Customer interaction analytics creates a new way of closing deals, sales coaching and gaining business results for your company. It is smart to use scripts for helping Agents to not forget anything or ensure they follow the call flow.
Call scripts are necessary, however…
When you look at large call centers, then you usually see that they use predefined call scripts. Call scripting is necessary to speed up the help for customers. It also helps standardize answers among the agents to ensure consistency. The same information needs to go out regarding the products, brand, process or service. During our extensive year of client projects, we have observed that there are agents who use scripts a lot. At the same time, there are others who rarely turn to them.
According to this blog post by Zendesk, using scripts may risk agents sounding robotic or only partly solving the problem for the customer. Fortunately, there are more efficient ways to guide your call center agents to handle potential sales calls and closing deals without using strict scripts.
Three ways to coach agents on scripting:
1. Use sales arguments
Ensure that sales arguments are updated. They need to always represent your brand messages and include campaign messages. Let agents freely choose all other words and phrases during customer conversations. This means that you agree on the general architecture of a call, then update the sales. The rest of the conversation can designed by agents to ensure a delightful and personal experience for customers. In 2018 there were 78% of customers who indicated that customer experience improves a lot without call scripts.
2. Adapt conversational features
There is another tangible aspect of customer service calls which is matching coversational features to the customer. Calls are unnatural when there is a monologue from the agents side or agent often puts customers on hold. It is awkward and unpleasant when both sides talk over each other or the agent is searching for the right answer during a call. A better customer experience can be created when agents adapt their conversational features. They should try to match the customer’s tempo, maintain a normal ratio of silence, and minimize crosstalk.
3. Provide personal coaching
Feelingstream transcribes all calls for greater visibility into what is going on in customer interactions. When large amounts of calls are searchable in text format, team leads can detect patterns in agents’ behavior quickly. Then they can make decision around which areas need most improvement. This is an excellent resource also for personal coaching on how agents can close deals better.
You can keep the scripts, just analyze how you build them
Call scripting does not need to lead to robotic agents. You can still create meaningful, personal and smooth conversations with customers by agreeing upon those call elements that actually have a positive impact on customer experience. If you learn from analysis what works and what doesn’t, you can adjust your scripting and approaches.
