Have you ever played a game of Twister? The gyrations support agents need to go through to keep that 20% of customers who have really challenging issues to solve, happy, can be likened it to the Milton Bradley game. If you’re too young to know what Twister is, it’s a game where you connect your hands and feet in arbitrary and awkward configurations, to certain spots on a mat on the floor. You end up looking like a drunken spider. Plus you find muscles you didn’t know you had, which complain loudly. And you’re not the only player.
Even though CRMs may contain case content, customer history and some call notes, and some even have a knowledge base, agents still need information that is elsewhere, spread breadcrumb-like through customer communications across multiple channels, in social media like Twitter, in defect tracking databases, in shared folders, the intranet, in customer communities, on other websites, in email, call transcripts, a case that was just solved, maybe in the brain of another employee….you get the picture. It might even be in the intelligent combination of all of the above. Twister, with multiple agents playing the game. No wonder turnover is high and customers aren’t always happy.
Survey data tells us that agents need to access from 5 to 20 different systems to solve customer challenges, and that they may have access to less than 25 percent of customer information. Contact centers are designed for the 80% of cases which are standard, but the remaining 20% is where 60%+ of the dollars are spent, where customers are lost, and where relevant information is everywhere but in the CRM system.
What agents need is an all-knowing, trusted mentor, one who can guide her or him along the path to the exact information or expert to help solve the case, wherever the answer is. Who can do all of this securely, and, of course, instantly. If only we all had that kind of mentor, we’d never have to play Twister with customer data.
Because the knowledge is there, it’s just not in your CRM.
Keep your eye out for a Twister-busting, mentor-like CRM-power-booster from Coveo. It’s coming soon, and early signs are that it will change the CRM world—for the better. Like Salesforce.com? You’ll love it with Coveo.
Who is your trusted mentor? How well do you play Twister?