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Using Chatbots to Improve Customer Support for the Modern Consumer

Artificial intelligence (AI) has made its way into customer support delivery in many shapes and forms. Conversational AI can handle a variety of menial tasks, from visual search to automated messages in the modern customer experience. 

One of these AI-powered technologies in the customer service space is chatbots. The objective of chatbots is to help ease customer service pressures by offloading mundane, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks. 

With intelligent automation, chatbots are able to complete these routine tasks effectively by using algorithms driven by machine learning. This article discusses the scope of a customer service chatbot and how it can use AI to improve customer satisfaction as part of a digital transformation strategy. 

Benefits of Chatbots for Customer Support Delivery

Chatbots are particularly beneficial in customer service because they can handle high volumes of standard technical queries quickly and efficiently. They create more satisfied customers with consistent outcomes and reduced handle time. Likewise, chatbots help reduce or eliminate mundane tasks so customer service agents can focus on addressing more complex customer service needs and deliver more rewarding customer experiences. 

Through chatbot conversation automation, information can easily be collated into valuable reports for better analysis and decision-making. Ultimately, chatbots can help eliminate human error, reduce unnecessary spend, and increase productivity.

Why Are Chatbots Necessary for Customer Service?

BPOs like iQor that deliver customized solutions can deploy automation where it matters most for creating happy customers. Solutions that include chatbots can help do the following: 

• Offer 24/7 customer service. If customers don’t get an instant response to their questions, they may take their business elsewhere. Chatbots allow customers to access support whenever they want, irrespective of their time zone or geographical location. 
• Speed up problem resolution. Chatbots offer an instant personalized experience, responding to customers faster than human agents can. They can access databases and existing knowledge bases and provide quick answers to all sorts of questions. 
• Provide multi-language support. Providing live customer support in different languages can increase costs. Chatbots can offer multi-language support and resolve customer queries in the customer’s language of choice, serving a broader customer base while reducing spend. 
• Remain accurate and consistent. A sudden influx in customer support requests has the potential to increase average handle time (AHT) and leave room for human error. On the other hand, an AI-powered customer service chatbot ensures prompt responses with a high level of accuracy and consistency. 
• Gather data. Human agents may find it challenging to recall all details shared in a conversation and satisfy the customers’ expectations. Chatbots, however, collect analytics on the fly and remember them forever. This helps them provide accurate data to customers. Chatbots remember what customers like and dislike and act accordingly when they get relevant requests. 
• Offer better self-service. Chatbots can help direct customers to self-service options, such as web pages and documents, that customers can use to solve their problems themselves. Along with reducing the number of support tickets, this also maintains high customer satisfaction. 
• Reduce channel sprawl. Customers often switch between different channels to get the information they want. For example, a connected omnichannel experience enables customers to start with a live chat option and, after some time, drop it for email support if they don’t get satisfactory answers. With chatbots, customers can use the same channel for the majority of their support needs. 
• Lower interactive voice response (IVR) frustrations. The IVR devices used in customer service can sometimes be challenging for certain customers, especially if they don’t get a personalized response. BPO solutions that include chatbots can replace this technology and send customers to the appropriate response team without the need for a human agent. 

How Chatbots Can Empower a Customer Support Team

Research shows that 67% of global consumers have interacted with a chatbot in the past year. This means that more and more companies are using customer support chatbots to improve their customer service in remote work and in-office operations. 

Chatbots can provide 24/7/365 support and don’t need sick days or vacations. In this way, customers can reach support agents anytime and anywhere through messaging apps and mobile devices. 

According to Drift’s 2020 State of Conversational Marketing report, chatbot use has grown by 92% since 2019. The global chatbot market is expected to reach a value of $10.5 billion by 2026. 

It’s easy to see that conversational marketing and AI-based customer support optimize your customer experience and foster stronger and more satisfying interactions with your brand. 

How Do Chatbots Assist the Customer Support Team?

BPOs like iQor can develop custom CX solutions that include an AI chatbot to empower customer service teams resulting in less time spent on repetitive tasks. For example, a chatbot can help teams sort through and respond to customer requests. 

Here are some other ways in which an AI chatbot empowers customer support representatives to create meaningful experiences. 

