At the time of writing, most managers and business leaders are struggling to minimize the impact of the Coronavirus on their businesses. This unprecedented pandemic has affected all departments within companies, but in different ways.
Where the Finance department is dealing with sensitive issues of cash flow and cash management, Human Resources is facing very tough human realities such as staff reductions, salary freezes, and furlough measures. The Sales department, on the other hand, is working to reassure clients to continue purchasing, while the IT department is working hard to support remote agents to ensure their productivity.
Among the most affected departments is the telemarketing department. To better understand the impact of this crisis on customer support, a recent study conducted by Tethr examined 1 million customer calls handled by the call centers (customer service) of 20 companies across various sectors.
These calls took place between March 11, when the World Health Organization officially declared the Coronavirus a pandemic, and March 26.
The analysis used an algorithm with 250 variables to identify different levels of effort in customer interactions, ranging from "difficult" to "easy" for problem resolution. This algorithm also determines the underlying elements of these different levels.
In short, the analysis of the situation painted a worrying picture of the impact of remote working on customer experience and customer relationship management.
In just two weeks, the companies involved in this study recorded a percentage of calls categorized as "difficult" that was twice as high as usual (from 10% to 20%). These "difficult" problems related to the pandemic ranged from claims for extended payment deadlines to disputes over insurance coverage. The level of customer anxiety is at its peak, making the work of remote call center agents even more challenging.
Calls related to financial aspects are among the most challenging for call center agents to handle, being 2.5 times more complicated.
However, client anxiety only partially explains these difficulties in handling calls. Another equally important factor is the remote work of call center agents. The crisis caught everyone off guard, and companies unprepared for remote work have struggled. Some agents working from home are in a different environment than what they had in their call centers. They lack technical infrastructure (such as a reliable internet connection) and the coaching from their managers (who help with handling difficult objections), leading to greater difficulties in managing client and prospect calls. The study revealed a significant increase on both sides: clients and agents, with cases such as "I can't understand you" rising. Some companies in the study saw a 34% increase in wait times and a 68% surge in call escalations.
This dramatic increase in the effort required for customer and prospect support is a nightmare for managers. These tense interactions will lead to a high attrition rate and jeopardize the entire company, which will, in turn, be much less likely to generate new sales.
For one of the companies involved in this study, difficult interactions had only a 6% chance of resulting in a cross-sell or upsell, compared to an 80% chance for easy interactions. Moreover, among customers threatening to leave, those having difficult interactions with the company had less than a 4% chance of accepting an offer or promotion to encourage them to stay, versus a 20% probability for customers who had easy interactions.
What can companies do to help their customer service representatives and clients navigate this complex period?
Customer relationship management needs to change, and we have identified 3 tactics and tips that should be adopted by savvy leaders.
Call center managers must keep their cool.
Media hype, the over-informed public overreacts and tends to panic. However, fear is a poor advisor, and this is something to avoid at all costs, especially in businesses.
Infectious disease specialists agree on this: the coronavirus causes more fear than harm.
- The coronavirus will not wipe out humanity. However, it will still cause damage, particularly economic.
- The coronavirus is not more dangerous than the seasonal flu. However, like the flu, it can be deadly for the most vulnerable and elderly individuals.
- Fear and panic cause more disasters than the virus itself. The good news is that you are at very low risk if you are under 60 and don’t smoke. However, if you are over 70 and have health issues, it’s important to be cautious.
- Its mortality rate is only 2% to 3%: the coronavirus spreads rapidly but kills relatively few. Influenza and measles kill a hundred times more each year than the coronavirus.
To effectively defend ourselves against this dreaded virus, we must not succumb to panic and must keep our composure.
Equip telemarketers working from home with techniques to help reduce customer frustration.
Making difficult situations even worse. In telemarketing companies, many telemarketers are still bound by the basic standards applied before the pandemic (such as rules for extending payments). They hide behind these regulations and tell clients that they are "unable to help them."
The study reveals that the rate of calls handled by less effective remote telemarketers who hide behind basic standards during the Coronavirus crisis is 27% higher than that of their more effective peers.
