CX Demo

Author: Franz Malten Buemann

  • CCaaS: Rethinking Your CX and Customer Service Strategy

    Customer service is one piece of the CX puzzle, and it’s not confined solely to the contact center. Companies today must take a holistic approach, and chances are you’ll need to go beyond conventional contact center offerings. There’s no singular way to do that, which largely explains why there are so many different types of choices now. When thinking about CCaaS, you should rethink your CX from the customer’s perspective. The results you achieve could be much more far-reaching than just your contact center. Full article: https://www.nojitter.com/contact-center-customer-experience/ccaas-rethinking-your-cx-and-customer-service-strategy
    submitted by /u/vesuvitas [link] [comments]

  • 12 Critical Elements Every Website Homepage Must Have [Infographic]

    Serving as your company’s virtual front door, this page is responsible for drawing in a majority of your website’s traffic. Still, despite its prominence, many businesses struggle to optimize it properly.
    You see, your homepage needs to wear a lot of hats. Rather than treating it like a dedicated landing page built around one particular action, it should be designed to serve different audiences, from different origins. And in order to do so effectively, it needs to be built with purpose. In other words, you’ll need to incorporate elements that attract traffic, educate visitors, and invite conversions.
    To improve the performance of your homepage, check out these elements every homepage must have.

    12 Critical Elements Every Website Homepage Must Have
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    What You Should Include in Your Website Homepage Design
    1. Headline
    Within three seconds, a website needs to tell visitors what the business has to offer. That’s where your headline comes in. It may only be a few words, but it’s one of the most important pieces of copy on your website.
    Many types of people might visit your website, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a few words that hit home for everyone. Instead, write your headline to target a third of those people who are most likely to be happy with your product.
    Keep the headline itself clear and simple. Dropbox’s headline is a great example: “Everything you need for work, all in one place.” It’s simple, yet powerful — no need to decode jargon to figure out what Dropbox really does.

    2. Sub-headline
    Your sub-headline should supplement the headline by offering a brief description of what you do or what you offer. This can be done effectively by zeroing in on a common pain point that your product or service solves.
    Here’s an example of a great sub-headline from Mirror: “Hiding in plain sight.” It hones in on the primary selling point of the mirror gym: It’s a full at-home gym, personal trainer, and workout plan all in the comfort of your home without taking up precious square footage with equipment.
    To optimize your headlines for mobile, use larger fonts to give visitors a better experience. Small fonts could force mobile visitors to pinch and zoom in order to read and interact with the content on your site. Our advice? Use the heading options in your page editor. H1 headings are perfect for page titles — there should only be one H1 on a page. Subheadings should follow the order of the hierarchy, H2, H3 … H6, and so on. You can have several of these headings, just make sure they’re in order. For example, you won’t want to jump from an H1 to an H3 — choose an H2 instead.
    3. Primary Calls-to-Action
    The goal of your homepage is to compel visitors to dig deeper into your website and move them down the funnel. Include two to three calls-to-action above the fold that direct people to different stages of the buying cycle — and place them in spots that are easy to find.
    These CTAs should be visually striking, ideally in a color that contrasts with the color scheme of your homepage while still fitting in with the overall design. Keep the copy brief — no more than five words — and action-oriented, so it compels visitors to click whatever you’re offering. Examples of CTA copy are “Sign up,” “Make an appointment,” or “Try it for free.”
    Afterschool HQ’s website features two CTAs above the fold, both geared toward program directors who are interested in promoting their after-school programs to families on the site. The note below the longer CTA “Create Your Free Profile” gives visitors the nudge they need to create an account — the first step to becoming an Afterschool HQ provider.

