Great Culture = Great Customer Experience
Corporate culture is often difficult to understand and even harder to control. A dysfunctional culture in your call center almost ensures that your employees will be looking for the door with your customer experience suffering in the process. Your newest employees often have the best perspective and can give you some honest insight on the positives and/or negatives of your culture. Now ask your customers and they might tell you a lot about the culture based on their interactions with customer support.
Luckily, there is always hope—and many times the call center is the best place to start improving your company culture. What’s the trick? We all know those excellent customer service skills that help you make new sales and save customers. Point a few of those inward toward your colleagues and watch your company culture shift. Here are some quick tips to turn around your culture and your CX:
1. Lead with empathy –
We love the word empathy and for good reason. It’s all about truly caring about the feelings of another person. This is a key to sales and to good relationships with your friends and family. But are you empathizing with your employees and colleagues? This is the first step to changing your culture and building a team that can translate this to your customers.
2. Watch your mouth –
Gossip is a fantastic culture killer. It’s so easy in customer service to get in this mode of customer bashing. Talking poorly about customers affects your attitude toward those customers. In the same way, talking poorly about other employees has that same effect.
3. Can do spirit –
Nothing is more deflating to a customer than when they call customer service for help only to hear a “No. Sorry, I can’t help you.” In the exact same way, employees hate hearing this same line internally. When an employee comes to you with a problem, adopt a buck stops here mentality and take responsibility for the solution. Then, they get to go back to the customer with a solution rather than a sad face.
4. Lighten up –
I love nothing more than a customer service professional that is personable and friendly. It’s like talking to a person instead of a robot. In the same way, it’s ok to have a little fun with your colleagues. It’s ok not to be all business all the time. Teams that laugh together stay together!
5. Seek to understand –
Those difficult customers are really the true test. By seeking to understand where the customer is coming from, we set ourselves in the best possible place to work with them. The same goes for employees. Those difficult relationships are going to require extra effort and understanding. Tools that help understand the unique strengths and ability of your team are invaluable.
Great company culture doesn’t just happen and it’s not as simple as a trip to play laser tag or buying drinks after work —although those can’t hurt. To build a fantastic contact center culture, practice the customer service skills that you preach in your sales or support meetings on your most important “customers”—your employees.
If you are ready to enhance your customer experience, contact Worldwide Call Centers today at 719.368.8393 for free call center consulting cervices. We will discuss your situation and explore the contact center outsourcing options available from the US and Canada to Eastern Europe, Asia or Latin America.
