The ultimate tech stack to improve CSAT and agent efficiency

Guest post by James Robinson

Improvement of CSAT… the holy grail of all CX directors, contact centre managers and CEOs alike. We know that improving the way we deal with customers is key to increasing CSAT (and subsequent profitability), but what types of technology have been proven to deliver these all-important results?

Web Self-Service

First and foremost, make sure you are offering the channels as your customers want. With 50% of customers thinking it’s important to solve product or service issues themselves and 70% expecting a company’s website to include a self-service application , self-service is no longer a ‘nice to have’. A query resolved by the customer themselves, using an intelligent web self-service tool is a query your contact centre agents didn’t have to deal with, significantly increasing their efficiency levels and, by proxy, customer satisfaction.

Conversational AI

Virtual Agents are more than just a flashy UI delivering the same answers as a web self-service tool; they are tools that humanise AI. An intelligently implemented virtual assistant that utilises advanced AI to ‘converse’ with your customers can build trust, something that is vital to attain. Once that trust has been established it is clear that not only will your customer return to that very cost effective channel to communicate with you in the future, but will most likely become a promoter of your company.

Live Chat

The ultimate catchall. As well as the ‘go to’ channel for many customers, an intelligent live-chat solution can be offered to customers who didn’t find what they were looking for first time around, streamlining their journey and improving the chance of achieving one of the most efficiency-driving KPIs around: first contact resolution.

Contact Centre Agent Support

Your contact centre agents are the first (and often, only) interaction with a human that your customers experience so it is vital they have all the information and support they need in order to serve that customer quickly and, more importantly, first time. An AI driven knowledgebase with process simplifying decision trees should do the trick. Encouraging your agents to create content and leave a legacy improves employee engagement and has a positive knock-on effect on CSAT.

Cohesion

OK, not a piece of tech per se but definitely an element of functionality worth mentioning, one that can make the difference between good and stellar results from these technologies. When AI is applied to the journey of a customer in a cohesive way, the experience of that customer improves exponentially. When a solution knows how a customer has interacted with a knowledge resource across all channels, it can react and deliver in a more accurate, human way.

The thought of the cost of implementing all these technologies can be daunting, however, before I finish, I would like to leave with some good news! There is something innate that is already streaming throughout your enterprise, something that is self-generating and infinite, something that is at the very core of all the solutions mentioned in this post. That something is: KNOWLEDGE. Once an enterprise harnesses that innate power it really does transcend the tech to deliver the most significant efficiencies and make a serious impact to a brand’s CSAT.