Customer facing people in call centres or shops usually aim to do more than just complete a conversation with a customer as fast as possible. For most calls and interactions, either the organisation or the customer or both want to have a more meaningful conversation in some way. Whether it’s just in serving that customer in a warm and positive manner, or understanding the customer’s real (and often unstated) needs, treating that customer in a personal way usually results in higher satisfaction, loyalty and ultimately higher sales. This is why call centres make significant investments into training staff to have needs-based and engaging conversations. However, many of them still end up having transactional interactions with their customers.

So what is required to have engaging conversations in the call centre?

1)       Service principles that underpin everything

Principles that are simple and memorable can underpin the types of conversations you want your staff to have.  They should be based on your company’s strategy, purpose, vision and values and fit with your brand. They should be appropriately worded for staff that use them.  They will help to determine the kind of conversations your staff have and the language they use.   For more on customer principles see here. 

2)       Stated and unstated customer needs

It’s key that the customer’s needs are well understood.  This can be achieved through the use of a conversation framework that assesses both stated needs (what the customer says they want) and unstated needs (what they want but don’t mention).  Effective dialoguing skills (a balance of listening and questioning to arrive at a good understanding of needs) can then be used to guide the customer to the right solution.   If unstated needs have been highlighted effectively then it enables unexpected value to be added to the interaction (for the customer and your company), by meeting these.

3)       Language

Language and positioning: How your staff talk, the language they use is not only important to the customer’s experience but also to your brand.  Virgin Australia for example, has a relaxed way of speaking to customers.  Conversely, the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain is quite formal when speaking to their guests.  These two styles are quite different but both suit the company and its customers.  The goal is to illustrate your positioning well.  Some of the other considerations around language are;

• Being clear and concise is important in any service situation – avoiding jargon is one example; the emphasis should be on removing even the commonplace expressions or acronyms as not every customer will understand them.
• Finally, phrasing advice positively has a big impact on customers regardless of the interaction’s outcome.  ‘You just need to pop that in the post to us so we can process it for you’ sounds very different to ‘sorry but you’ll have to send it in’, even though the message is the same. 

4)       Emotional Connections

When you think back to great service experiences you have had, what comes to mind?  One element is likely to be the level of engagement or fulfilment at an emotional level.  In the context of sales or service CEC defines emotional intelligence as the ability to identify, assess, and control emotions and how you respond to others; very relevant to the case of how an agent controls conversations to put the customer in the centre.  As a concept emotional intelligence is growing but it is often limited in customer conversations.  Some of the core components in brief;

• Rapport building is integral – it is about creating a comfortable ‘state’ where all parties converse freely and comfortably which makes it far easier to ascertain and meet the customers’ needs.
• Empathy is important especially at key moments (as our minds normally retain only the most vivid aspects from each situation), for example hellos and goodbyes should be warm and personal, apologies for errors genuine and well delivered. 
• Pitch, pace and tone.  In normal conversation Body language accounts for 55% of what is remembered.  On telephone calls the body language is removed so the tone of voice is remembered 86% and the words 14%.  Tone is important in maintaining rapport and should be warm and friendly, genuine and reassuring, active and lively.  The pitch and pace should match (but not necessarily mirror) the customer’s.

Case study – Insurance sector

The Customer Experience Company recently completed a project for an insurer who needed to make their customer contacts less transactional.  By designing service principles we were able to articulate ‘what’ was required from their calls and by creating training around principles, meeting stated and unstated needs, language and emotional intelligence we illustrated ‘how’ customer care agents could achieve this.  The outcomes were:

• Contact centre managers and customer experience managers that were happy that the defined service principles reflected their company’s strategy and were needed to improve customer satisfaction ratings.
• Agents that felt better equipped to provide this required quality of service and that following the training were (in their own words) ‘showing more empathy across the board’ and ‘providing much more personal service rather than transactional’. 
• Agents that (after initially expecting that improving their service would be very hard work) found it ‘a joy to come to work’ and ‘Forgot my break’.
• Perhaps surprisingly, a minimal impact on average handling time – which only increased by 5-10%
• and most importantly, customers that noticed the difference ‘I felt like I was speaking to a real person not just someone doing their job. She had a lovely human aspect to her which stood out from others I have called.’

Conclusion

So it is possible to train your people to have needs based and engaging conversations (and enjoy having them), but remember;

• You need principles that are aligned to your company and worded well for their users
• There should be a framework based around customer needs
• The right language should be articulated and emotional intelligence up skilling should take place