Seeking insights from your frontline call center agents can help you better understand the customer.
When it comes to getting intel on customers, most managers would talk straight to the customer. They'd conduct surveys or interviews and ask them about their complaints. These methods are always effective, but there's another way to gather data about your target market: through your call center agents.
Customer service reps are perfectly poised to gather consumer insights since they talk with customers daily. All those interactions on several channels help them understand your customers at a deeper level.
To get accurate data from your employees, you may distribute questionnaires among them. However, face-to-face interviews and focus group discussions may be more effective. These will allow you to gain a firsthand account of employees' experiences with customers. Having this information will allow you to create better customer support and marketing approaches.
When gathering employee insights, keep track of the following points of interest that would help you discover customers' needs and preferences:
1. Recurring issues
Getting the same complaints from multiple customers over and over means there's something wrong with your operations. Do ask your agents if there are any recurring issues because they can become disastrous if not remedied. They may point to defective products or poorly trained customer support agents. By asking employees about these complaints, your team can stay on top of things and find the problem's root cause.
2. Most frequent queries
What do customers usually ask your agents upon dialing your hotline? Knowing the most common queries they raise can help you and your customer service provider anticipate consumers' needs. This allows you to provide a hassle-free customer experience. Based on these insights, you can also create a FAQs page or build a knowledge base to help your customers get the information they need.
3. Consumer expectations
Staying attuned to customers' expectations is a sign of a brand's efficiency. Your support agents can tell you about customers' reactions and responses especially when it comes to your products and services. From there, you can gauge people's wants and needs.
If you can match or even surpass these standards, you can gain a competitive advantage. Hence, keep an ear on the ground. Ask your call center reps about customers' attitudes toward your brand and your performance. This will let you formulate ideas on how to improve your customer service and marketing campaigns.
4. Consumer journey pain points
The customer's journey involves these phases:
· the customer discovers a product or service
· the customer researches about the product or service
· the customer interacts with a brand representative
· the customer makes a purchase
· the customer seeks post-purchase support
Pain points refer to the parts of the journey wherein the customer exerts the most effort to avail the services they need. Eliminating these portions can ensure customer satisfaction and increase retention.
To do this, you must first identify the faulty parts of the customer journey. Soliciting inputs from your employees can be a big help, since they're likely to be knowledgeable about what a customer goes through during transactions.