The introduction of new digital channels has opened contact centers to different challenges and opportunities. While it has created exciting ways of connecting with customers, it has also created demanding situations for contact centers and agents.
Agents have different ways of working and display different strengths and weaknesses. These differences in working can affect the seamless experience your contact center offers regardless of the technology you use.
While digital channels aren’t going away any time soon, the crucial operational question is, should you train all your agents in a hybrid approach?
Here are 3 rules for agents in the omnichannel experience:
Focus on evolving the level of training you offer
As customer experience changes, so does agent training. Contact center leaders will need to re-define their approach to the training their agents receive – how will you incorporate traditional and hybrid contact center training in your training programs?
Establish a clear evolution of training and how this will impact your current agents and the way you recruit future agents.
Agents must take a more significant part in the conversation
Agents are constantly evolving to meet rapidly changing customer expectations. It’s the only way to ensure that contact centers can maintain customer relationships and maximize the value of each experience.
Fostering the interests is a crucial step in building a growth-minded and engaged agent community. By giving agents a voice and directly linking individual growth to customer satisfaction, agents can more confidently provide the experience customers are looking for.
Omnichannel doesn’t mean every channel .
Agent training must consider how exactly your customers liked to be reached; do your customers tend to lean on voice, chat or social messaging? Does email play an essential role in your contact center? There are many questions to ask, but while catering for all these different channels, you cannot assume all your agents can effectively communicate on these channels too.
Not every agent needs to be fully omnichannel – some could be digitally focused, or some could lean more toward traditional channels. As long as the technology facilitates the movement, customers won’t see a service disruption.