Next-Gen Desktop for Next-Gen…No…All Employees
There’s a lot of talk about “the Millennials” these days—how they live and work and interact in a digitally disrupted world. As a Sociology major, I find it fascinating. As a 55-year-old high-tech professional, I find it nauseating. Like I don’t use a smart phone and adeptly use apps and the web and even the “Internet of Things.” Harumph.
If you’re reading this blog, there is an excellent chance that you work in the arena of customer engagement, which is being bombarded by higher customer expectations (nay, demands), rapid technical advances, and competitive comparisons that are one click away. It doesn’t matter how old you are or how old your staff members are; we’re all in this together. And guess what? You can teach an old dog new tricks.
If you’ve hired the right people, you have a small army of customer advocates who want to provide great experiences to customers. (See Steven Thurlow’s post entitled Empowering the Next-Gen Customer Advocate.)
Employees who spend most of their day interacting with customers (in a customer engagement center) or doing work on behalf of customers (in the back office) need to have a click-reducing interface to their activities that is streamlined, intuitive, contextual, fast, and unified.
Customer data is often spread all over the place—contact info here, billing info there, products and services over yonder, and interaction history scattered about. Navigating that is costly. Omer Minkara’s research at Aberdeen pegs it at 15 percent of an agent’s time. Check out this 90-second video intro to his research.
A modern employee desktop helps front-line and back-office employees:
- Focus on understanding and meeting the specific needs and requirements of each customer—to exceed customer expectations throughout the journey.
- Be ready for every interaction with all the right context and resources at hand—to provide swift, personalized information and issue resolution.
- Create and leverage opportunities to go above and beyond—to delight the customer to support exemplary experiences that win over customers’ hearts and minds.
- Be responsive to evolving customer, employee and business needs—so employees can embrace the role of customer advocate, as opposed to simply company agent.
Employees who serve customers want to be empowered and enabled by the systems they use. Brian Clancy, manager of contact center operations for AARP, told me that his Member Relationship Associates were elated to have tools that made their work easier and faster.
What used to take 10-11 steps now takes one. Providing them with up-to-date knowledge used to take four hours and now takes minutes. Transaction training time has been significantly reduced, allowing more time to spend on infusing new-hires with the AARP mission and culture. You can hear all about it in a webinar I’m doing with Brian on October 13 (register to attend or view the recording here).
Full disclosure: I am a card-carrying AARP member—a quinquagenarian privilege—and I use the app on my smart phone.
The post Next-Gen Desktop for Next-Gen…No…All Employees appeared first on Customer Experience Management Blog.
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
