Rachel Miller

Con­firm­ing cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion not only makes it clear that all needs and requests have been han­dled, but also allows an employee to feel good about suc­cess­fully assist­ing a customer.

How Am I Doing?

It’s nice to hear that you’re doing a good job. After respond­ing to requests, encour­age employ­ees to ask cus­tomers a ques­tion to ver­ify the cus­tomers’ under­stand­ing and accep­tance of the solu­tion or answer sup­plied to them. Get­ting this con­fir­ma­tion is cru­cial to con­firm­ing cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, and a good way to deter­mine that the customer’s needs and wants have been addressed. Con­firm­ing that the cus­tomer is sat­is­fied val­i­dates employee per­for­mance, and makes it easy to deter­mine if the call was successful.

Con­firm Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion in Two Easy Steps

1. State what action will be taken.
2. Ask a closed ques­tion to con­firm agree­ment and understanding.

For exam­ple, an...

Employee stress can be caused by many fac­tors in the work­place, and an impor­tant role of man­age­ment is to not only keep employ­ees engaged and pro­duc­tive, but to also acknowl­edge and teach employ­ees how to han­dle stress. Effec­tive stress man­age­ment will not only cre­ate hap­pier and more pro­duc­tive employ­ees, it will also mea­sur­ably improve busi­ness results.

Com­mon Causes of Employee Stress

Fol­low­ing are some com­mon causes of stress in con­tact centers.

• Lit­tle or no con­trol over work­ing conditions
• Repet­i­tive tasks, monotony
• Upset or dif­fi­cult customers
• Lack of nec­es­sary tools, infor­ma­tion, or resources to do job
• Unsat­is­fac­tory lead­er­ship or management
• Dif­fi­cult co-workers
• Non-working or poorly per­form­ing equipment
• Noise level
• Job inse­cu­rity
• Pres­sure to move quickly through calls, emails, or webchats
• Not know­ing what’s...

Invest­ing in employee train­ing is an intel­li­gent move. Con­firm­ing that agents are skilled not only in prod­uct knowl­edge, but also com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, will solid­ify long term com­pany suc­cess. Aside from increased cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, invest­ing in cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing will increase employee loy­alty, reduce employee turnover, and lower oper­a­tional costs. Do not miss an oppor­tu­nity to invest in your work­force — and most def­i­nitely take the time to cal­cu­late the return on invest­ment (ROI).

Accord­ing to the 2011 Train­ing Indus­try Report from Train­ing, total expen­di­tures in train­ing appear to be increas­ing. The amount spent on train­ing jumped about 13% from 2010, includ­ing increases in over­all train­ing bud...

If you fol­low cus­tomer ser­vice news or read blogs and print pub­li­ca­tions ded­i­cated to cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment, you may have noticed a new trend. Cor­po­rate Amer­ica cares about the cus­tomer! That’s right! Not only are com­pa­nies invest­ing in new ser­vice and sup­port chan­nels and cus­tomer ser­vice skills train­ing for employ­ees, they are also hir­ing new upper man­age­ment: Chief Cus­tomer Offi­cers (CCO).

Suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies know that they must allo­cate funds for the devel­op­ment of new prod­ucts and ser­vices, and employee skills devel­op­ment train­ing. Suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies also know the impor­tance of invest­ing time and money into cre­at­ing pos­i­tive cus­tomer expe­ri­ences. For­rester Research has been track­ing...