    4. Supporting Image
    Most people are visual. Make sure to use an image (or even a short video) that clearly indicates what you offer. Use images that capture emotion, drive action, and visually tell the story you’re writing about.
    To optimize your images for mobile users, use high-quality images that have a reduced file size. (HubSpot customers don’t need to worry about this, as images uploaded to HubSpot’s software are automatically compressed. Otherwise, tools like TinyPNG will do the trick.) Also, always add alt text to your images to make them more accessible to visitors who use screen readers and to take your SEO efforts up a notch.
    The 4 Rivers Smokehouse homepage is a great example of emotional imagery: It features a series of short, high definition, and mouthwatering videos that play on a loop behind a simple headline, sub-headline, and primary CTA:

    5. Benefits
    It’s not only important to describe what you do, but why what you do matters. Prospects want to know about the benefits of buying from you because that’s what will compel them to stick around.
    Keep the copy lightweight and easy to read, and speak the language of your customers. Evernote does a great job of listing benefits on their homepage in a way that’s compelling, visually pleasing, and easy to understand:

    6. Social Proof
    Social proof is a powerful indicator of trust. Your product or service could be the best in the world, and it’s okay to lay that claim — it’s just that people may not believe you unless they hear it from other people, too. And that’s exactly what social proof does.
    Include just a few of your best (short) quotes on the homepage, and link to case studies if applicable. Adding a name and photo gives these testimonials more credibility. Lessonly nails this on their homepage with glowing testimonials from actual clients.

    7. Navigation
    The design and content in your homepage navigation could mean the difference between a website conversion and a bounce. To decrease bounce rate, give your visitors a clear path to the pages they need right from the homepage. Make the navigation menu visible at the top of the page, and organize the links in a hierarchical structure.
    No one knows your website better than those who helped design it, so be sure to conduct user tests to make sure it’s simple and intuitive for visitors to find what they’re looking for on your site. Include a search box if you can. (Read this blog post for more helpful website navigation tips.)
    Here’s an example of a clear, well-structured navigation design from Slim & Husky’s Pizza Beeria homepage:

    8. Content Offer
    To generate even more leads from your homepage, feature a really great content offer, such as a whitepaper, ebook, or guide. Folks who may not be ready to buy might rather download an offer that gives them more information about a topic they’re interested in. If you need inspiration, here are several different content types to pick from.
    9. Secondary Calls-to-Action
    Include secondary CTAs on your homepage to offer additional conversion opportunities for prospects who aren’t interested in your primary objective. Think of them like the contingency plan: They offer another path for visitors who are not yet ready for something as high-commitment as you’re asking.
    While your primary CTAs should be above the fold, place secondary CTAs below the fold to give visitors things to click on when they scroll down. For example, below the fold on Spanx’s homepage, you’ll find three, clearly labeled calls-to-action that give folks who’ve scrolled that far a few more options to click on. These secondary CTAs are for two different types of conversions: one on the far left for $20 off and another, “shop now” to explore the online catalog.

    10. Features
    In addition to benefits, list some of your key features. This gives people more of an understanding of what’s provided by your products and services. Again, keep the copy light and easy to read. Dropbox for Business, for example, doesn’t shy away from showing off a features matrix right on their homepage below the fold.

    11. Resources
    Again, most visitors to your website won’t be ready to buy … yet. For folks who are looking for more information, offer a link to a resource center where they can browse relevant information. Not only does this keep them on your webpage for longer, but it also helps you establish your credibility as a thought leader in your industry.
    Lovesac adds a resources link to the footer below the fold. Notice how each of these secondary CTAs cover multiple stages in the buying cycle: a credit card link to help customers buy their furniture easily, a fabric swatch guide for those who are still looking for the perfect color before making a purchase, and an online catalog for people who are in the market for new furniture but aren’t yet ready to make a purchase.

    12. Success Indicators
    In addition to customer success stories, both awards and recognition can also help inspire a good first impression. Is your company a critically acclaimed restaurant? Were you voted best new app this year? Let your homepage visitors know of your accomplishments. Like social proof, it’ll give your business more credibility to those who don’t know you.
    On Calendly’s homepage, for example, you’ll find the names of famous organizations that have recognized them, like Gartner and Dropbox.

