AUGUST 2022CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM9Here are three technology-inclusive approaches I had adopted over the past couple of years:1. Be explicit about the agent experience. Marketing professionals revel in getting to know their customer demographic and meticulously craft journeys to eke out every possible advantage over their competitors. By applying that same logic and creating deliberate agent journeys, from the time they are recruited to the time they leave their post, agents are afforded a much richer and developmental working experience. Effort and friction are replaced with opportunity and engagement, which in turn drives down attrition and improves agent-based key performance indicators, such as Agent Net Promoter Score. There are a number of cloud-based platforms that support the creation of customer journeys; these can be retooled to create employee journeys.2. Provide platforms for discussion and idea sharing: Taking the time to sit face-to-face with frontline colleagues and have open and transparent conversations pays dividends. It is an opportunity to tune-in and really listen to what matters to them and builds rapport and trust in the long-run. I have also found that providing a digital platform for sharing information, ideas and updates are incredibly powerful. Agents are empowered to upload videos, text articles, and images that bring their idea to life and the comments sections allow others to feedback and build on the idea. It creates a community based on knowledge democratization and business benefit from the pipeline of ideas and improvements that are generated. 3. Solicit feedback regularly: Businesses traditionally run an annual staff survey, which generally provides insight into broad company-impacting themes. I have supplemented the annual survey with a quarterly agent survey, designed to solicit feedback specific to customer care and the agent's role. These surveys are short (no more than 10 questions) and anonymous and great care is taken to ensure that the key themes are explored and fed back on. For near real-time sentiment analysis, I have deployed a feedback kiosk on-site. The kiosk has 4 emoji buttons on it, similar to the kiosks you would find in an airport that ask about your baggage claim experience, and the questions are rotated every few months. We ask a simple question like: "How are you feeling today?" and we can identify the mood of our agent population down to 15-minute intervals on a particular day. Using this insight, we can collaborate with our agents to brainstorm ideas to improve the mood during those "down" times.There is no silver bullet to solving employee engagement. It is an on-going collaboration with your colleagues to identify friction points in the experience and working out strategies to remove them and there are technology tools available to give you teams a voice. IN THE FEW MINUTES THEY SPEND ENGAGING WITH A CUSTOMER, THEY CAN DIRECTLY INFLUENCE THE FUTURE BRAND LOYALTY OF THAT CUSTOMER. JUST LIKE CUSTOMERS, AGENTS LOYALTY TO A BRAND IS INFLUENCED BY THEIR EXPERIENCE WITH THAT BRAND; WHAT ARE THE WORKING CONDITIONS, HOW ARE THEY TREATED, ARE THEY VALUED AS INDIVIDUALS?
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