as well as specific mistakes that do not occur in all contact centers but only depend on the specifics of a certain project.
Common agent mistakes
1) Keep the customer in standby mode for a long time.
If it cannot be done without, the client must remain on the line for a minimum amount of time.
2) Send the customer to search for answers on the site.
If the client contacted the agent, there is a reason for this: the person needs clarification, he did not understand the information on the website, or he simply needs live communication.
3) Do not respond to appeals for a long time.
The perfect response time is 20-30 seconds.
4) The agent asks the client to contact him on another day.
5) Forwarding the request to another specialist.
In some cases, it helps to resolve the customer’s request. However, it is much more comfortable for a person to resolve all issues with one specialist. In addition, agents are often redirected to the wrong specialist, and clients have to familiarize themselves with their situation from scratch.
6) Using a script when it does not work in a certain situation.
The script helps the agent work efficiently. However, sometimes there are exceptions. And the professionalism of an agent is to orientate and help a person in rare (unforeseen) circumstances.
7) The agent asks a lot of unnecessary questions.
The employee takes time, does everything to make the customer hang up, and contacts another contact center employee for various reasons: he is in a hurry for lunch, to finish his shift, etc.
What will help to fix such problems?
First of all, you should understand the situation: talk to the agent, and understand what happened.
Before proposing a solution to the problem, the agent must first independently assess the situation, analyze it, draw conclusions and propose a solution. (Usually, companies already have prescribed solutions for standard problems).
Importantly! Professional contact centers constantly monitor and train employees. In addition, while working on projects, managers constantly identify the shortcomings of negotiation scripts in typical and non-standard situations and work on improvements to work processes.
Examples of specific situations in projects
- Mistake №1. Changing the subscriber’s tariff plan without his consent
As part of the project of the client company, which is a big telecommunications company, some agents informed subscribers that their tariff plan was ending. However, this did not correspond to reality and they changed it to another: better and more expensive. The purpose of such actions was to meet sales figures. In this way, it was possible to reach the percentage of tariff plans that had to be sold.
What helped to solve the problem?
We selected subscribers whose tariff plans were changed and listened to conversations between customers and agents. During the inspection, it was determined whether the agent misinformed the client. After all, such situations affect the specialist’s salary.
- Mistake №2. Not verifiyng calls by agents to get a good NPS
NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a customer loyalty index, which is used to determine the loyalty of consumers of goods and services to a particular brand or company.
When a subscriber calls the inbound line and communicates with an agent, after the end of the conversation, he should receive a message (notification) that the customer evaluates the work of the contact center, agent. The subscriber must react to it, so the rating is taken into account. However, such a message is sent to the client only if the agent fixes the topic of the appeals or indicates an inappropriate topic for the situation since not all topics of the appeals are evaluated. For example, in cases where people call to have fun. Therefore, such subscribers do not receive such a notification.
Why might agents not capture the request or specify the wrong subject? When, during the conversation, the contact center employee understands that the client may be dissatisfied for various reasons (regardless of the agent’s work), for example, even show aggression. Then the agent will not register such an appeal, because the person can leave a negative rating. And all because even when the customer of the company receives quality service from the support service, the customer may leave negative evaluations because they were dissatisfied with the product or service. And at this moment, they may not understand that they are evaluating the support service and not the company.
What helped to solve the problem?
We asked the client company for a report on the number of unregistered appeals for each agent. After the obtained results, we discussed with the agents why it is necessary to register all appeals since other departments work with this data later. And when a large error occurs, it affects the company’s operations.
- Mistake №3. Incorrect fixation of contacts
During the work on the project of the client company of the satellite television operator, it was agreed that the agents should record at least 95% of all calls. If the indicator turns out to be less, then the contact center pays fines, and accordingly, the agents pay a little less. To avoid this, agents, when for various reasons they could not record some calls, recorded other appeals at once under two topics.
What helped to solve the problem?
We understand that in some cases, agents may not have time to process some calls, because not all circumstances can be predicted. However, we can then contact the client again and respond to his request. And first of all, we explain and report various circumstances to the customer. That’s why he knows exactly how we work, he understands, and that’s why we don’t have fines.
- Mistake №4. Failure to meet CSAT
CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) is an average indicator of customer satisfaction with the interaction with the company. Its main advantage is that this metric takes into account the reaction of the customer immediately after the end of his interaction with the product or service.
Read also: Look beyond CSAT: Does the metric measure customer satisfaction?
As part of the project of the customer company, a convenient system of free booking and simple purchase of bus tickets, subscribers could put 4 points out of 5, which is also a good indicator.
The fact is that sometimes users do not understand that they are evaluating the work of the contact center, and not the company directly. It also affects the CSAT score. So when the agents saw that this indicator might not be fulfilled, they could call the line (themselves or their acquaintances), ask a simple question, and leave an excellent rating after the conversation.
What helped to solve the problem?
In cases where we understand that the agent is not working somewhere, we listen to the conversation. The employee receives feedback and time to improve and correct the situation. If such cases are repeated, such specialists stop working on the project and in the company.
We communicate with the customer, we explain to him where and why such indicator results are taken from. For example, when a person buys a bus ticket, the contact center is not responsible for the nuances of the trip, but users broadcast their emotions to agents and the contact center, which only provides advice.
Other agent errors
- The agent asks his colleagues to log him into the work system so that there is no delay.
- During remote work, the agent regularly experiences “unforeseen” circumstances: the power goes out, the Internet is bad, he rarely gets in touch, he is inactive, etc.
- If the customer is negative, even with good service from the agent, they are not redirected to rate the quality at the end of the conversation. Instead, they wait for him to hang up.
To avoid similar situations with agents in time, contact us! Our manager will reply to discuss the details and help you. Over 15 years, we have gained experience working with projects of varying complexity. So we know how to find an approach to each specialist to ensure an excellent customer experience.
