Examine the customer experience
Swenson’s first step is watching how her company meets customer needs, which requires a double-edged sword for addressing both the customer experience and the experience of the employee serving the customer.
She’s found a way to examine both at once.
“We monitor live calls against a directional framework that we would like people to use with the customer in terms of listening and responding and trying to take care of that call on the first contact,” she says. “Listening to the contact is probably the most effective.”
In tandem with assessing how employees are serving customers, monitoring calls also tunes you in to the customer’s perspective.
“Monitoring is a good barometer,” Swenson says. “It’s pretty quick feedback because when you make a change [to your customer service,] you can pay particular attention to the change. You hear what the customer experience is.”
Swenson and other customer support leaders monitor a set number of calls each month to give employees equal opportunity for feedback. They usually sit with the employee and connect through a jack in the phone so they can listen to the live conversation.
“The advantage of doing it side by side is the ability to watch the work process, watch the systems, see how the employee is able to interact with the customer and whether or not there are barriers to that,” she says.
That close observation might make employees nervous at first. But the way you set up the exercise can ease the tension.
First, clearly explain that the purpose of your visit is to improve the company, not nitpick about mistakes. Communicate what you’re listening for.
“We did a lot of training with our employees about what we were doing and why we were doing it and how we would be assessing this,” Swenson says. “So there was a lot of discussion upfront about what was going to be done.”
Obviously, as Swenson aligned the company’s approach, she wanted to hear the same basics regardless of which office she was visiting — like employees making personal connections with customers rather than treating them like a number.
She also listens for employees to address specific issues she’s asked them to crack down on, such as ending the conversation with, “Is there anything else I can do to help you today?”
“We have a standard approach in terms of the kinds of things that we look for: how the customer is greeted, the kind of engagement they have with the customer, whether or not they’ve been able to solve the customer’s problem,” Swenson says.
While the first layer of the exercise is hearing how the employee handles the encounter, your main goal is to identify areas for systemwide improvement, whether it’s a fault in the process or a best practice to spread. Staying focused on that goal as you evaluate can make employees more comfortable with monitoring in the future.
“You build that credibility over time because they realize you really are there to help them do a better job and not to be negative or look for all the mistakes,” Swenson says. “It’s not about what they didn’t do, but it’s what did the system or the way we’ve constructed the process do that got in the way of serving the customer.”
You’ll learn a lot by simply observing, but you’ll multiply the benefit by actually talking about it, too. So as soon as possible, if not immediately after the call, sit down with the employee to debrief.
Swenson sat in on one call where the employee needed to transfer the customer to another department but the contact person wasn’t available. The representative tried to get the manager instead, but the manager’s name wasn’t even in the system.
“I just talked to the rep after the call and said, ‘What would you need to make that more effective? What could help you?’” Swenson says. “It is not just observation, but it’s asking the person who’s actually doing the work, ‘What’s getting in the way of you serving the customer?’
“Give them feedback and get their feedback on how they thought the call went, what did they like about it, what would they do differently,” she says. “So it’s more interactive versus directive. We want to have a conversation with our employees because self-discovery is more powerful than listening to somebody talk at you. It really becomes their discussion and not the supervisor’s discussion.”