• Improving accuracy. Chatbots can send tickets to the right person in seconds while filtering out duplicates and irrelevant messages. They can also flag conversations that need more attention from human agents. This means that live agents can answer tickets more accurately, resulting in better service for customers. 
• Speeding up customer service. AI chatbots can help customer service teams process many more requests simultaneously by automatically routing tickets to the right person and helping agents prioritize conversation threads based on their contents. This reduces wait times for customers, which can help boost their satisfaction and brand loyalty. 
• Upselling and cross-selling. Even though chatbots can’t replace human beings, they can upsell and cross-sell customers by answering questions and suggesting related products or services. Chatbots can help sell everything from merchandise to travel packages to keep customer service agents focused on more complicated requests, such as refunding a purchase or offering technical support.
• Self-service solutions. Although some customers prefer talking to customer support representatives, 70% of them would rather use a self-service document or site. Chatbots can help steer customers to self-service resources. This is a win-win with customers receiving support in their preferred channel and customer support agents spending their time working on more complex service requests. 

Additionally, chatbots can understand different languages because they run on natural language processing (NLP).  NLP is a group of technologies that enables computers to understand the tone and context of human language and interact naturally, making it easier (and faster) for humans to interact with them. 

Moreover, according to Intercom, 29% of businesses report having lost customers due to a lack of multilingual support. Being able to provide support in as many as 20 languages is a huge selling point for chatbots without the need to hire multilingual agents. Although there may still be a need for multilingual agents, multilingual chatbots can reduce the number of agents needed. This need is also influenced by the dominance of customers requiring multilingual support. For example, programs that support companies based in Europe may need to staff customer service agents in multiple languages.

How Much Time Does a Customer Service Chatbot Save?

A custom solution with a conversational bot like the ones offered at iQor can reduce the average handle time for customer service interactions. This key performance indicator (KPI) measures the average amount of time it takes to resolve a support or service request. Improving AHT metrics by fulfilling customer needs with less time spent on hold, delays, or follow-up actions results in a better overall customer experience.

Suppose a CX program receives 30,000 calls per year. If the human agent spends an average of five minutes on each customer call, this equates to 2,500 hours on the phone every year. While some of these calls require human assistance, many contain questions that a bot can answer easily, reducing average handle time, which is a measurable saving. 

Indeed, a custom solution that includes a customer support chatbot can save agents hundreds of hours and enable them to focus on other more high-value tasks.

How Customers View Customer Support Chatbots

Research shows that customers are on board with digital transformation across their business. Customers actually like using chatbots due to how quickly they can get answers to their questions. 

Customer support chatbots are particularly useful for quick customer service and answering repetitive queries. 

According to Tidio, about 48.78% of female customers like chatbots and use them for communication when making online purchases. Meanwhile, 47.92% of men use chatbots if they can’t find answers to simple questions.

What Reasons Do Customers Give for Using Customer Service Chatbots?

Customers like using chatbots for the following reasons: 

• Instant response. Customers can reach a customer service agent immediately and 24/7. 
• Availability of information. Chatbots can provide detailed information right away. For instance, if a customer wants to know about a new product, they can get the information immediately instead of waiting for the agent’s response. 
• Intuitive interface. Customers are very familiar with using messaging apps on mobile devices. They’re used to typing in questions and receiving immediate responses. 
• Fast checkout processes. Customers appreciate that chatbots can conduct transactions faster than agents. 

Considering customers’ interest in using chatbots, businesses can use them to address many customer engagement opportunities. 

Best Practices for Deploying Customer Service Chatbots

When developing a chatbot as part of a digital transformation journey, iQor follows multiple best practices in forming its custom solution. 

Define Objectives

Determine the objectives for a chatbot to provide an interface for customers to make customer service requests. 

Will the chatbot resolve customer issues faster or gather more information about the problem? Will it be used for lead generation? Will it help customers find products? BPOs like iQor will make sure there’s a clear role for the chatbot from the beginning. 

Give It a Personality

Even when talking to a chatbot, people want some degree of human touch. The chatbot is an extension of the client’s brand and should have a personality so customers don’t feel like they’re talking to a machine. Meaningful chatbot experiences reinforce the brand and show empathy toward customers. 

Chatbot stats show that customers prefer interacting with bots with a persona and personality.  This enables chatbots to have more humanlike conversations, ultimately providing better customer care. 

