Have you ever contacted a brand's customer support only to be talking to someone as confused as you are?
The chances are little to none. Do you know why that is?
The reason is that most, if not every, contact center has a templatized script ready. Keeping a call script ready is the best way to ensure that agents can handle customers easily while customers receive the best experience.
Having a script ready ensures that all your agents deliver consistently stellar experiences to any customer. But how can you check whether your agents are sticking to your call script?
Check our Blog Post on How to Evaluate Call Scripts
Before looking at various possibilities to verify that agents stick to the script, let us understand something else better.
Is call script as crucial for customer experience as people make it out to be?
Why is a Call Script Important?
As the name suggests, a call script gives agents a flow to follow while handling customers. It makes good sense in theory, but what are the benefits of having a call script prepared for your agents?
1. Prepared for Everything
Having your agents keep a call script handy can help them be ready for specific queries or certain rare scenarios.
Agents can either memorize these scripts or keep an accessible copy nearby. This allows them to serve all customers without any delay.
2. Train New Agents Faster
Having a call script can make new agent training smoother and faster. Asking a new agent to answer calls in their own unprepared way is a recipe for disaster.
A call script shows agents how to proceed through their first few calls. Since the agents are working with a tried and tested call script, they can pick up pace faster.
Training new agents with such scripts can boost their productivity and reduce training times.
3. Reduce Compliance Violations
Agents that follow the call script in all situations rarely pave the way for compliance violations. Compliance violations happen when agents try to improvise during the call instead of sticking to the script.
Every contact center tries to comply with the compliance laws in their particular industry and strives to have no violations. Since following the script reduces the possibility of compliance violations, a script aids contact centers in many ways.
It is quite evident that a well-written script can do wonders and help agent performance throughout the call center.
But do agents always follow the script offered to them? Any detailed study on contact center statistics states that agents have a tendency to go off-script.
Some agents stray off for a brief detour, while some others go with their own script.
It can be helpful in certain cases where the agent has a charisma of their own to make calls work with their own flow. For other agents who find it difficult to stick with the script given to them will be even more lost when trying to create and stick to a script of their own.
Is there any way to check whether agents are sticking to their scripts or whether they’re deviating haphazardly and fruitlessly?
In this age of tools to automate contact center performances, tools like automated contact center monitoring can help.
Let us look at how they analyze and pinpoint calls where the script isn’t being followed.
What is the Use of Contact Center Reporting?
The rise of Artificial Intelligence has brought many changes in processes across industries. Automation and streamlined workflows are common in any organization.
Even contact centers have had the privilege of being transformed by such tools. When it comes to evaluating calls to check on agents following call scripts, contact center reporting tools are the best at it.
Wondering what is contact center reporting? Let us understand what does this tool do before we look at how it can evaluate scripts.
The Power of Contact Center Reporting
Call center reporting tools go through all customer interactions in your contact center and can analyze whether the agent follows the script. It makes an auditor's job easier by flagging moments where the agent has veered off the script.
While it does sound good in theory, let us look at the features of contact center reporting that makes it easier to ensure agents follow the call script.
1. Train Agents Easier
New agents will have a tough time in their initial days. While a script can help them go a long way, there are possibilities of making mistakes.
Contact center reporting software can inform agents of their mistakes and allow them to get better on future calls. Such proactive information helps agents get better without repeating their mistakes.
2. Flag Compliance Violations Immediately
A seasoned agent knows their way around the call script and sometimes improvises. Such improvisations can help them handle customers better, as it comes from experience.
Despite all the experience, there can be single one-off incidents where these deviations can lead to compliance violations. Contact center reporting tools flag these violations immediately once the call is over.
Bringing these violations immediately to the attention of the agent in question can help them realize their mistake. These seasoned agents can improve their off-script conversations when they know what to take care of, regarding compliance violations.
Start Monitoring Calls and Ensure Your Call Script is Followed!
It is better to let agents with experience go on their own variations of the script as long as they don’t stumble across compliance violations frequently. Their experience allows them to create tailor-made conversation flows that work for them.
3. Suggest Improvements in the Script
Call center reporting software also comes with conversation intelligence features. Conversation intelligence allows you to analyze and understand customer reactions to the script.
Since the software combs through all the calls in the call center immediately after they are done, it has a huge sample size to work on. If there are enough situations where customers are unhappy with the solutions in the current call script, it can also suggest changes to improve the call script.
Results first, payment later.
Summing Up
Call scripts can help agents maintain consistent standards on their calls and be prepared for any customer queries.
Despite having effective call scripts, agents sometimes go off-script in certain calls. This can cause issues like compliance violations and irritated customers.
A monitoring system like contact center reporting can help catch such cases and inform agents how to improve. This reduces compliance violations as well as helps in training new agents faster.
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