According to the American Express Customer Service Barometer, 99% of consumers surveyed say that getting a satisfactory answer or being connected to someone knowledgeable (98%) are the most important prerequisites to a great customer experience.
It may seem like a simple expectation, but for many brands and organizations, it’s a tough one to meet as the time employees stay with a company keeps decreasing. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that employees aged 20 – 24 now stay with a company for only 1.1 years on average, while those aged 25 – 34 stay for just 2.7 years.
It’s becoming less common to find employees who have a deep understanding of the company, its products, services, and customers, built through years of training and experience. Our recently released 2016 State of Knowledge Management in Customer Service Report highlights that one key goal organizations have for their knowledge management efforts is to safeguard corporate knowledge and avoid “brain drain” by capturing the insights of long-serving and high-performing employees before they leave.
So, back to the question. Should customer service agents know all the answers? While as customers we want them to, realistically, they cannot. Leading organizations are working however to empower not just agents, but all employees, to be able to find the answers they and their customers need and quickly – as 77% of consumers say valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good customer service.
Employee Self-Service
As web self-service has emerged as the most-used channel for customers to find the answers and information they need, the internal use of self-service knowledge is also starting to trend. Gartner Research has predicted that by 2018, the ability to rapidly create and retrieve relevant content (knowledge) will be a key attribute of leading enterprises.
Innovative brands such as Metro Bank are taking this to heart, investing early in employee self-service knowledge not just to improve and speed customer service, but to empower every employee to deliver a consistent customer experience from day one on the job. “Any question being asked, if we didn’t know the answer, we would go to Metropedia (Metro Bank’s employee self-service offering) to find the answer,” says Craig Donaldson, Metro Bank CEO.
“It means that colleagues have got confidence if they don’t know the answer, to just pop on to Metropedia and off they go, quick fast and efficiently. Technology should be used to engage people and that’s what we do at Metro Bank. It’s all about our colleagues and our customers.”
Today’s workforce is changing, from employees who knew all the answers to employees who don’t, but intuitively think to search for them online. Your agents may not know all the answers. The question is can they find them?
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Learn More About Employee Self-Service
According to IDC research, 44% of the time, employees can’t find the information they’re looking for, and more than 60% have to search across four or more systems when looking (13% across 11 or more systems). No matter how personalized each interaction, service is doomed in customer satisfaction and first contact resolution ratings – and the organization in customer experience ratings – if employees can’t surface and deliver consistent answers and information quickly.