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Article : Train Your Agents For The Net

Your contact center is your most intimate connection with your customers and prospects. You have worked hard to develop the strategies and processes that work for phone-based interactions, but increasingly, your customers want to connect with you via e-mail and text chat. Studies have discovered that most companies have not adjusted their business practices to accommodate the online channel, and as a result, their Web interactions are failing.

The most common mistake companies make is to assume they can replicate their telephone service practices and people for the online medium. In fact, there are significant differences between the two, and the way companies handle these differences can make or break their support centers.

 

The Role of the Net Rep


Jill Leigh
Co-Founder & President,
Initiatives Three

Net reps are agents who interact with customers via Internet channels such as e-mail and text chat.One of their most important roles is to manage customers' online experiences and build loyalty. Net reps are a company's brand shepherds, and their interactions with customers can build Web share, increase revenues made online and boost customer satisfaction.

Building online relationships is critical, since customers often require the integration of a human touch with their electronic contact. Customers do not perceive a relationship with the medium itself, but rather with the company as a whole. In other words, it's not the technology that makes a Web center, it's the people. So, once you've got the right people in place, the most important step for online success is training your net reps.

 

Time For Training
When you have identified your net reps and have team leaders in place, it's time to train them to handle Internet-based interactions for your company. Traditional training on product line, company history and policies and escalation procedures are important, but training created specifically for the online media is essential. Each step of the customer interaction process requires its own training.

Understanding a customer's true intent is one of the most important skills for a net rep, yet it is often overlooked in online training courses. Gather information and statistics about your customers' experiences with your Web site or online interactions, and use them to develop training for your net reps. For example, many customers stall in their online purchasing experience. A traditional salesperson would never knowingly let a frustrated customer abandon a shopping cart full of merchandise and leave the store. Most would approach a customer, determine what was missing in his or her experience, and do their best to resolve it.

The same is true for Web interactions. Find out where your customers are abandoning your site, and position Web agents to guide them through the tough spots. Teach your net reps to figure out if customers want to place orders or are merely seeking more information on a product. Discover if customers are trying to express frustration with a negative experience, or are just undecided about a purchase. Because net reps are often missing many of the visual or verbal clues a traditional salesperson could use to determine the customer's intent, it is important to train reps to reach out and probe customers' attitudes and wishes. Your netreps need to be able to properly interpret the need/inquiry or problem/complaint – regardless of the customer's writing ability or style. Through proper interpretation of customer requests, your net reps will be poised to respond completely and with value to the online customer.

Writing. Web communication differs from traditional letter writing. It is, for all intents, a new language that is informal, colloquial and often "live," so net reps must be able to improvise. Training should focus on applying your company's style to interactions, and should incorporate drills, exercises and quizzes. Content should include ways to write with brevity, while still communicating all relevant information. Reps need to be able to craft clear, concise responses to customers that advance the sale, provide excellent service and deliver your company's brand online. If your center allows the use of abbreviations and emoticons, agents should receive training on these elements, as well as proper grammar and other elements of "netiquette."

Sales and service. Whether your customers contact you to get answers to questions or to purchase products or services, your reps must be trained to handle their inquiries. Your net reps should adapt these skills to provide proper Web-based interactions. For example, not every browser will actually make a purchase. Net reps need to be trained in skills to move the customer beyond browsing to buying. Rather than rehash data and information that is readily available on your site, your reps should be asking both rhetorical and probing questions to invite waves of communication, which is essential in building online relationships and selling. This area of a training curriculum should also include techniques to upsell and cross-sell, which can significantly boost the average online order price.

Good net reps also need to provide swift service: many online customers use the Internet medium because they perceive it to be faster. A response time that might be perfectly adequate for a phone message is perceived as dreadfully slow by an online customer. Know your customers' response time thresholds, and make sure your reps know, too. That way, they can time their responses to ensure customer satisfaction.

 

Role Playing As A Training Tool
Role playing (or "e-plays") is an important part of the training process. Well-crafted e-plays allow your net reps to have real-life experiences without the pressure of making mistakes or potentially damaging customer relationships. It also allows team leaders and coaches to evaluate net reps on criteria they will use on a day-to-day basis.

 

Measure and Monitoring
Every traditional call center has applied measurements to ensure that each phone representative meets quality, productivity and results standards while interacting with customers. The Web interaction center needs the same level of measurement, but tailored for online interactions. In our practice, we call them Netrics. These are the benchmarks upon which each rep is measured, and they determine areas of strength, as well as areas that need further training and focus.

Developing your company's unique measurements depends on the objectives of your interaction center. Some obvious choices include the number of interactions handled per rep and the ability to respond within acceptable time frames. If your center is a sales outlet, then volume of sales closed, including upselling and cross-selling, are valid measurements.

Yet, to truly evaluate the performance of your net reps, it is crucial to measure beyond plain numbers. For example, an important measurement is how well your net reps support your brand implementation. Relationship building and affiliation should be monitored, as well as the reps' ability to build e-mail "waves" of communication with your customers.

A successful Web interaction center isn't developed overnight, and it isn't a once-and-done proposition. It is a continuum that includes continued attention to and refinement of the key steps: determining the brand promises and personality that net reps must convey, finding the people with the skills and personality to thrive in your online environment, training them how to deliver and measuring their results. Your business and your customers deserve nothing less.


About the Author
Jill Leigh is co-founder and President of Initiatives Three Inc., a contact center training and consulting firm that offers "Elements" a writing, sales and service skills training for email. Initiatives Three is a training and consulting firm that has assisted many contact centers to evolve from a phone-based channel to a multi-channel environment.

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Published: Friday, November 8, 2002

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