Anyone who’s worked to improve CX efficiency through periods of rapid business growth or acquisitions understands the challenges. From the practicalities of customer data migration issues to the intangible issue of managing through cultural differences, management has a seemingly never-ending list of issues to work through. For the contact center, new product lines, systems, and workflows introduce even more complexity. Despite the difficulties behind the scenes, the goal with acquisitions and rapid organic growth is to keep the process seamless for customers and as painless as possible for employees. Here are a few ways to maintain contact center efficiency throughout the transition.

1. Ensure Customer Service Processes Are Aligned

Acquisitions often lead to disjointed customer service experiences due to differences in systems, policies, and teams. To align service across merged businesses, conduct a service audit to assess current processes and identify gaps. During the service audit, you’ll compare and contrast workflows, software, quality assurance procedures, agent scripts, and key performance indicators. This audit will form the baseline of where discrepancies exist and provide a framework for an integration plan that incorporates the best of both worlds. As a guiding principle, simplicity is key. While a multi-step process or more sophisticated workflow might make sense, consider tabling any additional complexity for a phase two implementation down the road. For now, during the process of initial integration, the goal is to improve CX efficiency across all customer service touchpoints. The extent to which you can simplify this process will reduce training time for new and current employees and ultimately give you a better opportunity to provide customers with a predictable and high-quality experience. Of course, you’ll want to solicit input and gain buy-in from stakeholders on both sides of the acquisition. This integration moment is the perfect time to challenge sacred cows and traditional ways of doing things by questioning everything and asking “why?” at every opportunity.

2. Train Employees on a Consistent Brand Voice

With your combined integration plan documented and approved, you’ll need to adjust your new hire and ongoing training curriculum to reflect any new workflows, insights and brand voice you’ve identified through the process outlined in step 1. A single, central support system across all entities is the preferred approach. Communicating and training for consistency in brand voice is never a one-and-done initiative. It usually requires a culture shift that involves multiple points of reinforcement over long periods of time. Mission statement reminders posted in around the contact centers as well as reinforcement of brand values and voice during daily huddles are a couple of ways to make consistent brand voice a reality. Ensure that all contact center employees have access to an easily searchable centralized knowledge base that includes company policies, service scripts, and troubleshooting guides. Artificial intelligence tools can be layered onto such knowledgebases to proactively pop up standard operating procedures (SOPs) for customer interactions when AI detects that agent conversations can benefit from such support.

3. Enhance Management Training

During mergers and acquisitions, or any time your business is rapidly scaling, you’ll want to create a deep management bench. One of the biggest challenges that come with rapid scale and transition is that junior employees can be promoted to hard-to-fill management roles before they’re ready. In these cases, often what’s missing is less about the hard skills and technical expertise but more about the soft skills in dealing with and managing staff. Inexperienced managers can be the greatest cause of employee attrition, which will be a huge detriment to meeting your goal of creating a consistent and exceptional customer experience. Creating a management academy training program can help to quickly address these skill shortages and ensure that your best and brightest junior employees have the confidence and skills to be successful in management roles.

4. Consider Outsourcing to Improve CX Efficiency

The ultimate goal of any acquisition is to combine businesses to create synergies that will fuel exponential future growth. When your acquisition has been successfully integrated, the rapid growth that ensues will be the next hurdle to overcome. And although growth is arguably the best problem a business can have, solutions for coping with rapid growth can be difficult to come by. At this point, meeting with a nearshore contact center service provider is a good idea to discuss ways to improve CX efficiency while lowering overall cost to serve. Check out our resources for selecting a contact center outsourcing partner and tips for making the most of your site visit.  Contact Advensus to discuss your nearshore contact center needs. 

Conclusion

The quest to Improve CX efficiency despite organic expansion and acquisitions requires a proactive and strategic approach. By conducting a comprehensive audit and comparison of current standard operating procedures and workflows as well as technology, you’ll be in a better position to assess training and technology needs that will ensure a consistent and seamless customer experience. Aligning service teams, and fostering a customer-centric culture, businesses can maintain high-quality service while scaling operations. Remember that prioritizing the ability to improve CX efficiency ensures that growth does not come at the expense of customer satisfaction.