This week marks National Customer Service Week, a celebration of the customer service industry and its vital role in successful business practice across the UK. At IPI, we’re taking the opportunity to reflect on how we help our clients deliver exceptional customer contact, and to encourage everyone to appreciate the importance of, and the agents behind, customer service delivery for businesses all year round.
The value of positive customer interactions cannot be underestimated. Exceptional customer service not only strengthens relationships between customers and brands, but also enhances brand reputation and improves customer retention rates. At the heart of this lies Contact Centre agents, who act as the face and voice of a brand when dealing with customers. It is their ability to resolve issues quickly and effectively that reflects directly on the brand’s competence and care, and ultimately determines whether that customer returns to your brand time and again.
With Contact Centres being the epicentre of customer service delivery, businesses need to prioritise empowering the agents behind them. But how do you achieve this?
Firstly, you need to look after your agents and invest in agent wellbeing. A happy agent means a better customer experience delivered. There are many ways in which you can do so. Whether it’s providing the flexibility to work from home or applying motivation techniques such as gamification – look at ways of keeping your agents engaged. Think long-term and invest in their skills development to boost retention rates amongst your agents and encourage them to develop their long-term career within your organisation.
It’s also essential to consider the impact that having the right tools can have when it comes to empowering agents. With the help of advanced technology, Contact Centre agents are now better equipped than ever to solve problems proactively, fostering trust and loyalty that turn one-time customers into long-term advocates through exceptional customer experience (CX). Creating Super Agents through advanced tools and training empowers them to deliver a more compassionate and effective service to clients. Automation, for example, can be used to handle repetitive tasks, affording agents the time to focus on more complex customer issues, which in turn contributes to higher customer satisfaction rates.
Empowering Contact Centre agents to deliver exceptional customer experiences is at the heart of IPI’s ElasticCX CCaaS offering. By providing them with the advanced tools they need to engage customers across their preferred channels, ElasticCX CCaaS not only enhances productivity but also supports seamless interactions that lead to a better overall customer experience. The solution is designed to be scalable and resilient, ensuring organisations can respond to peaks (and troughs) in demands while maintaining cost efficiency and high service standards.
This National Customer Service Week, take the time to consider how great customer service comes from the Contact Centre, and remember that great customer service doesn’t happen by standing still. It requires constant review and continual investment in enhancing the processes and technology that make up your customer service offering.
Jane Dance is Head of Marketing at IPI with over 30 years experience in the IT marketing arena.
Passionate about driving change through innovative technologies and highly focused on delivering IPI’s core messages to it’s clients and prospects.
IPI enables brands to meet their digital transformation goals with creative and innovative Contact Centre, Cloud and Connectivity services and solutions, which are proven to drive exceptional customer and employee experiences, as well as better business outcomes and increased revenues.
Its team of experts add value at every part of the transformation journey, by providing bespoke consultancy services, training and enablement programmes, DevOps and integration, as well as a range of proprietary solutions and managed services, spanning the Contact Centre, automation and AI, workforce engagement, security and compliance, speech and text analytics, voice services, cloud, and outsourced IT.
Founded in 2001, with its headquarters in Reading and offices in London, Manchester and the Philippines, IPI’s clients include some of the biggest brands in the finance, insurance, retail, travel and leisure, utilities, higher education, and public sectors.
For additional information on IP view their Company Profile
