Stop me if this sounds like a familiar experience.
You run into a minor concern with your credit card, so you phone in on the support number on the back of the card. After about half a minute, your call is answered. An automated voice prompt asks you to enter your phone number and your credit card number in a smooth, steady voice. This takes you a minute. You have to enter in the long digits using your keypad. After confirming your number, the automated voice tells you to wait patiently as all agents are busy.
After another minute of waiting, you are finally connected to a real person, and as you get ready to explain your situation, he asks you for your name and confirms some information with you. He asks you what your concern is, and you finally get to explain why you called in the first place.
He says, “That won’t be a problem, I can help you with that.” And as he is about to resolve your concern, the phone gets disconnected.
A little peeved, you call the number again. You do everything over and over again.
How much time was wasted in those exchanges? Quite a lot, and this is actually par for the course for most customers trying to get support for their concerns. Surely there must be a better way?
There’s a new technology available for contact centers, and it’s called Sticky Agent.
Enter Sticky Agent
Stick Agent is basically an advanced call routing feature that routes an incoming customer to the same agent who attended his concern the last time he called. It sounds simple, but the way contact centers were organized in the past made it difficult to implement.
It’s something many customers have wanted for decades. Having the ability to bring your caller back to the same agent has its benefits.
First, It Saves A Lot of Time.
The customer just needs to call once, and after that for any subsequent calls he won’t have to enter the same information or explain the same problem all over again. This saves a lot of time for both the customer and the agent; you can expect average handling time to go down across the board. That alone should be enough incentive to give this option a look, but there’s more to it than an operational benefit.
Second, It Just Provides a Superior Customer Experience. The same agent will gradually get to know the customer over time, understanding his or her personal quirks, needs and concerns. It’s like talking to an old friend. If you’ve ever wondered why people line up at Starbucks just to pay $3 for a simple cup of coffee a dozen times a month or more, it’s because they’re not paying for the coffee. They’re paying for the experience.
Joseph Michelli, a best-selling author and consultant, called this the “The Starbucks Experience,” where he outlined the success of the Starbucks brand was in its ability to create a personalized experience at every store for every customer. This secured customer loyalty and earned the business a lot of dividends in the long term. That same magic can be put to work for your business using Sticky Agent technology.
When you know your customers and create the means for them to have a quick and effortless interaction with your company, you create a connection that runs on a personalized experience.
It opens the opportunity for your agents to go deeper with the customer, asking about their day, putting a face and a life to the voice behind the call and knowing how to resolve their concerns just the way they like it. It’s not easy to forget such a relationship, and it’s that kind of connection that secures customer loyalty.
Try Sticky Agent out, and back it up with a customer policy that encourages your agents to personalize the experience. We promise your customers will love it, and so will you.