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“We want to have our agents sell all our products.” We were speaking with the business team at a customer recently, and they were looking to transform their business and have their team sell all their services rather than just a few. Naturally we asked, “How are you going to make sure they become productive quickly?” “Well, we’ll train them,” was the reply.
It got me thinking about the entire issue of asking agents to take on more and more responsibility for a broader product portfolio, or a broader service offering, and how companies can respond effectively to the challenge. Right now, the constraint on a company that limits what they can do in this area is the time required for agents to become productive. If your agents need 4-6 months to become fully productive, and you have turnover of 80-100% in your centers, it comes extremely expensive to support your original business initiative.
Some companies have responded to this challenge with a fully scripted contact center experience. One customer of mine uses Word documents with links to provide a script which agents must follow while working through the customer interaction and data gathering. It’s no wonder that the compliance rate to those scripts is relatively low. It’s just too hard for agents to keep track of everything they must do and still follow the script.
Business Process Management (BPM) may be an answer to the challenge. BPM is defined by Wikipedia as, “... a discipline involving any combination of modeling, automation, execution, control, measurement and optimization of business activity flows, in support of enterprise goals, spanning systems, employees, customers and partners within and beyond the enterprise boundaries.”
Let’s see if we can define BPM a bit more simply by looking at the features of BPM tools. A BPM tool will let you mix the call script, data gathering, and workflow rules into one simplified approach. Whereas today companies may have trained their agents to look at the script in one tool and enter the data in another, that model does not scale as demands on the contact center increase. Plus, the compliance issue means that as the product line evolves, some agents will give customers out of date information.
It has been the case that BPM tools are often seen as something that only works for much larger companies, where hundreds or thousands of agents need to be agile in responding to changes in the business. It is our experience that BPM can be cost effective and useful for smaller companies. Cloud-based vendors have leveled the playing field for CRM software in general, and they have done the same for BPM tools.
At Salesforce, we have seen Service Cloud solve the service challenge for our customers through a service console user interface, knowledge, workflow, and a host of productivity tools to improve service quality and decrease costs. The success of Service Cloud is a reflection of the success of our customers and validated Salesforce’s approach as the leader in cloud computing.
Some reading this entry are probably thinking, “There is no way we would support a scripted experience for our customers. We want to have a more natural discussion with our customers.” In my experience, even companies with a scripted experience want a more natural discussion with their customers. There needs to be a better way.
While it requires some training for agents, the BPM tool will guide the agent through the discussion, allow them to gather the required data, but not necessarily require that they say specific words in their discussion with customers. It gives you the benefits of a scripted experience in terms of agility and consistency, while also allowing you to deliver a natural, customer-friendly experience.
As you look at the needs of your business, keep BPM in mind. It can be a cost-effective and simple solution to the demands that are challenging your call centers and your business. Delivering BPM on Salesforce Service Cloud is the way to achieve higher productivity, lower costs, and shorter times to productivity for your agents.