Chatbot interactions should be evaluated with the same level of importance as interactions with human agents.

Have an Option for Directing to a Human Agent

Chatbots should be part of a seamless omnichannel experience with an option to switch to a human agent at any time if customers need more assistance. This enables customers to benefit from a consistent customer experience through the channel of their choice, while also ensuring they conveniently receive help from a human agent when needed.

Use Fallbacks

In some cases, a chatbot won’t be able to come up with a response to the customer query because it’s not programmed for that. Maybe the customer typed in a query that doesn’t match the chatbot’s purpose. 

For instance, when Siri or Alexa don’t understand what you’re saying, they respond with something to the effect of, “I’m not sure I understand.” All chatbots should have a fallback option for such cases. 

A fallback option such as asking the customer to clarify their query helps counter this issue to meet the customers’ needs. The iQor advantage takes this a step further to ensure customer needs are met by enabling live agents to jump in when the chatbot is unable to sufficiently address the issue. This creates an excellent customer experience without frustration.

Use Analytics to Improve the Chatbot

Solutions that include chatbots will also track the chatbot’s performance through analytics and use this data to make improvements. 

Analytics is a way of measuring the progress and performance of the chatbot through key metrics such as chat volume, number of conversations, and average message length. 

Just like any other form of software, chatbots need regular maintenance and updates. BPO’s like iQor will use data to make ongoing adjustments to ensure chatbots meet the individual needs of clients and their customers.

How Does Measuring Chatbot Performance Improve the Customer Experience?

Ongoing measurements of a chatbot’s performance are essential for ensuring the chatbot provides the best possible experience for customers. 

For example, if a customer support chatbot has an average response time of seven minutes, analytics can identify when there are peaks in conversation. The project team can plan accordingly to ensure sufficient resources are in place to reduce wait times and provide prompt service that improves customer loyalty. 

Final Words

All in all, a solution that includes a customer support chatbot can help automate mundane aspects of the customer journey while still providing an amazing digital customer service experience and freeing up agents’ time to work on creating more meaningful experiences. They also provide a collection of data on customer interactions to help inform and improve customer service.

Experience the iQor Difference

iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences. iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX.

Our award-winning CX services include:

• A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries.
• A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice.
• A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI.
• The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers.
• Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want.
• The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers.
• A best-in-class workforce management team and supporting technology to create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business.

iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles.

RPA Creates More Rewarding Customer Service Experiences and Helps Employees Perform at Their Best 

Customer service is of the utmost importance in helping businesses strengthen their brand, stand out from their competition, and ensure customer loyalty. However, it can sometimes be hard to keep up with the large number of customer support tasks. That’s where robotic process automation (RPA) can help.

Solutions based on the strategic and effective use of custom-written RPA technology help businesses improve their workflows and achieve outstanding results, ultimately supporting better customer service. Through custom RPA solutions, employees can go beyond meeting their productivity goals and customer-facing employees can focus on creating more rewarding customer experiences.

Below, we discuss RPA solutions and their importance in ensuring a rewarding customer experience as part of a comprehensive digital transformation strategy that enhances the customer journey. 

What Is Robotic Process Automation?

Robotic process automation is a technology that allows computer systems to perform tasks typically handled by humans. It helps companies boost their productivity, decrease costs, and be more competitive by automating menial and repetitive tasks, all while maintaining accuracy and high levels of customer service. 

RPA uses intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) to handle an organization’s most basic and time-consuming activities. These include tasks such as collecting data from different sources, updating spreadsheets and databases, and filling out forms.

In customer service, solutions that utilize RPA technology can simplify processes like responding to commonly asked questions and directing customers toward self-service pages as part of a seamless omnichannel experience.

While traditional automation uses application programming interfaces (APIs) to integrate systems, robotic process automation makes use of software bots to understand the actions of users at the user interface level. An RPA developer must be thoroughly familiar with the target system.

The Goal of RPA 

The goal of RPA is to eliminate low-value tasks and free employees to spend more time on work with greater impact—like interacting with customers—to achieve better business results.

Intelligent automation can significantly advance customer experiences with your brand given that Americans are willing to pay 17% more to do business with companies with excellent reputations in customer service. Indeed, 90% of Americans consider customer service an important factor in determining whether or not they want to be associated with a company at all.

