To learn more about our success stories, visit our store.
As you acquire and retain customers, do you measure the customer experience and loyalty? Most businesses measure Customer Satisfaction (CSAT). If CSAT is the key performance indicator (KPI) you manage, then you know that Demeanor shown by your employee, while interacting with your prospect or customer, is a key driver of CSAT.
We define Demeanor as the quality for verbal, written, and non-verbal communication. The four behavioral attributes for demeanor are: escalation/de-escalation factor; empathy factor; human-touch factor; and non-verbal factor. These factors are subjective behavior measures.
- Escalation/De-escalation factor: Typically customers do not reach out to you, because they are thrilled with your products and services and/or simply to engage in idle chatter. They reach out to you when they are looking to buy or they have a question or concern. Typically they are in charged state of mind. Recognizing their anxiety and their state-of-mind and responding in a calm but enthusiastic manner shows that you exercised this factor in an interaction. Employees, who know how to de-escalate and use escalation or transfer process appropriately, typically provide better resolution and customer experience.
- Empathy factor: Building rapport with your prospect or customer is an important step in customer interaction. Showing empathy and using a conversational tone are important factors that help build rapport and make the customer more open to listen to what you have to say. However, an overfriendly tone or engaging "banter for banter sake" or providing wrong information and not showing desire to address the concern can adversely impact other KPIs such as average handle time (AHT) or sales conversion or first issue resolution (FCR). Employees who effectively and efficiently empathize with the customer, provide faster and better resolution.
- Human-touch factor: Your customer craves human-attention. Whether the customer interaction is completely virtual (such as chat or social-media or web) or in-person (such as phone, face-to-face, webinar, and video), customers find comfort in perceiving and knowing that the interaction is being led with human-intelligence. Employees who show emotion and the desire "to resolve" rather than being flat, robotic, scripted and mechanical, provide better customer experience.
- Non-verbal factor: Body-language and non-verbal communication such as eye contact, smiling, showing enthusiasm are important behaviors that drive the quality of customer interaction. This is especially relevant for those interactions that are in-person, such as phone, face-to-face, webinar and video. In virtual interactions, such as chat, social media, web and email, responsiveness and acknowledgement of a customer's query or concern are the non-verbal equivalents of behaviors. Employees who effectively manage their non-verbal presence, provide extraordinary customer experience.
Think of your last interaction with a product or service company where you were a customer. Do you remember the exact steps and process that the employee followed in order to manage you as customer? Almost 99% of your customers do not remember the exact steps that solved their issues—but they always remember the Demeanor of the employees who served them.
Stephen Mann of Forrester while writing about Help Desk Customer Experience (CX), defines CX as "How customers perceive their interactions with your company.” The key driver for this is Demeanor.
In Customer Management IQ Blog series, Brian Cantor writes about a survey conducted by AchieveGlobal:
"Worth noting is that manners are not the exclusive means by which an agent can demonstrate he hears and respects the customer. While 46% list 'rudeness and indifference' as a top three cause of negative in-person customer experiences, 50% blame 'no concern for my problem'. More than 40% of those surveyed get annoyed when agents 'talk about things other than the problem I am trying to resolve.' But agents must also be organic in their conversations. Efficiency is fine, but robotic, scripted communication is not."
Our results show that sales reps, customer service reps (CSRs) and team leaders who are trained and coached (in a targeted way) and maximize their Demeanor skills by using our products, increase their CSAT and sales conversion by 3X compared to those who did not use our products and/or did not get target-trained.
PAKRA® Games simulate your work processes and provide a practice environment where your employees acquire critical-thinking and decision-making skills — before they engage with prospects and customers. We measure various metrics for every action and click that a learner makes in our Games.
In our Games:
1. Instructions for the game-player or learner emphasize Demeanor. Here are samples of instructions of some of our games:
- "Make sure that you build a rapport by expressing empathy, when appropriate."
- "Make sure that you confidently and knowledgably discuss product feature and capabilities through the interaction."
- "Make sure that you are positive, polite and respectful to your customer and express yourself clearly and effectively."
- "You can empathize but you must follow "no apology guarantee" policy."
2. Gage R&R measurement system is used to score our games.
3. Instant feedback to change behaviors, especially when the choices indicate "unacceptable" behaviors, are provided.
The following is an example that you can use when you coach your sales rep or CSR.
Maya Walters calls Best National Bank
1. Bad Demeanor
Manmeet (CSR): Hello Ms. Maya Walters. This is Manmeet. I will be your banker today.
Maya: Yes! You can help me. What’s my credit card balance? Also can you increase my credit limit? And yes! I know I can check balance on my mobile. But my mobile account is not set up. Can you just tell me?
Manmeet: I need your 15-digit account number and your last transaction with this credit card.
Maya: God! you people need all kinds of things. You think! I memorize 15 digit numbers. Really! God! Aaugh! Wait a minute, let me find it.
2. Average Demeanor
Manmeet (CSR): Hello Ms. Walters. This is Manmeet. I will be your banker today.
Maya: Yes! You can help me. What’s my credit card balance? Also can you increase my credit limit? And yes! I know I can check balance on my mobile. But my mobile account is not set up. Can you just tell me?
Manmeet: For security purposes, I need to do double verification. I need your 15-digit account number and your last transaction with this credit card.
Maya: Yeah! Yeah! Let me get my card out for you.
3. Excellent Demeanor
Manmeet (CSR): Hello. Thank you for calling Best National Bank. This is Manmeet. I will be your banker today. Am I speaking with Maya Walters? How can I help you?
Maya: Yes! You can help me. What’s my credit card balance? Also can you increase my credit limit? And yes! I know I can check balance on my mobile. But my mobile account is not set up. Can you just tell me?
Manmeet: Ms. Walters, can I call you Maya? I would love to find those answers for you today. I have your account in front of me, but for security and regulatory purposes, I need to do double verification. Can you read your 15-digit account number and also tell me your last transaction with this credit card?
Maya: You can call me Maya. My last transaction was at Global Foods -- I think yesterday. Let me read the card number to you. [Proceeds to read the number]
References:
1. Do Manner Matter in Contact Center? Brian Cantor, Customer Management IQ, A division of IQPC
2. Is Your IT Service Desk Customer Experience Up To Scratch? Stephen Mann, Forrestor Blog
4. Metrics Blog from Customer Relationship Metrics
5. Contact Center Customer Satisfaction Index
To learn more about our success stories, visit our store.
Follow us on Google+
