What Type of Customer Service Environment Do You Have?

One of the downsides to working as a customer service executive is that it’s very easy to form a bias about your organization because you only see it from the inside. Many people put on blinders, and fail to truly understand what customers think about their contact centers.

The truth is that all contact centers have distinct personalities depending on how they are organized and managed. And as an executive, it’s important to understand how your customer service team is viewed.

A contact center, for instance, can be:

Friendly: In this type of environment, agents are advised to do everything in their power to keep customers feeling happy. Agents are assessed based on cheerfulness, enthusiasm and empathy. Contact centers that come across as friendly to customers stand a much better chance of generating strong customer service ratings, and positive reviews. The only downside to having a contact center that is overly-friendly is that customers will at times try to take advantage of agents. So it’s important to tell agents to be pleasant and happy, but also firm. You can be nice without being taken advantage of.

Aggressive: At the other end of the spectrum is the aggressive contact center, or one that values its bottom line over customer relations. In this type of environment, agents are instructed to be less friendly, and more aggressive in their pursuits to collect money, resolve issues quickly and process requests in a timely manner. Contact centers that come across as aggressive can also be seen as hostile. This can make customers upset, and cause them to seek out competitors. The cable and utility industries are notorious for having aggressive customer service strategies.

Creative: In this type of environment, agents are instructed to use creative thinking at strategic times to keep customers satisfied. Here is an example of how this may work: Imagine a customer stays at a hotel but cannot eat any of the snacks in the mini bar due to food allergies. After calling and complaining to the corporate customer service team, the contact center could arrange to have healthy snacks sent up to the room at no additional cost. This is the type of small, but highly-effective personal touch that goes a long way in driving customer loyalty. It’s also the type of thing that a customer may post on social media, where it could go viral.

So, what can you do to make sure your contact center is setting the right tone for your business? Round up your team and create a customer service task force. Have your team members figure out what is being said about your company online, and in the media. You may even want to have agents from this task force call in and perform anonymous spot checks. Then, come together as a team and discuss your findings.

You can also outsource your department to a third party contact center solutions provider that specializes in providing consistent, amazing customer service backed with a quality guarantee.