How do you integrate advisors’ multi-skills into a digital environment?
A look back at the speech made by Armatis’ Partnership Director, Elvira Cekovic, on the occasion of the Pépite Café organised by AMARC in collaboration with NICE.
Elvira took the opportunity to share her strategic experiences in setup of efficient organisations between employees’ specialisations and versatility.
Consumers’ habits have evolved and these days customers prioritise online interactions, in particular for simple requests, thanks to digitisation, which has made them more autonomous.
However, customers require a quality service in order to resolve pain points in their journeys. This makes customer service an essential point of contact.
In all cases, whatever way consumers interact, they want a simple, immediate, efficient and rapid service whatever channel they choose.
What impacts does digitisation have on organisations?
As new channels develop and evolve, organisations and advisors adapt to new tools, channels and procedures while having to cope with greater expectations and increased requirements on the part of customers.
A number of factors are therefore involved in ensuring provision of the best possible experience to customers and to actors in the experience:
- The ability to handle all flows on all channels, thanks in particular to routing of flows and optimisation of management…
- Oversight and monitoring in order to model the activity, monitor workload variations and define key indicators…
- Advisors: by working on profiles, and the training programmes enabling them to acquire professional skills, necessary products.
- Organisation: what model should be implemented? By product sector, by activity, by channel, by skill…?
It is the agility of these various components that enables adaptation to changes in customers’ expectations and behaviours, and, of course, achievement of quality and performance objectives.
Often siloed, certain models have proved to be incompatible with customers’ expectations and customer journeys: such is the case when the customer is transferred from one department to another in order to have all their questions answered.
How do you align customer journeys, new channels and operational systems?
Analysis of the customer journey, mapping of reasons for contact and their levels of complexity, and skills mapping are all essential to alignment of customer journeys and the operational system.
An organisation’s success depends on its ability to identify reasons for customer contacts and the key skills to implement in order to deal with the requests concerned.
Failure to development this matrix runs the risk of ending up with poor omnichannel reachability and inadequate first call resolution rates.
Among other things, mapping and analysing all the journey’s touchpoints enables identification of the gap between the perception that business managers or CX have of the journey and the reality experienced by customers.
Efforts made by customers in order to obtain responses to their requests are often out of sync.
As regards complaints management, such mapping is all the more relevant as it enables better understanding of all the processes involved in the journey, and identification of the generating “road” (customer context, processes, tools, media, etc.), the aim being to eradicate (matrix) pain paints thereby.
Finally, integration of digital channels requires their conjunction/coordination with so-called traditional channels.
The target here is to handle interactions as a whole, forming one and the same conversation throughout the customer journey.
This target vision of customer journeys is by no means static; it must above all be able to evolve.
Are multi-skilled advisors becoming the norm in an omnichannel environment?
Having multi-skilled employees’ meets 2 major challenges:
- Increasing operational systems’ productivity, efficacy and profitability;
- Breaking the chain of pain points and generating customer satisfaction by immediate resolution of all problems.
This latter approach makes the end customer the centre of attention.
But in considering this model, account must be taken of a factor key to its success: the employee, their wellbeing, engagement, and ability to try and ensure customer satisfaction by adopting a posture of care towards their customers.
The increase in “selfcarisation” enables advisors to free themselves of low value-added, sometimes repetitive tasks and devote themselves fully to their customers, providing them with all their value in terms of advice and assistance.
In order to achieve a balance, virtuous organisation of multi-skills must not be multilayer or multifaceted: there’s no point in having multiple skills if they are not fully mastered or are poorly used.
Above all, it is a matter of competency development through a programme that takes account of advisors’ “native” skills and interests, and of coherence in training courses.
To this end, there is no need to try and master all requests and processes, but rather to master a part of the journey that will be applicable to all channels.
It is therefore important to provide advisors with the framework and resources enabling them to take good care of their customers and act efficaciously.
I am convinced that this evolution and the sense of purpose given to employees will contribute to their retention, above all in the present context of high tension that the sector is subject to with regard to recruitment.
A system including multi-skilled advisors enables a 5- to 10-point increase in First Call Resolution rates, depending on activity.
It takes between 6 months and a year to set up an organisation with 30% to 45% multi-skilled employees (depending on activities’ levels of complexity).
Some activities require continued advisor specialisation, in particular dealing with complaints in order to halt the dissatisfaction chain.
What will the advisor’s profession look like in 2025?
It’s clear that certain trends are here to stay and will be a lasting part of the customer relations landscape:
- increasing digitisation of interactions, and therefore increasingly autonomous consumers;
- more requirements on the part of customers during exchanges with brands.
We must bear in mind that every customer is unique, every customer has different expectations and behaviours depending on such things as their age, their need for security/ confidentiality, their personal situation, and their history with the brand.
And every journey, exchange and experience includes memorable moments that arouse emotion: strong points or tolerable pain paints, or even truly painful, decisive moments.
So there cannot be a single approach to customer relations; it’s a question of adapting to each situation and each individual as the context dictates, in order to leave a lasting positive impression.
This is why 2025’s advisors will be focusing on exchange and conversation. They’ll create a lasting bond with their customers based on listening, a caring attitude and empathy.
And so as to enable them to really BE with their customers, they must be able to free themselves from complex business actions thanks to simple, intuitive technologies that leave plenty of room for dialogue. Advisors will no longer be managing complaints, cases and tasks, but rather exchanges, customers!
