Teleadvisor, a true musician of contact centers
Contact centers continue their exponential growth. One of the key factors explaining this phenomenon is the emergence of an accelerated society, marked by a culture of immediacy in which the consumer, hurried and versatile, is considered King. Today, these are not just companies but complete models of tightly organized structures. Nevertheless, employee retention is a major issue for these organizations. Agents or tele-advisors do not envision themselves here, judging the tasks to be unattractive and time-consuming. They quickly realize the monotonous work, almost dull and the limited career prospects, leading to a strong feeling of despair that originates from intense stress!
Yet, the tele-advisor is the first point of contact in the customer journey. More than that, they are the guarantor of a sustainably successful customer relationship. A fine blend of human qualities and professional skills, the DNA of a tele-advisor is rich and complex. Let's explore the underpinnings of this versatile profession, essential to the proper development of a company.
Is selling really stealing?
Courtesy, patience, commercial flair, stress resistance… the skills of a “good” tele-advisor are numerous and varied. When you, like me, call a customer service for assistance, you expect a prompt and effective response. Today, the advisor does not simply take orders. They advise, propose additional purchases, suggest promotions… In short, they sell! However, selling requires knowledge about products and services, as well as how the contact center operates. Furthermore, the agent must be able to handle difficult situations, regularly changing procedures, and customer interactions that are often loaded with emotions and stress (frustration, hesitation, misunderstanding…) especially in the current crisis context. But they must also embody the company culture, like a strategic messenger providing high-value-added services. All these skills will drive customer satisfaction and company performance!
Career advancement opportunities are often complex, but attainable!
In contact centers, advancement opportunities are -very- limited. Agents complain about the repetitive nature of their tasks. The high turnover of teams requires quick training. Thus, the job is often simplified and lacks creative tasks to quickly pass the baton. The only possible hierarchical progression is the position of supervisor, ensuring in turn the smooth running of operations and daily tracking of productivity goals. To achieve this significant advancement, a long-term projection is necessary. However, due to temporary contracts and the pressure generated, along with a strong feeling of stress, this projection is limited by their desire to eventually leave the organization. The result: significant costs and often overlooked performance losses.
To address this issue, we generally need to change management methods based on distrust and control, generating difficult working atmospheres. There is a clear deficit: agents are viewed as easily replaceable and little effort is put into dialogue and achieving win-win results. Thus, it is relevant to develop agent involvement and reduce turnover if we want to improve contact center performance. For this, effective tools for tele-advisors and supervisors involve the possibility of focusing on their core business: customer relations. That’s why the stability of the system is crucial!
ViaDialog, your best ally for the success of your customer relationship
ViaDialog offers, through ViaSpeech and ViaFlow, complete solutions covering all your customer relationship management needs. We believe that among the essential factors necessary for the performance of contact centers is the contribution of AI to support agents as well as customers. This revolutionary technology has pushed us to develop innovative solutions for automating the customer journey and improving the working conditions of tele-advisors, such as detecting emotions during customer calls.
ViaSpeech offers a complete solution for automating the customer journey in natural language with tools enabling the creation of voicebots, callbots, and voice assistants that can be directly integrated into your servers. And for a touch of omnichannelity, ViaDialog has developed ViaFlow, a natively omnichannel platform for managing customer interactions, incorporating our latest AI technologies. At ViaDialog, we have been working on these topics for years to continuously provide more comfort to both supervisors and agents.