RPA bots offload the weight of inefficient processes across any business vertical or industry so employees can focus on what matters most. Tasks that check the following boxes can be optimized by RPA software to support your business: 

• Time-sensitive 
• Labor-intensive or high-volume 
• Repetitive 
• Rule-based 
• Highly structured 
• Prone to human error 

Understanding RPA is imperative for today’s businesses. Solutions that use RPA enable efficient automation of routine tasks in customer service, such as: 

• Loading and changing data. 
• Filling out forms. 
• Streamlining information on different systems. 
• Screening application forms and documents. 
• Managing people requests. 

How RPA Solutions Help Improve the Customer Service Experience

Solutions that employ RPA software improve the customer service experience in multiple ways.

For one, it speeds up processes and reduces repetition, which enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty. Intelligent automation creates positive outcomes and improves customer service by providing quick and consistent support with reduced handle time for customer service agents.

Second, it helps create happier, more focused employees. On average, 40% of employees’ time is wasted on repetitive manual tasks, according to an Automation Anywhere study—and 75% of employees believe spending time on tasks that can easily be automated is a poor use of their skills.  By using automated processes to reduce or eliminate mundane tasks, employees can spend more time creating more meaningful customer experiences.

Third, RPA solutions increase productivity and accuracy. Through streamlined workflows, customer service teams can complete tasks faster and more accurately. UiPath’s 2021 Office Worker Survey found that 67% of global workers feel crushed by repetitive tasks. Intelligent automation of repetitive tasks can help people find fulfillment and attain higher productivity at work. 

Automated processes, such as conversational artificial intelligence (AI), have a lower margin of error which helps businesses meet customer expectations. RPA solutions eliminate potential human errors entering customer data, providing streamlined service and saving companies time and money.

Additionally, RPA solutions reduce costs and increase revenue. They provide early visibility into trends, creating opportunities to eliminate human error, reduce unnecessary spend, and improve productivity.

Finally, RPA solutions help maintain best practices by providing consistency in service delivery throughout the contact center. They also ensure that all employees use customer information effectively and efficiently. 

Ultimately, RPA solutions allow for better tracking of tasks, knowledge sharing, and consistent service delivery, thus helping employees provide better customer service through the contact center. They can generate remarkable benefits for multi-national corporations as well as local small businesses by offering significant time-savings for completing repetitive tasks and better utilizing employees’ skills on more meaningful work.

How to Measure and Optimize Customer Support Effectiveness With RPA Solutions

As a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions, iQor creates RPA solutions for our clients. After implementing process automation in customer service, BPOs like iQor can measure its effectiveness for their clients in the following ways. 

• Increased revenue: How much money are you saving or making thanks to BPO solutions with intelligent virtual assistants? Your business may open up a new revenue stream by reassigning teams and workflows or adding new projects to expand operations. With higher customer satisfaction, you’re also bound to get new customers through word of mouth, ultimately increasing profits.
• Velocity: Velocity is the time it takes for an automated process to complete a task. BPOs can save their clients time and increase velocity by removing manual processes through RPA solutions. 

BPOs like iQor can use these aforementioned metrics to identify opportunities to deploy RPA solutions to further enhance customer support strategies for their clients. Additionally, they can use intelligent automation to inform social media monitoring and respond to customer reviews and feedback to better meet customer needs.

How Can You Make the Best Use of RPA Solutions in Customer Support? 

Here are some ways to get the most out of RPA solutions: 

• Start by automating simple tasks. 
• Upskill customer support agents as RPA deployments mature. 
• Automate customer service across all touchpoints and omnichannel platforms for a connected experience. 
• Focus on specific metrics and determine how well RPA is doing in those aspects. 

It’s also imperative that the solution implemented by your BPO provides RPA security so automation and convenience align with cybersecurity protocols. In addition to a CX private cloud, here are four ways to accomplish this: 

• Implement change control and review for RPA technology scripts. 
• Ensure the RPA bot has audit capabilities. 
• Avoid fraud and abuse by enabling privileged session management. 
• Rotate bot credentials frequently to ensure accountability for the actions of the RPA solution. 

Typical Use Cases for RPA

Research indicates that 20% of organizations have adopted robotic process automation as of 2021, a noteworthy jump from just 13% in 2020.

