4 Ways to Empower Agents to Connect With Clients

Currently, ensuring a good customer experience has become one of the main priorities of customer service centers. Agents are the key to achieving a great customer experience, according to the “Future of CX Employees” report, prepared by CCW Digital. In fact, the ‘personal connection’ between agents and users is now a differentiating factor, since the greater use of self-service by customers means that call center employees develop skills that offer added value to the queries raised by the consumers. But how can call centers empower agents to ‘connect’ with customers?

In its report, CCW Digital describes 4 ways to empower agents to ‘connect’ with customers:

1.- Understanding the importance of the ‘human’ touch

Today, agents mean more to the customer experience than ever before. Therefore, when seeking new talent, organizations must prioritize ‘human’ factors such as sympathy, empathy and emotional intelligence that allow contact center employees to be able to establish real ‘connections’ in their interaction with users.

The CCW Digital report reveals that only 17% of organizations see internal promotion as a strategy to increase performance. According to the study, this means that the demands of current consumers force call centers to also seek talent outside the organization.

2.- Training the ‘smile’

The leaders of the customer service centers have become increasingly clear that, in addition to providing agents with the appropriate skills and knowledge, they must train their ‘smile’ in order to facilitate their ‘connection’ between themselves and their customers.

To do this, they have to ask questions such as: What types of problems, types of client’s personality and emotional behaviors seem to cause more problems for agents in interactions with users? How can they handle these problems more skillfully in the future? How can the agent determine if a client is satisfied? The training to answer these questions is what differentiates a mere receptionist from a customer-focused agent.

3.- Facilitating decision-making in ‘connection’ with the client

In the current era of customer centricity, call centers must train their agents to be able to react in atypical situations, adapting their language and behavior according to each user they speak with.

The ‘normality’ of contact centers is no longer what it was a few years ago. It is a sector that undergoes constant changes that distance it from the old standards and procedures. Therefore, it is essential to provide agents with the necessary tools to prepare them for the new normality based on the ‘customer centricity’. The agent must understand the connection between the customer’s experience practices and the central business objectives to make decisions independently.

4.- Providing them with resolutive capacity

Although the added value of agents lies in their ability to connect with clients based on factors such as empathy and friendliness, efficiency and productivity also play an important role. In fact, according to the CCW Digital report, 85% of customers value “resolution speed” as a key demand when interacting with an agent.

In conclusion, call centers must ensure that their agents can develop all their skills in interaction with customers. They must have a clear idea of who the client is, what problem or query they want to solve and how they feel when making the call. This knowledge allows the agents to establish a quick ‘connection’ with the users; at the same time they can take immediate measures to solve the problem. According to one of the experts participating in the CCW Digital report: “Feeling valued and listened to, the customer will feel confident that the brand is offering the best possible resolution.”