A lot of factors play into your customers’ experience when they reach out to you for support. You need a system that makes sure each touchpoint is operating at optimal levels, you need knowledgeable agents, regular performance tracking—the list goes on.
CX governance in the contact center can help maintain the levels of customer experience you expect. It gives you the ability to guide your agents into delivering an experience that is in line with your values consistently.
Today, we explain what a CX governance plan is, what the pieces of a CX governance plan are, and how you can build one.
The contact center is characterized by multiple processes working together to deliver a great customer experience. Each piece of the experience needs to work in a way that is expected. When it doesn’t, problems and customer pain points arise.
You need a platform that allows you to proactively manage customer experiences. The systems and workflows that your communications platform helps facilitate are called CX governance.
What is CX governance?
Governance plans are the training wheels that keep your CX bicycle from toppling over.
CX governance is the structured approach to making sure your customers receive consistent experiences. It is the formalized process of monitoring your CX strategies to ensure their success.
But, how much control do you really need to exert over the experiences your agents are delivering?
How to implement a CX governance plan
A CX governance plan should take into account your customer satisfaction goals and layout actions you will take to make sure they are met.
An effective CX governance plan makes expectations clear to your management and agents. It also establishes consequences and guidelines for when processes break down.
Let’s have a look at the five things your CX governance plan can’t do without.
Set goals
The goal of your CX governance plan is to make sure you are consistently delivering customer service that meets your organization’s standards. To do this, you need to establish a baseline of what that means.
This can be a simple statement, a list of ideals, or OKRs displayed on wallboards for entire teams to see and track progress in the moment. But, these goals are what guide your customer service processes. They should be clear to everyone that is expected to follow your cx governance.
The heart of your CX governance goals should be to deliver a consistent and on-brand experience. When customers have a stellar experience time and time again, your organization’s image becomes positive over time. When problems do arise, they don’t fit with the narrative and negative experiences will be one-offs.
Setting standards provides a support baseline
Establish your customer experience standards. You can use customer feedback through tools like speech analytics or CSAT surveys to really understand what those should be. Find out what makes your customers happy and uncover their pain points.
Broadly, your CX standards should be customer-centric. Each process in your contact center should make sure your customers’ needs are met, their experience positive, and that their ticket is resolved as timely as possible.
Define your metrics
Metrics are a tangible way to see if your processes are working in accordance with your CX governance plan. They provide insight into what is working and what needs improvement.
Define what metrics indicate adherence to the CX governance plan. They should reflect customer service goals and be easy to understand.
Hold teams accountable
Your CX governance plan should clearly define who is responsible for oversight and implementation of contact center processes. Leadership, management, and agents must understand to whom they are to answer.
Don’t overcomplicate your CX governance hierarchy. Small groups and teams work best. The fewer feet in the river, the less muddied the water becomes.
Make sure you can answer:
- Who is responsible for taking action when processes go outside your cx governance program?
- What action will be taken when x governance is not followed?
What does a CX governance decision-making framework look like?
Inevitably you will need to make adjustments to your CX plan. You might find that processes no longer serve your customers or their needs have changed. The decisions you make when it comes to adjusting your process should be filtered through your CX governance plan.
Make sure to consider how your CX governance plan will come to make decisions when adjustments are needed.
What are the right CX governance tools?
Making sure all the processes are working in accordance with your governance plan is a lot to monitor. The good news is that you don’t have to carry a cx governance plan manually. There are tools that help you easily apply governance to your contact center.
Speech analytics allows you to monitor processes in real-time as well as for later assessment.
It can help you:
- Monitor conversations
- Provide real time assistance to agents during calls
- Provide tailored training to refine the experience agents are delivering
Automated scorecards are a great way to make sure you are measuring for specific parts of your plan. They provide a subjective approach to governance.
Every ship needs a captain. CX governance acts as a leader in the contact center, navigating you away from rough waters. It helps you deliver a consistent experience that improves your bottom line.