Many companies underestimate the power of customer feedback strategy. They rely instead on customer support agent metrics that only tell part of the story.
Customer support agent performance alone doesn’t give a whole picture of how effective your client service is. It also doesn’t define customer success. Does that seem counter-intuitive? Let’s have a different look at this.
Companies believe that the most crucial indicator of successful customer experience today through various omnichannel interactions lies in agent performance metrics. This is partially true since agent performance illustrates the level of expertise of your firm and sets a higher standard for the rest of your customer support team.
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However, even with the finest skills and knowledge in the industry, your agents’ performance can never surpass the value of customer insights. Your customers are the experts on how your service comes across.
Should you ignore agent performance metrics? No, not at all. They can perfectly coexist with the feedback your consultants receive from the clients.
Keep reading to learn more about how customer feedback can go hand in hand with support agent performance. Learn how to help your company design the most effective and personalized approach for each of your consumers. Doing so will:
- Keep your customers satisfied;
- Allow your agents to get the most out of customer interactions;
- Improve their work and;
- Eventually, your business outcomes.
How to Make It Work?
Companies should recognize that the operations their support agents perform and how customers respond are closely interconnected. Ten years ago, American Express demonstrated the merits of this approach, and it still remains relevant today.
American Express was a trailblazer for a customer-centric business model. Today most organizations realize the benefits of building more intimate and meaningful relationships with their potential clientele. This means that now companies let the customers define what’s coming next.
As a result, customer feedback now takes the front seat in the modern-day business environment. Businesses use the feedback to boost their service levels.
Using Consumer Feedback to Boost Your Customer Service
Personalize
First, ensure your support agents have access to customer feedback. Avoid sharing the generalized trends gathered from the overall customer feedback. Instead, make it personal, so your agents will pay closer attention to fixing customer communication bugs.
Such a strategy will also help your consultants decipher the power of the impact they have on your potential consumers and calculate the consequences in advance.
Motivate
Real-time customer feedback is a powerful and motivational asset to ensure your consultants are fully armed at work. Sharing positive consumer feedback gives a boost for your support agents and drives their work engagement. As such, companies reap the benefits of satisfied employees and their clients.
However, negative reactions from your clients can have motivational effects as well. To yield positive results from the negative customer feedback, a team leader must give constructive meaning to the feedback to develop a personalized plan for the agent. This way, a customer would never feel the same about your agent and can give you another chance.
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Educate
Education is a lifetime journey, so are the relationships between your agents and customers. The successful bonds with your clients define your competitive advantage, which is why they are crucial for your business.
Post-call or post-chat customer surveys provide the most sincere and direct feedback from the clients. Make sure you put enough effort into identifying potential threats and challenges in customer experiences with your brand. Improving such gaps requires customized training for each agent to monitor the feedback trends on the agent’s level and enhance the quality of the customer service.
The constant analysis of your up-to-date customer feedback is fundamental for better practices and results in customer support.
The Latest Practices for Harnessing Customer Feedback
Human interactions are at the core of customer experience with the companies. Every interaction that your customers have with support agents defines the relationship vector with clients.
Learning how to use customer feedback to improve customer experience is a tough skill to master. But it’s not impossible with the following tips:
- Ensure 360-degree performance visibility
- Provide agent training
- Boost agent motivation
- Eliminate negative interactions
- Employ service innovations
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Concluding Thoughts
Companies must understand the power of customers’ opinions regarding the services that they provide. Taking control of customer feedback helps them ensure that their end results meet clients’ expectations and solve customer-related issues.
Positive or negative, direct customer feedback gets you to the cutting edge of customer service. It’s the main impetus behind your agents’ performance.
Ask for the most radically honest feedback from your customers to transform your corporate culture from the inside, starting from your agents’ input. Doing so will help you build a thriving support team and create a loyal client base.