At iQor, our cognitive RPA custom solutions have yielded outstanding results for clients. iQor developed an RPA bot that simplified the voucher program for a major airline carrier, saving time and significantly improving productivity. The airline program saved 1,965 hours per year by reducing handle time by two minutes per voucher request. They saw a 29% reduction in overall handle time and were able to process 36,400 transactions per year.

iQor’s RPA solution has generated improved outcomes across other business processes as well. It has been used to simplify processes for a global HR team, automating HR-based workflow requests. In checking for accuracy, providing real-time visibility into staffing metrics, and offering other payroll and benefits improvements it has saved 650 hours per employee each year. With 100% process automation it completes 75 complex HR transactions per hour, supercharging the HR workforce.

Some additional use cases for RPA technology solutions in customer support to improve contact center analytics include: 

Update CRM Data 

RPA solutions can cull customer data from a CRM solution and update it with the latest information. In this way, it frees up the customer support team to focus on helping customers instead of updating common data, such as cold calls, interactions with customer support employees, reports, documents, and emails. 

Root Cause Analysis 

When an incident occurs, the RPA solution can be used to gather data automatically so that your team can quickly identify the root cause. Once they know why an incident occurred, they can more easily solve the problem. 

Assist Customer Support Agents 

According to Salesforce, 63% of customers expect customer service agents to be familiar with their expectations and unique needs.  

An RPA solution can fetch customer data, such as purchases, previous complaints, demographics, and tickets, for the customer service rep to help them better deal with customer inquiries. 

Instant Response 

RPA solutions can be used to automate simple customer service functions, such as sending customers on hold new information about their order or shipping status. RPA is also great for generating responses to common requests or questions from customers, saving time and helping to provide better service.   

Final Words 

In sum, custom RPA solutions offered by BPOs like iQor can be immensely helpful in enhancing customer service and the customer experience for clients of all sizes. Whether large or small, companies can benefit from the enhanced productivity, cost savings, and improved customer service that RPA solutions provide.

Experience the iQor Difference 

iQor’s intelligent automation delivers better customer experiences and helps employees perform at their best. Our cognitive RPA software solutions are customized to client needs. We use AI and machine learning to handle high-volume, repetitive, or slow, time-consuming tasks. With streamlined workflows using RPAs, our team completes tasks faster and more accurately to provide amazing customer experiences.

If you’re considering outsourcing customer support, explore partnering with iQor. We are an award-winning global BPO, purpose-built to deliver omnichannel customer service through our work-at-home and in-office agents spread across more than 50 locations worldwide.

We know how to maximize RPA for superior customer service, efficiency, and cost-saving. To learn more about how we can help you achieve your goals, listen to our podcasts or contact us here.

Ada Smith is director of analytics at iQor.

How Workforce Management as a Service Maximizes Your Most Valuable Resource

The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on all aspects of our lives has led many to ponder the future of work. What will workforce management look like going forward? How can businesses best manage increasing numbers of remote employees and online consumers?

Workforce management as a service (WFMaaS), like the team of experts and supporting technology offered by iQor, is a powerful way to improve your workforce’s engagement, productivity, and flexibility today and into the future. Based on the software as a service (SaaS) model, WFMaaS takes a service-oriented and consultative approach to workforce optimization, employing the best people, processes, and systems to maximize the value of your workforce. 

What exactly is WFMaaS, and how can it improve employee engagement and customer experience? This post goes in-depth on WFMaaS and how it can fine-tune the most precise forecasts, enable efficient scheduling, and engage employees to better serve your entire business. 

What Is Workforce Management as a Service? 

Workforce management (WFM) is the process of optimizing employee productivity and delivering a customer experience that consistently meets expected standards. However, workforce management as a service refers to an external organization’s or consultant’s expertise in that process of skill, resource, and service optimization, helping you better manage employees, processes, and service outcomes.

As a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions, iQor provides WFMaaS to help you match employees’ dexterity to job requirements whenever needed. WFMaaS is two-fold: it offers WFM technology and a team of experts to provide a comprehensive service tailored to your business to optimize results. iQor’s best-in-class workforce management team and our supporting WFM technology create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business. The WFM team shares best practices and provides a consistent support network for all clients so you can expect the same level of amazing service no matter the program or location. 