    A Homepage Worth Visiting
    The homepage of your site is the first introduction each visitor will have to your business. Before they make up their mind to become a customer, they’ll review your homepage to get an idea of what you sell, why that matters to them, and how they can benefit from what you have to offer.
    Make a brilliant first impression with a homepage that incorporates the elements outlined above. And for more inspiration, check out stunning examples of homepages by downloading the free lookbook below.
    Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January 2012 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

  • The 6 Kinds of Digital Marketing Collateral You Should Be Creating

    It goes without saying, but your marketing materials shouldn’t be limited to conventional outbound advertisements — particularly if your business is B2B. Sure, capturing attention is part of the battle, but what happens when a prospect visits your website and sees nothing but some product descriptions and a pricing page?
    There has to be more there. You need to have some material to show that you can walk the walk. One kind of content that helps get you there is known as marketing collateral, and it can come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
    Here, we’ll get a more in-depth understanding of the concept and go over the five most important marketing collateral formats you can use to help establish legitimacy and supplement your sales efforts.

    At its core, marketing collateral is a way to let prospects know that you know what you’re talking about. It’s not supposed to be as flashy as conventional advertisements. In creating marketing collateral, your first priority generally isn’t to capture attention — it’s to retain and enhance it.
    In most cases, the prospects who are looking at your marketing collateral are curious about your company, but they might not be intimately familiar with you or what you’re offering. Well-crafted marketing collateral can put them at ease. It can help build the kind of trust necessary to start and sustain a customer relationship.
    Now you might be wondering, how does marketing collateral relate to marketing materials in general? Good question. 
    Marketing Materials vs Marketing Collateral
    In general, the difference between marketing materials and marketing collateral comes down to showing not telling. While other marketing materials might tell the reader explicitly why their company or offering is the best, marketing collateral is focused on showing why their company or offering is the best. 
    That’s why marketing collateral tends to be educational in some capacity. When done right, the informative nature of the format lets you separate yourself from the competition by letting you showcase an extensive understanding of your industry that others in your space might not be projecting.
    If all of your marketing materials are solely dedicated to talking up your product or service, you’ll be selling yourself short. When prospects are deciding to buy, they’re not just considering what’s for sale — they’re considering your company as a whole.
    They want to know they’ll be taken care of by a competent, capable, knowledgeable organization that they can rely on to address any issues and concerns they might have as they arise. Creating thoughtful marketing collateral is one way to help that cause.
    1. Blog Posts
    Producing good marketing collateral is often a matter of consistently providing value to your audience. One of the better forums to create and promote the kind of material that does that on an ongoing basis is a well-maintained company blog.
    It allows you to supplement your sales efforts with helpful insight and audience engagement — driving traffic to your website and generating leads through actionable advice, expertise, and entertainment. Below are some examples from HubSpot’s Website Blog. 
    Blog Post Example

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    Like any other kind of effective marketing collateral, good blog posts can project authority in your industry. You want to show you’re staying abreast of industry trends and understand the nuances of your space — constantly churning out high-quality, helpful content can help that cause and put your prospects at ease.
    Keeping all these benefits in mind, it’s no wonder then that marketers ranked blogs as the second primary form of media used within their content strategy in a recent HubSpot survey.
    2. Ebooks
    Ebooks are similar to blog posts in that they should project industry authority through engagement, but they tend to be longer, more in-depth, and less snackable than typical blog content. This type of marketing collateral generally attracts prospects with a vested interest in your industry. Below are some examples from HubSpot.
    Ebook Example

    Image Source
    In some ways, an Ebook could be likened to an extended blog post or a few blog posts strung together. Like blog content, an Ebook generally contains accessible language and directly actionable advice.
    In many cases, Ebooks are downloadable and can only be accessed in exchange for a prospect’s contact information — making them a powerful vehicle for lead generation.
    No matter where your company stands, you likely have the resources and knowhow to channel your industry-specific knowledge into a thoughtful Ebook. Remember, your marketing collateral should be designed to build trust with prospects and customers.
    If you can put out Ebooks to reliably bolster their knowledge of your industry, you can convince them they’re in good hands when they buy your product or service.
    3. Case Studies
    Case studies are offering-specific documents that detail how specific customers saw success as a result of leveraging your product or service. This format is different from the previous two in that it’s never product-agnostic. Below is an example from HubSpot.
    Case Study Example

