Digital age moves contact centre agent to role of advisor

© visivasnc – 123RF.com

As more basic functions of a contact centre (such as account balance inquiries) are automated, customer service agents are freed up to provide more complex support services to customers – bringing about the need for an all-encompassing customer ‘advisor’, as opposed to the more traditional, one-dimensional service ‘agent’.

Customers themselves have upgraded their expectations for the levels of service they expect. These factors demand that a new breed of customer service advisor take control, with sophisticated skill set that meets these demands.

Since so many of the interactions take place via the written word (email, text, chat), service advisors must have advanced writing skills to cope in a fast-paced, responsive environment. Information must be available in real-time and conveyed in a way that meets customer expectations of the brand.

It is not simply about being polite, there is an element of brand reputation management and guardianship: advisors providing incorrect information or treating customers poorly could find themselves on the receiving end of negative viral customer feedback – dissatisfied customers are quick to take their grievances to social media.

In that case, the service advisor must have advanced skills in social media management (facilitated by the provision of extensive training) as well as a deep understanding of the brand’s messaging. There should also be crisis communication scripts available that allow the advisor to react in the event of a potential disaster.

Compared with simple voice interactions, multi-channel interactions require multi-tasking and multi-skilled agents, but the quality of the interaction must not suffer.

Expected product knowledge

However, the challenge does not end there: customers expect that agents should have specialised knowledge of the product and their history with the company. Extensive product information must be made available (regarding the product itself and the company’s related procedures), and the agent must be able to access an extensive customer profile that itemises all interactions with the company. All of this information must be at hand so that the interaction is not delayed or deferred to another agent or department.

While previously, agents on voice calls typically had to defer the call or make multiple calls in order to conclude an interaction (to obtain information stored in other departments, perhaps even on paper), customers now expect all information to be centralised.

So the contact centre advisor of the future must have instant access to all customer information, be capable of acting as brand guardian and be able to respond accurately (in writing or verbally) to all customer interactions.

Sourcing, training skilled advisors

All of these points pose a challenge to contact centres and their related human resource functions: how will they source these multi-skilled agents, how can training be accelerated, how can customer interaction data be available to support an agent advisory role and how do companies provide the best possible customer experience?

This becomes a discussion not just centred around people, but also the processes, technology and data that will be required to support the customer service advisor of the future. This dynamic space is bound to see progressive companies leading the charge when it comes to service excellence.