4 Ways to Address ‘Agent Control’ in CSAT Surveys

Whether you call it ‘removing agent control’ or ‘cherry picking’, the issue of agents selecting which calls (or other interactions) are passed into a customer feedback survey has been a challenge for many years. There is simply very little value in capturing a whole raft of generally positive customer feedback.

The challenge is to capture a mix of positive and negative feedback. To generate a range of customer insight, that allows us to translate that insight into action. To run a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program that develops actionable insight which can actually help us improve and enhance the customer experience.

To meet this challenge, there are a number of potential solutions:

1. Calculated Averages

If we are just working via a ‘bolt-on’ solution, where agents receive customer calls and simply transfer them into a hosted IVR survey, we can look to influence behaviour via ‘calculated averages’. In practice, we look to encourage more surveys by rewarding agents that transfer more calls into the survey.

Within the platform, supervisors can adjust settings to reward agents that transfer more calls into the survey and reduce the average scores of agents that are perhaps ‘cherry picking’. This simple measure can have quite a dramatic effect on the increased volume and variety of surveys completed.

2. Agent Desktop App

The next evolution on agent transfer is to use an Agent Desktop Application (ADT). Here, we can start to connect the agent and the customer with the CSAT solution. By entering customer details, mid-call, agents can now trigger post-interaction surveys across voice, email and SMS channels.

Within the ADT, we can let agents know when the customer last completed a survey and if they have been ‘blacklisted’. There is more agent engagement by tracking and providing stats on how many surveys have been completed, the number of maximums and the average scores for each agent.

3. Auto SMS Surveys

In some ways the perfect solution for removing agent control is to recognise calls from mobile numbers and automatically trigger an SMS survey request. Due to the immediacy of the survey request, uptake is very high and by removing agent control, we see a much wider mix of positive and negative surveys.

Rules can be developed to ensure customers are not bombarded with survey requests and different surveys can be triggered to match different customer journeys or contact types. The SMS survey requests can be interactive Q&A or linked to a branded, web-based survey optimised for mobile.

4. Full Integration

By full integration we mean getting involved in the call routing. Here, we can introduce customer choice, through adding pre-call opt-in / opt-out routing. Or, we can put in place a defined percentage of calls that will be offered a CSAT survey. The key is that we can take away agent control entirely.

We can also integrate with CRM solutions (like Salesforce), match up the customer record, and automatically trigger surveys across other channels like email, SMS and even social media channels. All completed surveys are stored to provide a threaded history of customer feedback, across channel.

Clearly, now we are able to address agent control and we have that rich mix of customer feedback, we need a platform that’s going to help us turn all that insight into action. That’s where the full MWS CSAT solution comes into play! So, please contact us here if you would like to arrange a quick demo…