Only engaged service teams can deliver next-level customer loyalty in an era of uncertainty

Customers are increasingly showing that they will not settle for sub-par experiences. On the other hand, brands that provide excellent customer service build trust new research. And 80% of customers who experience great support will recommend the company.

It’s not surprising that customer service has such a powerful impact on loyalty, referrals, and brand perception. After all, it’s a sensitive moment in the customer journey when they need help. This digital-first world has taught consumers to expect that businesses should be available at all times on any platform and able to address any potential issues they might have. This level of accessibility has raised the bar on service quality expectations for all businesses in every industry.

A crucial part of delivering exceptional services is enabled through platform integration and real-time automation and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions based on a single view of the customer. But it’s also more human. Without the support of intelligent, integrated platforms and cross-channel insights, agents often feel they cannot meet rising expectations. When considering the impact of the pandemic on service teams, things get a little more complicated. Customer service managers and agents are now working remotely or in hybrid environments spread across regions—sometimes the world—writing the new service playbook as they go.

Any technology and business investments that fail to align service innovation, agent skills and customer expectations are missing out on a transformative opportunity to foster loyalty and drive business growth in this new world.

So how can service leaders manage their teams to scale as demand increases while minimizing the negative impact of service team displacement? How can service agents deliver great experiences in these times?

The key is employee engagement.

EX + CX = business growth

Happy employees are happy customers, as the saying goes. Breaking down the walls between employee experience and customer experience can lead to a tremendous opportunity for revenue growth of 50% or more, according to one study new research. However, the report also found that 74% of C-suite leaders say no one in their organization is truly responsible for employee experience.

That needs to change.

Workforce management has always been about efficiency and ensuring teams are as productive as possible. This mentality has to change. That’s not to say productivity isn’t important—it’s still the end goal of any workforce management solution. But overall productivity isn’t as “black and white” as it used to be.

Aside from the inefficient workflows that come with a distributed service center, there is an element of human emotion that needs to be addressed. Service agents are more than just employees. They are people – each with their own unique circumstances at home, families to support, and worries about the uncertainty that comes with a volatile global pandemic. Executives need to think beyond simple agent enablement to agent well-being and agent success. To achieve this, the needs of the team must be approached with empathy and understanding – much like the agents themselves are expected to approach every customer interaction.

By prioritizing employee well-being, leaders are creating something bigger than a well-oiled machine or a streamlined tech stack. They can foster an environment in which service providers operate want to do their job; an environment where teams are able to tackle the increasingly complex problems customers face with honesty and sophistication – while maintaining that critical level of operational efficiency. Yes, fast service is great for one-off transactions, but quality service is what drives long-term customer loyalty.

So how exactly do you create an environment that makes service agents feel engaged and empowered in every customer interaction? The answer is actually quite simple. Technology remains a key factor in a service team’s ability to manage these priorities – but the types of technology investments business leaders are making are the key differentiators here.

Innovation with agent and employee engagement in mind

In the past, service centers functioned as cost centers — where technology allowed companies to scale customer support while ultimately moving further away and decoupled from the customer. Customer interactions became more automated, and speed and efficiency took precedence over everything else.

Now that customer service channels have become the front lines of consumer-to-brand communications, technology investments are helping these agents become better closer to the customer and occupy more strategic roles than ever before (according to a state of service According to a Salesforce report, a majority of agents say their role is more strategic than it was two years ago).

Along with the ability to reach customers at every digital touchpoint (voice, chat, SMS, video, etc.), there are backend technology integrations that help agents focus on what matters most: delivering exceptional service experiences . Modern workforce management innovations empower service leaders with tools to help them better understand their service teams’ capacities, skills, schedules and more—all on one connected platform. Workforce management solutions of the past relied on separate, separate solutions to accommodate the diverse needs of employees. By providing all of these capabilities on one platform, service managers can perform more accurate forecasting and planning, and ensure service agents with the appropriate skills are available and ready to respond when needed.

This increased visibility helps optimize operational efficiencies, but AI and automation really help drive service team engagement. Believe it or not, in many cases service managers still work with spreadsheets. On the other hand, agents are still expected to manually enter and search for data before, during, and after customer interactions. These inefficiencies not only impede a service team’s ability to scale appropriately as demand increases, but also prevent service reps from showing empathy and understanding in every customer interaction. AI and automation can help relieve a significant portion of the mundane, manual tasks of service agents and executives alike — and free agents time to really engage with the customer in the moment.

By investing in an engaged workforce, service leaders offer their agents the opportunity to be more creative, present and honest themselves. Operational efficiency is still very important, but workforce management will give teams new room for engagement.

Now is the time to create new standards of service excellence and maximize the extra time agents spend to deliver exponential value. The teams that invest in developing their agents’ interpersonal skills and encourage creativity will find that both agents and end customers are happier in the long run. Agents feel empowered and connected to new growth opportunities, while customers feel like they’re really being listened to. You won’t think a customer service representative is working from a script or rushing to end the call or chat, but instead will be able to see the humanity of the person on the other side.

That human connection is what defines a lifetime customer, and that level of commitment to the agent makes the job worthwhile.