What Can WFMaaS Do for You? 

WFMaaS offers an array of benefits to help you accurately predict the future, gain real-time insights, and create space to meet more targets across your organization. Specifically, WFMaaS helps you: 

• Increase efficiency and productivity – Solve for omnichannel complexity with multichannel forecasting, multi-skill scheduling, contact center agent self-service, competence development, and monitoring of real-time and past activities. 
• Improve planning and governance – WFMaaS provides you with a dedicated WFM team to streamline processes, review your metrics on a regular basis, and plan for your staffing needs. 
• Analyze current workforce management metrics – A WFMaaS provider can bring together data, insights, and industry best practice benchmarks to examine your service key performance indicators (KPIs) such as service levels, average speed of answer (ASA), abandonment rate, average handle time, and customer satisfaction. Based on these metrics, your WMaaS team can recommend improvements and process automation that will improve the customer experience, assist employees, and benefit your bottom line. 
• Forecast capabilities more accurately – Enhanced algorithms, automation, and AI help predict staffing levels down to the half-hour to increase occupancy and generate efficiencies for amazing service. 
• Provide oversight in real-time – Keep agents focused and on time, manage omnichannel queues, and modify schedules and staffing to meet demand and identify anomalies. 
• Empower agents to manage their schedules – Agents can see their schedules in real-time and request changes instantly. 
• Scale with the cloud – With a WFMaaS entity that uses cloud-based infrastructure, you can scale to the speed of your business and instantly add new teammates. 

Who Needs WFMaaS? 

Robust workforce management solutions assist companies across every industry. In particular, B2C businesses with omnichannel customer support experiences—voice, email, chat, text, social, and digital agents—need integrated solutions for increasingly tech-savvy customers. 

The future of work requires service agents to match and even go beyond the digital literacy of their customers to provide an amazing customer experience (CX). 

WFMaaS helps businesses bridge the gap between complexities. Some of the industries that benefit from WFMaaS for better customer experience include: 

• Communications, media, and technology – Develop loyal customers with tech-savvy customer support teams. 
• Financial services – Skilled experts can quickly help your customers respond to market changes. 
• Healthcare – Provide compassionate and empathetic support teams that stay current on all regulatory changes. 
• The public sector – Build connections with the people you serve, offering the same superior customer experience as B2C entities. 
• Automotive – Help customers make educated buying decisions. 
• Travel and hospitality – Let customers contact you through the most convenient channel for them, using scalable, omnichannel CX solutions. 
• Retail and e-commerce – Scale CX teams for seasonal and event-driven volume seamlessly. 
• Energy and utilities – Meet seasonal demands cost-effectively and connect with customers during weather events. 

Why Has the Need for WFMaaS Increased? 

More businesses want to offer multiple channels for customer engagement to enhance the overall customer service experience. Doing so requires skilled employees who can keep up with the demands of an omnichannel CX model. WFMaaS meets these needs by: 

• Sending customer interactions to the right resource. 
• Managing and ensuring schedule adherence for all channels. 
• Improving workforce planning automation. 
• Making accurate workload predictions. 

Leveraging Candidate Skill Sets Through WFMaaS 

One of the primary goals of WFMaaS is applying workforce resources where and when they’re needed. With analysis and consultation from WFM experts, your company can start this process before candidates are hired. As a result, you’ll have a deeper understanding of the skill sets your organization needs and can pick those attributes during the recruitment process. 

Why Does Workforce Management as a Service Matter? 

Workforce management as a service enables efficient scheduling and employee engagement, no matter which industry you’re in. It adjusts as needs change. Coaching and other ad hoc activities can be planned with updates based on ramps, contact arrival patterns, and trends. By better optimizing your workforce to serve your customers’ needs, you simultaneously create experiences that make customers and employees smile while reaching your business goals. 

How Does WFMaaS Result in Better Customer Experiences? 

WFMaaS offers your business the tools to develop a flexible, skilled workforce that meets customer demand. Your brand and customers are unique and deserve personalized solutions. Consulting with WFM specialists can help you find valuable CX data and insights that enable better customer solutions and more responsive customer success teams.  

When your customers experience meaningful interactions with skilled agents, it instills trust in your brand. 

