What does it mean to empower someone? Websters defines Empowered (or empowerment) as to "give authority to someone to do something." Customer service requires that something be done. That someone do something to serve. However, in the contact center industry, far too often the employees handling the calls or contacts for your customers are not often fully empowered to serve the customer? Are your call center reps empowered?
It sounds simple. It sounds easy. But, more often than not, when a customer calls a customer service line (or sends an email or originates a chat), the representative handling those contacts often does not have the authority to serve the request of the customer. To solve this issue, it is tempting to feel that your agents need to be trained on every single "potential" question they may be asked. What is important is to set a
policy of how you want your agents to handle those requests of which they are not fully informed. For example, implementing an "on demand" Knowledgebase tool with a robust search tool will them quickly find answers. In addition, it is important to have ongoing policies of what your reps can, and cannot say and do, for very specific questions or customer situations. Lastly, having a fast and efficient "escalation" procedure in place that gets your customers in touch with a supervisor who is empowered is essential. Very often, the mere fact that your customers know their call is being escalated is half the battle to solving their request.
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