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    Every case study is made in collaboration with a satisfied customer. It’s a form of cross-promotion that shows what your product or service is like in practice — a roadmap that lets prospects imagine what you could do for their business.
    Like almost every other example on this list, case studies are educational. They provide a more thorough explanation of how your product or service works through an active example. It’s also another avenue for building trust.
    If you can point to reputable customers who are willing to vouch for your business in extensive detail, you can bolster your company’s reputation as a solid, knowledgeable organization with a product or service that delivers results.
    4. Testimonials
    Testimonials are essentially condensed, snackable case studies. Many — if not most — prospects don’t have the time or interest to delve into a full-on case study. If you want to reach them, you’re going to have to provide quick-hitting content that they can glance over passively. Testimonials can do just that. Below is an example of one from HubSpot.
    Testimonial Example

    Image Source
    This testimonial follows the format’s best practice. It’s visually engaging, clearly establishes who provided the quote, and references specific benefits — a solid example of an appropriately informative, easily digestible piece of marketing collateral. Ultimately, a good testimonial helps project the company’s legitimacy while inspiring potential customers to further explore the product it’s promoting.
    5. White Papers
    A white paper is a persuasive, authoritative, in-depth report on a specific topic. Generally, one of these documents will raise a problem and present a solution to it.
    It’s typically more technical and less accessible than an Ebook. It’s meant to draw a crowd more intimately involved with or interested in your industry — an audience that might naturally run into the issue at the core of the document.
    White papers shouldn’t be product pitches. It’s best practice to keep them objective and educational. That being said, the topics you choose need to be relevant to your company or space.
    This kind of collateral also needs to be thoroughly researched, thoughtfully formatted, polished, and written in a serious tone. That means no flashy language or cute gimmicks. Below are some examples of topics from HubSpot’s Not Another State of Marketing Report.
    White Paper Example

    Image Source
    As I keep mentioning, every format listed in this article is tailored to project authority to some extent — the white paper is the purest example of that trend. It’s a technical document that’s meant to demonstrate technical knowledge to a crowd with technical prowess.
    6. Explainer Videos
    Explainer videos — the most commonly-created types of video — are an excellent way to appeal to visual learners. Designed to provide a quick and easy explanation of a product, service, or topic related to your industry, these help your company establish expertise and gain the trust of their target audience.
    They are generally between 30 to 90 seconds in length, which translates into a written script of 200 words or less.  This type of collateral can often be found on a website’s homepage, landing pages, prominent product pages, and social media accounts. Below is an example of one from HubSpot.
    Explainer Video Example

     

    The explainer video is a quick and memorable way to make an impact on your audience. It can be the difference between a prospect buying your product and not buying it, or subscribing to your YouTube page, and more. 
    For inspiration, check out 17 Examples of Fabulous Explainer Videos.
    Ready to Create Your Own Marketing Collateral?
    Well-crafted marketing collateral can give you a leg up on your competition. Not only is it an excellent vehicle for lead generation, but it can also offer your business an element of authority and trustworthiness to make potential customers more comfortable and inclined to buy from you. If your company isn’t producing it, consider trying out one of the formats listed above.
    Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

  • How can advertisers maximise social media potential?

    In the last years, social media advertising has been understood as a channel that drives short-term sales. At Nepa, we think this is misleading. In fact, there is clear evidence that social media advertising drives long-term sales as well. Our research is based on over 1600 retail social media campaigns and includes direct access to…
    The post How can advertisers maximise social media potential? appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

  • Any ideas on how to optimize B2B sales funnel?

    As a Salesforce consultant, we typically get requests from B2B companies looking for ways to get the most out of the CRM. You, probably, know that there are plenty of customization opportunities with lots of possible integrations affecting sales. We have described one easy and effective case here. Maybe you have tried other solutions? Would be great to know, thanks.
    submitted by /u/v_moroz [link] [comments]

  • How to miss a deadline

    In my earlier post, I opened a discussion about how to avoid missing a deadline.

    But what happens if you can’t avoid it?

    Projects are always on the frontier, combining elements and ideas and effort to do something that’s not been done before, not quite the way we’re doing it here and now.