The Benefits of the Inherent Consultative Approach of WFMaaS 

WFMaaS isn’t just software. Its consultative approach allows your business to work directly with experts on your management and workforce evaluation processes. Your workforce needs are unlike those of other businesses, so choosing a WFM solution strategically tailored to your needs will provide invaluable workforce optimization. 

Experts like the WFM team at iQor will take the time to understand your workforce and business goals. Consultants can leverage the latest technology to devise creative and innovative solutions suited to your workforce plan. You don’t have to worry about learning how to use a new workforce management tool or platform on your own. Instead, your WFM consultants will guide you.

A WFM consultant will also teach you how to interpret all the data they collect to predict staffing requirements or forecast your capabilities with high accuracy, for example. 

With WFMaaS combining sophisticated and flexible WFM tech with passionate, dedicated WFM professionals focused on strategic management, you can enjoy rapid scalability and superior customer experiences at the same time. 

WFMaaS Improves Engagement, Productivity, and Flexibility 

Increasingly tech-savvy customers, remote working and mobile employees, and self-service are growing areas of workforce management that WFMaaS addresses to ensure optimal experiences. 

The increase in remote workers introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic has presented new opportunities in WFM. Work-at-home employees face challenges such as isolation, lack of socialization, and distractions at home. WFMaaS can empower companies to improve mobile workforce management by implementing technology that supports flexibility and work-life balance for virtual staff. 

Indeed, WFMaaS addresses ongoing staffing requirements as well as seasonal staffing needs. Further, WFMaaS optimizes remote workforce management with solutions such as incorporating interaction analytics, automating low-level queries, using chatbots, and relying on a cloud-based infrastructure. Streamlining processes and equipping your workforce with flexible self-service capabilities improves the employee experience and creates a happier and more engaged staff.

How Does WFMaaS Meet the Needs of Tech-Savvy Consumers? 

As customers become more tech-savvy, it’s essential that customer service offerings meet them on the channel of their choice whenever they want. Providing superior service through various channels ensures valuable customer experiences that elevate your brand.  

To this end, omnichannel CX enables customers to use the channel they’re most comfortable with to engage with an experienced customer service agent. Utilizing WFMaaS helps deploy proactive strategies to reduce overall interaction volumes and improve the customer journey by making the information they seek readily available to them through their channel of choice. 

The Need for Connected Channels and Seamless Experiences 

WFMaaS can help ensure your channels are aligned with your customers’ needs. By digitally enabling your agents with tools, such as robotic process automation, a unified desktop, unified omnichannel customer relationship management software, and AI-powered recommendations, you allow your agents to do their jobs better and faster. Seamless integrations ensure your customers can self-serve when needed but also receive live support as part of an integrated experience if one channel doesn’t meet their needs. Creating a powerful digital customer experience through a comprehensive digital transformation strategy can not only provide exceptional experiences for your consumers, but it can also free up time for agents to focus on more meaningful interactions. As a result, they can provide more caring and empathetic service. 

How to Mobilize a Successful WFMaaS Strategy for Your Business 

Experts at an experienced BPO like iQor can develop a personalized WFMaaS strategy for your business. The development process should optimize your workforce value and enable workforce planning to boost employee engagement, productivity, and customer satisfaction. 

Experience the iQor Difference 

iQor is here when you need us most. Our agile workforce management culture and flexible cloud-based technology enable rapid scalability and superior customer experiences at the same time for a powerful experience. With our WFMaaS capabilities, we provided a 500% increase in FTEs to meet a gift retailer’s seasonal peak demands. We hired 1,500 customer support experts in two months and served 35,000 customers during the client’s peak holiday shopping week. 

iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences. iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX. 

Our award-winning CX services include: 

• A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries. 
• A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice. 
• A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI. 
• The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers. 
• Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want. 
• The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers. 
• A best-in-class workforce management team and supporting technology to create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business. 

iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles.

Neeraj Thakran is vice president of workforce management at iQor.

When BPOs invest in leadership development, they inspire improvement across the organization. From frontline call center agents to operations directors, clear and effective leadership can motivate, energize, and inspire employees at every level.  

One study showed that companies displayed the following results from leadership training: 

• Return on investment was nearly six times the program cost. 
• Workplace relationships improved by 77 percent. 
• Teamwork improved by 67 percent. 
• Fifty-one percent of employees reported greater job satisfaction. 
• Overall quality improved by 48 percent. 