It is therefore essential to update the regulations to reflect this new reality and thus reduce the likelihood of telemarketers using basic standards to avoid resolving customer issues.
Another behavior revealed by this study, which further hardens interactions with clients, is doubt and perplexity, using negative vocabulary, and often hastily routing calls elsewhere. That is, the telemarketer passes the issue to another person or department, saying, for example, "I suggest you contact..." or "I can’t help you, but maybe they can...".
Being redirected means clients will have to wait and explain their problem again, leading to a waste of time. In this study, the rate of telemarketers who use vocabulary to redirect calls and pass the issue to someone else is 38% higher than that of their more effective peers.
The most direct solution to resolving client issues is to allow telemarketers to make exceptions. However, changing the culture and operational policies of a call center can be a long process. For quicker results, it is more effective to equip telemarketers with language tailored to this pandemic period to reduce client effort and anxiety. Even better, giving them more power and freedom to make exceptions can be highly beneficial.
Techniques such as "The Advocate," where the telemarketer supports the client’s issue and conveys that they are on the client's side, can make a significant difference. For example, saying something like, "Let's see if we can solve this problem together," can greatly influence whether a client leaves the call frustrated and potentially leaves the company, or remains more loyal. According to this research, the use of advocacy language reduces client effort to resolve their issues by more than 77%.
One of the companies participating in this study followed these recommendations and developed targeted coaching sessions for its telemarketers based on "advocacy" techniques. The number of frustrated clients plummeted sharply: on March 10, over 40% of calls ended with frustrated clients and unresolved issues, but by March 23, this rate had dropped to 7%. Similarly, during the same period, the percentage of calls identified as "difficult" decreased significantly from 20% to 7%.
Advise managers not to fall back into old habits.
Call centers managed by enlightened and progressive leaders have long abandoned the "occasional" coaching practiced by most traditional call centers.
Rather than setting aside an hour each week to review a set of calls and listen to each agent’s recordings (which can be perceived as punishment and disrupt their daily operations), savvy managers develop "integrated" coaching within the daily workflow.
These "integrated" coaching sessions should be brief—before, after, and live during calls in progress. Indeed, the study showed that this type of coaching improves call center agents' performance by 12%. The best managers spend over 75% of their allocated coaching time on this type of "integrated" coaching.
With remote work from home, managers no longer have the visibility they had before COVID-19. They find it challenging to find time for daily integrated coaching sessions with each of their team members. As a result, they tend to fall back into old coaching methods: blocking out some time each week for each agent and focusing on metrics like call duration, rather than observing behaviors and optimizing attitudes.
The good news is that integrated coaching can be conducted virtually. One of the companies studied, forced into remote work and committed to preventing a return to old coaching habits, found that with small adjustments with their agents, they were able to prevent reverting to previous practices.
One of their executives explained that they ensured managers asked more open-ended questions to their agents to understand how their calls were going—identifying the various issues they encountered—and organized mini coaching sessions throughout the day. They used video conferences to provide concrete examples and demonstrate the appropriate attitude to follow.
Utilize collaboration tools to allow agents to share their knowledge.
Encouraging the sharing of knowledge and expertise among team members is one of the secrets of high-performing call centers. Customer service representatives who leverage the expertise of their peers are 50% more effective than those who stick strictly to scripts and rely solely on their managers for answers.
Creating such an interactive environment is challenging under normal conditions, and even more so when representatives are working from home. Fortunately, there are collaboration tools like Slack and other live chat platforms that enable them to communicate with their peers in real-time and share information, advice, and experiences.
At the outset of the crisis and remote work, a manager from one of the studied companies quickly set up a chat group and integrated it into the company's platform. He observed that the traffic on this channel has been steady since the launch of the live chat, with representatives helping each other, answering questions, making suggestions to their peers, and willingly sharing information. Additionally, the representatives are quick to correct any incorrect information shared on the platform, thereby helping the company avoid non-compliance risks and associated high costs.
The Coronavirus has put everyone under pressure in call centers, from managers to representatives. This is an unprecedented situation. However, by focusing on human skills, managerial support, and proper coaching of staff, there is no reason why a company cannot navigate this crisis calmly and even thrive.