    And so, bold projects sometimes fail to make their deadline. Even if we build systems and use buffers, sometimes it doesn’t work.

    Some thoughts:

    Don’t wait until the last minute. Wishful thinking is sometimes confused with optimism, but you probably knew more than four days before the deadline that you weren’t going to meet expectations. If people are building dependencies around your promises, then waiting until you have no choice simply makes the miss worse. Because not only are you late, but you were hiding it.
    Don’t minimize the problem. You’re late. Clearly. So say it. Loud and (not quite) proud. By owning the original promise and then being clear that you’re aware of the miss, you help the people who were counting on you feel seen and respected.
    Create alternatives. This isn’t always possible, but when it is, it usually leads to better relationships. If an airline can’t have a plane in a certain spot at a certain time, it goes a long way if they do the work of finding all 100 people inconvenienced a new plan, instead of putting that on them, one at a time.
    There’s a difference between seeing the damage (and working to ameliorate it) and accepting shame and blame. It’s clear that the future is unclear, and that things happen. If you can clearly outline what you’ve seen and what you’ve learned, it doesn’t make your clients feel better if you also fall on a sword–because if it’s not your fault, the sword is meaningless theater. And if it is your fault, it’s worth telling us that as well.
    In short, there’s no good way to make a missed deadline meaningless to the person who was counting on you. Being counted on is a gift. If you want to be counted on next time, best to invest early and often in making that deadline, and then, in the rare cases when it’s not enough, treating your clients with the respect that you’d like to receive in a similar situation.

    [Even better, check out out my previous post and create approaches so you don’t miss the deadline in the first place.]

  • How (not) to miss a deadline

    Deadlines are valuable, and deadlines are expensive.

    Organized systems and societies need deadlines. It would be impossible to efficiently build a house if the subcontractors could deliver their goods or services whenever it were convenient for them. Movie studios and book publishers schedule their releases months in advance to allow distribution teams to plan their work. Software is dependent on subsystems that have to be in place before the entire program can work.

    Along with the value that synchronized deliverables create, there are also real costs. Not simply the organizational cost of a missed deadline, but the significant damage to a reputation or brand that happens when a promise isn’t kept. And there’s a human cost–the stress and strain that comes from working to keep a promise that we might not have personally made, or that might be more difficult because someone else didn’t perform their part of the dance.

    In the wide-open race for attention and commitments, the standards of deadlines have been wavering. For forty years, Saturday Night Live has gone on at 11:30. Not, as its creator says, because it’s ready, but because it’s 11:30. That’s the deal.

    On Kickstarter, this sort of sacrosanct deadline is rare indeed. “This charger will ship in six weeks!” they say, when actually, it’s been more than a year with no shipment date in sight. Or with venture capitalists and other backers. “We’re going to beat the competition to market by three months.” Sometimes it feels like if the company doesn’t bring wishful thinking to the table, they won’t get funded. Given that choice, it’s no wonder that people get desperate. Wishful thinking might not be called lying, but it is. We should know better.

    Earning the reputation as someone (a freelancer, a marketer, a company, a leader) who doesn’t miss a deadline is valuable. And it doesn’t happen simply because you avoid sleeping and work like a dog. That’s the last resort of someone who isn’t good at planning.

    Here are some basic principles that might help with the planning part:

    If you’re competing in an industry where the only way to ‘win’ is to lie about deadlines, realize that competing in that industry is a choice, and accept that you’re going to miss deadlines and have to deal with the emotional overhead that comes with that.
    Knowing that it’s a choice, consider picking a different industry, one where keeping deadlines is expected and where you can gain satisfaction in creating value for others by keeping your promises.
    Don’t rely on false deadlines as a form of incentive. It won’t work the same on everyone, which means that some people will take you at your word and actually deliver on time, while others will assume that it was simply a guideline. It’s more efficient to be clear and to help people understand from the outset what you mean by a deadline. The boy cried wolf but the villagers didn’t come.
    At the same time, don’t use internal deadlines as a guaranteed component of your external promises. A project with no buffers is certain to be late. Not just likely to be late, but certain. Better buffers make better deadlines.
    Embrace the fact that delivering something on a certain date costs more than delivering it whenever it’s ready. As a result, you should charge more, perhaps a great deal more, for the value that your promise of a deadline creates. And then spend that money to make sure the deadline isn’t missed.
    Deadlines aren’t kept by people ‘doing their best.’ Keeping a deadline requires a systemic approach to dependencies and buffers and scenario planning. If you’re regularly cutting corners or burning out to meet deadlines, you have a systems problem.
    The antidote to feature creep isn’t occasional pruning. That’s emotionally draining and a losing battle. The answer is to actively restructure the spec, removing or adding entire blocks of work. “That will be in the next version,” is a totally acceptable answer, particularly when people are depending on this version to ship on time.
    A single deadline is a deadline that will certainly not be met. But if you can break down your big deadline into ten or fifteen intermediate milestones, you will know about your progress long before it’s too late to do something about it.
    The Mythical Person-Month is a serious trap. Nine people, working together in perfect harmony, cannot figure out how to have a baby in one month. Throwing more people at a project often does not speed it up. By the time you start to solve a deadline problem this way, it might be too late. The alternative is to staff each component of your project with the right number of people, and to have as many components running in parallel as possible.
    Bottlenecks are useful, until they aren’t. If you need just one person to approve every element of your project, it’s unlikely you can run as many things in parallel as you could. The alternative is to have a rigorous spec created in advance, in which many standards are approved before you even begin the work.
    Discussions about timing often devolve into issues of trust, shame and effort. That’s not nearly as helpful as separating conversations about system structure and data from the ones about commitment and oomph.
    Hidden problems don’t get better. In a hyper-connected world, there’s no technical reason why the project manager can’t know what the team in the field knows about the state of the project.

    Like most things that matter, keeping deadlines is a skill, and since it’s a skill, we can learn it.

    [More on this in my next post on what to do if you can’t avoid breaking your promise.]

  • Lessons from lockdown: why customers care about your employer brand

    The pandemic has taught us many things and gave some companies a costly lesson of how to look after their employees. As it turns out, the way employers treat their employees has an impact on customers’ loyalty and their general opinion. Flashback to July 2020. The pandemic is doing the rounds, and we’re all grappling…
    The post Lessons from lockdown: why customers care about your employer brand appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

  • How to Make a Call Center Agent Engagement Survey

    Employee feedback is critical for businesses who want to understand their employees’ opinions and attitudes towards work, and improve their business policies and processes. Measuring engagement through surveys allows for employees to feel heard.
    Engagement is especially important for call centers, since staff turnover is typically high. Research shows that customer complaints, poor morale, and low pay all attribute to high turnover rates in the call center industry. However, you can’t know the specifics around an agent’s satisfaction levels without asking them about it. That’s why agent engagement surveys are so important.
    Discover the Six Crucial Contact Center Trends That Will Shape 2021
    What is the Purpose of an Agent Engagement Survey?
    Agent engagement surveys help you reach the end goals of better profits and agent performance. To get there, however, surveys help you fulfill 3 purposes:

    Find out how agents feel about their work and the company.
    Show agents that you care about their voices and opinions.
    Identify areas for company and agent improvement.

    Best Practices for Agent Engagement Surveys
    When drafting your agent engagement survey, you might be tempted to list every burning question you have for your agents. However, to keep your survey results measurable, relevant, and actionable, consider these best practices:
    How to Create a Great Customer Perception Survey
    1. Shorter is better
    Shorter surveys have a better chance at completion, and are more reliable. If your survey is long, there’s a higher chance that agents won’t complete them, which can weaken the overall data. Keep surveys short, and relevant to your call center’s business processes and culture.
    2. Avoid jargon and technical terms wherever possible
    Keep the survey flow simple and easy. Avoid using technical terms and jargon where possible, to avoid frustration and confusion.
    3. Keep the questions as easy to answer as possible
    If there’s an efficient and easy way to get something done, your agents will be more productive. Similar to how call-back technology makes agents’ work easier, clear and concise survey questions make it easier for agents to complete the survey.