The takeaway? Effective leadership bolsters employee job performance, and leadership training is a highly successful way to ensure leaders at all levels can bring out the best in their teams. 

Leadership Development Drives Retention, Engagement, and Employee Satisfaction 

Starting off on the right foot is critical to new leaders and their teams. When leadership training only occurs post promotion, it can be difficult for new leaders to transition into management. And without the proper knowledge of how to coach, support, and engage with team members in a way that’s aligned with company culture and values, leaders can veer off course and develop habits that can lead to unsatisfied employees. 

At iQor, we have challenged ourselves by revolutionizing professional development throughout our global footprint via our award-winning sQholar program. This 6-month program provides future leaders with the training needed to successfully execute and perform at a level that allows their team to meet or exceed performance expectations from the minute they hit the floor. Every quarter, the Corporate Training Team progresses a batch of leader-ready employees and, in turn, accepts new applicants into the program.  

We train sQholars to be supportive and how to build trust and provide constructive feedback. As employees pick up on these skills, there is less turnover and more engaged agents who are equipped to handle customer service issues.  

What is iQor’s Leadership Development Program, sQholar? 

The sQholar program is for high-potential employees with exceptional leadership skills who are team-oriented and want to progress in their careers. The program consists of nine to eleven hours of eLearning and team-building activities that align with the organization’s leadership competency model. 

The program includes our four-day workshop — PeaQ Performance Qoaching –that teaches agents to identify and document behaviors that lead to strong performance and how best to coach team members based on their individual needs. 

Then, employees start the sQholar curriculum, which includes a 2-day orientation, shadowing call center management, and completing a research paper before graduation that details their plan to improve retention and increase employee engagement. 

Employees Love Leadership Training and Development 

More than 2,400 of our current supervisors have completed one if not all of the learning modules and courses within the sQholar program. Additionally, employees are exposed to iQor’s management culture, and real-time challenges that managers face every day, giving them a new appreciation for those who lead and develop their own personal leadership style.  

Since its launch in 2017, more than 700 iQor employees have finished the sQholar training, and nearly 300 have been promoted. On average, 41 percent of sQholar participants are promoted to a supervisor role within their first year of completing the program. Our program has grown to well over 465 active sQholars working their way towards a leadership position.   

The sQholar program is now a mandatory prerequisite for all internal promotions, with hundreds of applicants applying every quarter. External hires must now complete the courses and curriculum as well.    

The sQholar program has been recognized by HR.com as a LEAD award winner in several categories placing 2nd as Best Global Leadership Program in 2020, and also won the 2019 Bronze Stevie Award for Sales & Customer Service.  

In total, iQor has received 30 awards from Hr.com’s LEAD Awards over the last seven years, and 39 training awards in total for our unique and innovative career development offerings for CX leadership in our global call centers and work-at-home environment. 

Leadership Development is Good for Business Too 

We hire approximately 30 new call center supervisors every month.  New supervisors take time to understand iQor’s unique culture, performance drivers, and supervisory challenges. Additionally, our exit survey data and company surveys indicate that career growth paths are an important factor in employee retention. 

The courses and curriculum a sQholar completes during their training period are proven performance accelerators. Employees who have this knowledge have less of a learning curve and are more likely to succeed than employees hired from outside. 

A sQholar is selected by their work history, personal initiative, and the recommendations of their peers. They are expected to maintain their current performance levels. For that reason, sQholar graduates typically have significant leverage over their externally hired counterparts, thus lowering agent attrition and improving retention and employee engagement. 

sQholar supervisors who are well trained and highly engaged have the most significant impact on lowering agent attrition. For every 1% reduction in yearly agent attrition, our company saves about $500,000 a year. 

What Lies Ahead for iQor’s Leadership Training Programs? 

iQor has a long history of promoting from within. Some of our most senior managers started as agents. Our General Manager and SVP of Operations for Retail and Residential Services, Tone Holmen, has had a similar journey. 

iQor believes the sQholar program offers a groundbreaking opportunity that benefits both its company and its employees. We are continuously improving the program to provide more career choices along the supervisor and manager development paths. 

Discover iQor career opportunities at jobs.iqor.com.