Customer Experience - Navigation in Rough Waters

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

What's the relationship between white water Kayaking and handling calls?


Great technology can't make-up for poor navigation.


Handling calls may not be as exhilarating or physically challenging as navigating through rapids, but success in either endeavor requires preparation, intelligence, and precise execution.



Top performing agent need to be well informed, have keen situational awareness, and have confidence in their ability to guide interactions to a desired end-point. 


Being an effective guide requires collaboration, establishing an objective, and keeping interactions on track by hitting critical waypoints.


Collaboration - 'Help Me Help You'


For an interaction to be efficient and successful both parties need to provide input, insight, and understanding of the desired outcome.  Collaboration calms the turbulence that adversarial, or parent-child interactions tend to produce.


Confirming Objectives


Successful agents make sure they understand their caller's objectives by restating them.


Query: "How can I help you today?" 

Response: " I want to ...." 

Confirmation: "Okay you want to ..., Is that correct?"


Seems simple enough. However, in a recent study of retention interactions we found that:

  1. •40% of agents didn't confirm objectives. 

  2. •Their interactions resulted in 50% less revenue retained, compared with the agents that used this tool.

We're not suggesting that confirming objectives was the only factor influencing the large difference in results. Its more likely that Aristotle's maxim applies - 'Well begun is half done".


Checking Waypoints


Successful agent don't skip steps.


Our call assessments include tracking of 10 waypoints. A recent study of Sales interactions showed that:

  1. •Only 34% of interactions hit 5 or more of our waypoints 

  2. •Those that did, closed 32% more opportunities, with 22% higher revenue/sale than interactions that  hit less than 5 waypoints.

Better by Design


Call Intelligence Inc. is a Transactional Intelligence and Design Consultancy with over 24 years helping our clients to better understand and improve the outcomes of interactions with their prospects and customers.



Our analyses allow us to map, correlate and prioritize thousands of possible relationships between marketing programs, call handling systems, calls, callers, concerns, agents, competition, etc. and outcomes.