    TIP:
    You can significantly reduce agent overwhelm and high call volumes with call-back technology.

    4. Go easy on the open-ended questions
    Too many open-ended questions negatively affects response rate, and ability for analysis. While some open-ended questions help you learn unique information about your agents, you should limit them to ensure you can measure and analyze your survey data.
    5. Keep each question about one topic
    Avoid confusion and keep things simple by sticking to one topic per question.
    6. Reward employees for participation
    Make sure to reward employees evenly for participation. This might look like a staff pizza lunch, or letting them go home an hour early during quiet periods. Rewarding your agents in general is a great strategy for engagement.
    7. Keep it voluntarily anonymous
    Anonymous surveys encourage honesty from agents in completing the survey. Give your agents the opportunity to choose their preference. You might find that some prefer to identify themselves with their feedback, and they’ll appreciate you giving them the option to choose.
    Example Questions for a Call Center Agent Engagement Survey
    1. How do you feel about work today?
    Call centers are stressful work environments, as they frequently need to deal with frustrated customers. This stress can lead to burnout, so it’s important to know how your agents are feeling in their day-to-day work.
    2. Would you recommend [organization] to your friends as an employer?
    As mentioned, call center jobs are stressful. That’s why it’s so important for employers to take an active role in employee engagement. If your agents aren’t happy at work, they’re far less likely to recommend you as an employer to their friends.
    9 Inclusive Practices to Boost Agent Performance
    3. Are you proud to work for [organization]?
    This question lets you know how your agents feel about your organization. If your agents aren’t proud to work at your call center, this might be an opportunity for you to improve your company policies and culture.
    4. Are you satisfied with your current compensation and benefits?
    Most call centers offer a base pay with bonuses. If employees are dissatisfied with compensation and benefits, it might be an indication that you need to either better outline performance goals for bonuses, or consider promotions for high-performing agents.
    5. Do you receive constructive feedback from your manager?
    Call center managers sometimes rely too heavily on data to inform coaching and performance measures. The truth is, agents are all unique and require targeted feedback to excel in their role.
    6. Does your manager recognize your efforts when you perform well?
    Manager-employee relationships are especially important in call centers. Agents should feel acknowledged, supported, and recognized by their managers, so it’s important to learn if there are any issues as soon as possible.
    7. Do you have a friend at work?
    Coworker relationships play an integral role in call center agent engagement. This question helps you assess a need for greater group engagement. Perhaps your company can consider social events and employee lunches to improve coworker relationships.
    8. Is your team receptive to your suggestions?
    Feeling heard by your manager is one thing, but feeling heard by your coworkers can be equally important for a call center agent. This question helps identify a need for more group meetings and sessions where every agent feels like their voices are heard.
    9. Do your team members contribute to your success?
    Call center agents should have shared goals with their colleagues and learn from each other. This question helps you identify a need to perhaps have more team huddles or group coaching sessions.
    10. Do you have sufficient free time for your family and personal life?
    As a call center, you won’t be able to satisfy your customers with unhappy employees. Work-life balance is essential to agent satisfaction, so this question will help you better identify any needs for improved flex-time options or introduce more vacation days.
    3 Reasons Why Agent Satisfaction is the New Customer Satisfaction
    11. Do you have the materials, equipment, and permissions, and technology you need to do your job effectively?
    The right technology makes a huge difference in the day-to-day operations of a call center agent. Agents are sometimes hesitant to express technology concerns, so this question helps you assess whether or not you should invest in better technology. Fonolo’s cloud-based call-back technology is a great start.
    12. Do you have opportunities to learn and develop your career at work?
    Call centers have many opportunities for career growth and learning and development. You might offer your agents opportunities to move laterally to different departments to learn about a different area of work, coaching sessions, or opportunities for advancement. Use this question to make sure your agents are aware of these opportunities, and to learn more about your agents’ learning and development goals.
    Final Thoughts
    Agent engagement surveys help you understand your employees’ experiences and attitudes towards your call center. They also help you to improve company and agent performance, and heighten employee retention.The post Blog first appeared on Fonolo.

  • Grow your business with confidence using SAP Business One

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