The customer service we experience today and our expectations of it are vastly different from what it was two years ago. As many brands no longer have physical stores and in-person sales representatives, building strong customer service through their contact centres has become essential.
As an extenuating number of brands have made the transition and upscaled their contact centre resources, providing differentiation between brands at this level has become increasingly difficult. The demands that customers hold on reputable brands and their customer service team has increased tenfold. As e-commerce looks to remain a dominant force for the foreseeable future, building a contact centre that can handle both the demands in quality and increased quantity remains the crucial challenge for contact centre managers.
Pressure on Customer Service
The importance of a good customer service experience is undisputed, especially during the pandemic, as the contact centre may have been one of the only interactions a customer had with a business. As a result, the way a customer views your organisation could rest entirely upon their interaction with your customer support team.
The pressures upon contact centres to produce high quality, fast, and engaging experiences is increasing by the day. A customer can easily identify the difference between an engaged agent and one that is not so it is important to make sure your staff have the training and skills they need to keep them motivated.
Building Engagement
Staff engagement in the contact centre is hugely important. Handling time, customer service scores, and energy displayed throughout the query represent important elements that can help brands succeed and build meaningful relationships with their customers.
Improving agent engagement in your contact centre can lead to a raft of benefits:
• A reduction in sick leave
• Greater agent satisfaction
• Higher agent retention
• Lower gross agent training costs
• Higher customer satisfaction scores
• Higher self-motivation
Building engagement and improving productivity simultaneously is however no easy feat.
Channel Engagement
Gamification represents one of the fastest growing methods of building engagement with 60% of agents reporting that they felt more engaged after gamification had been introduced into their training and work. Gamification allows contact centre managers to build engagement by appealing to a larger array of emotions, using more senses, and adding rewards and point scoring elements into the training process.
While building engagement within any workplace is relatively easy with increased breaks, rotating tasks, and other small activities, most of them lead to decreased productivity and lost focus on the task at hand. It is for this very reason that gamification has become so popular all over the world. These small gaming elements that might seem mindless and off-task are specially designed to improve agents’ performance and sculpt the perfect customer service experience while they play the game.
Gamification solutions are extremely customisable and integrate with existing training procedures and KPI measuring systems. No matter the industry that a contact centre services, gamification can keep agents on task, continually learning and most importantly engaged.
As the demand in quality and quantity of customer service continues to increase, solutions such as gamification play an important role in developing contact centres for the future. Gamification impacts the quality-of-service delivery in two direct ways:
1. It Models the ‘Perfect’ Customer Experience
Throughout the training process, agents are taught what the perfect customer experience looks like by watching others or learning from customer service handbooks. Neither of which allows for an immersive experience and a complete comprehension of providing a positive customer experience.
Gamification allows agents to engage more of their senses throughout the training process and practice delivering a positive service before being presented with actual clients.
2. Gamification Builds Engagement
A more engaged agent conveys more energetic emotions throughout the experience. They are more aware of the customer needs, and are more motivated to handle customer queries faster and with higher quality.
Through a variation of activities, gamification instantaneously builds engagement and improves the customer service experience.
As the increased demands for quality and quantity of customer service show no signs of slowing down, contact centre managers must build engagement designed to last and continue growing with the customer’s demands. Gamification represents one of the most cost effective and effective methods of building engagement in the contact centre. Companies worldwide are turning to gamification as the next best means of improving their output and efficiencies and 40% of the Global 1000 organisations are already using gamification.
If your contact centre is looking to improve its operations and deliver a higher quality of customer service, speak to our professional consultants to discover the potential of Call Design’s gamification solutions.