A dedicated Center of Excellence (CoE) for customer service takes time, dedication, and specialized resources to create a fool-proof structure. Before you begin, here are four hygiene checks to look out for:
1. Set goals: Develop specific goals and assign timelines to achieve them. For example, if you see that your contact center has been experiencing several call drops, set a goal to identify the root cause and ensure customers can easily reach out to you. Setting specific goals and timelines will help the CoE team fix minute problems.
2. Put an A-team together: A CoE comprises the best practices, tools, and guidelines that are put together by the best minds. This team of specialists has to ensure the learnings, practices, and tools they bring to the table have been tested and proven to have worked successfully. This team will play a crucial role in the implementation of the guidelines.
3. Pool in resources: For instance, if the Center of Excellence (CoE) sets out to obtain customer feedback on their experience, tools that make the process complex will mean fewer customer responses and render the feedback campaign inefficient. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure the tools and resources at hand are tailored to suit the goals set by the CoE.
4. Make time: Setting up a CoE requires time and dedication. Ensure you set aside the required hours to set up, implement, and make continuous checks to ensure the center serves its core purpose.
With the hygiene checks in place, you can go about setting up a Center of Excellence in three steps –
STEP ONE: GOALS AND STRATEGY
Naturally, the first step to building a CoE is to define the vision for it clearly. The vision and mission will help assign priorities and resources to drive targeted outcomes. Then, to work on a strategy, the CoE must fall back on data to understand the need for a CoE in the first place and devise practical solutions or approach plans.
STEP TWO: DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
Designing the Center of Excellence involves a detailed approach, one that involves:
- Arriving at a budget for setup and implementation
- Designing the CoE team structure
- Formulating hiring a plan
- Collating data across customer service touchpoints
- Analyzing the data to arrive at actionable insights
To design and develop a CoE, organizations require the right platforms and tools that aid the process by capturing relevant data and sharing rich insights. For instance, Xaqt, an AI-driven customer experience platform, helps companies design and deploy dynamic customer experiences across all channels.
STEP THREE: IMPLEMENT AND SUSTAIN
The final step to set up a Center of Excellence is to be able to implement the best practices and tools across the organization. The onus is then on the CoE to ensure adequate research, training, and support are extended during the launch.
The CoE must also constantly evaluate itself to ensure that it’s up to date with the best in customer service and carry out checks to provide consistent support. Xaqt’s conversational AI platform can help screen agent conversations to analyze the interaction, highlight inconsistencies or errors, and enable swift corrective courses of action.
Reference: https://www.xaqt.com/
