When you’re stuck on a problem in your contact center, call your competitors. Here’s why.
Whether an internal operational issue or a complex customer situation has you struggling for a solution, checking in on the competitor can help you find the answer.
If you call, visit, email or try an online chat with companies in your industry, you’ll likely see the different ways they operate. Even if their practices aren’t better, the exposure to new processes will likely spark creative problem-solving in your contact center.
Here are three other ways from experts at McKinsey Quarterly to get agents and contact center leaders to come up with fresh ideas:
- Be a customer. Call or email your own department. Viewing the experience from the customer’s perspective can help uncover the hiccups in any system.
- Jump in the executive’s chair. Pretend you’re at the head of a well-known organization and ask how you would handle the situation. For instance, “What would the CEO of Zappos do to improve customer satisfaction scores?” or “How would Jack Welch divide these limited resources?”
- Put on blinders. Force yourself to imagine the unlikely and how you would handle it. Example: How could we notify customers of a recall quickly if we didn’t have their email addresses?
