Evolution of Contact Centers: Modern Strategies for Managing PR and Recall Crises

Ready to transform crisis into opportunity? In this episode, we promise to arm you with practical strategies and cutting-edge tools to navigate the choppy waters of crisis management in contact centers. We use our insights and experiences to illuminate the potential of modern Customer Experience tools to mitigate such crises. With our guidance, you'll learn about setting up minimalistic self-service websites, deploying AI chatbots to deliver vital information, and strategizing to handle customer complaints effectively. 

We don't stop there! Harnessing social media during crisis communications can significantly make a difference. Listen as we unfold various social media strategies, right from TikTok Lives, Q&A sessions, to effective email campaigns. 

We also delve into the mechanics of adjusting IVR systems, routing calls to BPOs, and utilizing analytics. We shine light on the importance of maintaining consistent messaging for an enhanced customer experience. By the end, you'll be equipped with the knowledge to not just survive a crisis, but to leverage it for growth. So sit back, and let's change the game of crisis management together!

If you are looking for USA outsourced customer service or sales support, we here at Expivia would really like to help you support your customers.
Please check us out at expiviausa.com, or email us at info@expivia.net!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:26

Welcome back everybody to another episode of advice from a call center geek the call center, contact center podcast. We try to give you some actionable items Take back in your contact center, improve the overall quality, improve the agent experience, hopefully improve the customer experience as well. My name is Tom Laird. I'm the CEO here at Expedia Interaction and Auto QA. I want to throw that in there as well. Expedia is a 500, 600 seat contact center outsourcer located here in Erie, pennsylvania. Auto QA is our new business and our new product where we are trying to look at contact centers that are 50 seats and under, fully automating your QA processes with chat, gbt and some AI. Before I get going in today's episode, I want to invite again everybody. If you listen to the pre-roll ad here autoqacom please join head over to that landing page. All we ask you is for your email address. With that email address you'll get access to a Discord. There's about 100 people in our Discord right now. Contact center operation Discord. Anything that we just gave away a full, robust staffing, workforce management calculator for using Excel gave all the prompts away that we're utilizing with Auto QA, just trying to give a ton of value away. Again, I think it's worth it Just to give your email address. I'll never spam you. I'm not trying to sell you anything. If you'd like to be part of our beta or alpha beta testing. That's going to be coming up in a couple of weeks. That's the list of people from the pre-launch community that we'll be pulling all that stuff from. So, please, I think it's totally worth it. Autoqacom O-T-T-O-Q-Acom. Just give your email address and we'll get you on the list and get you rolling with everything.

Speaker 1: 2:11

Ok, today's episode. I am so exhausted with AI I think a lot of you guys are too I wanted to get something fresh. I've taken two weeks off the podcast. It's been a really busy time of year with what we're doing with Auto, with what Expedia is doing. We have some new clients that we've onboarded. I was in Vegas last week as those of you following me went to the Steelers game. So again, in thinking this episode through, I would look at about the last 10 things that I've talked about and we've discussed here on the podcast, and they're all AI related and AutoQA related. I don't want to seem redundant with this stuff and, again, there's so many things to talk about in this world. So I'm going to do something that we haven't done here and let's do a case study.

Speaker 1: 3:01

In 2001, I was extremely luck I don't want to say lucky, maybe lucky is not the right word but I was fortunate enough at least to learn. I was super young in the industry. Our contact center was one of the contact centers that were chosen as a BPO to help with the Firestone Tire Recall. Now, if any of you guys are too young for that, in 2001, firestone had like 13 or 16 million auto I'm sorry, said it's OTTOQA, not AUTO OTTOQAcom. They had like 15 million, something in that range, tire's recalled. So there's this massive recall. So there's this massive crisis that happens and the contact center takes the blunt.

Speaker 1: 3:49

Now in 2001, things were pretty antiquated. There's no cloud, there's very little CTI integration. Basically, I believe we had computers at the time that were dealing with the basic things from how we had our advice which set up. So maybe there was a little bit of integration, but it was pretty antiquated. So what I wanted to do is we're going to take a, a fictional company, right, we're gonna call it Tire Plus and we're gonna pretend that they have a huge issue and a huge recall.

Speaker 1: 4:27

Now, this could be anything. Right, if you're a retailer. This could be. You know, one of your products obviously gets recalled. This could be if there's a natural disaster and you need to kind of set some things up. If there's something that happens with, maybe, an influencer like the Bud Light kind of thing. How do you deal with those types of issues? So and again, looking at it from the contact center perspective and then looking at this from what I would do if I was in charge, looking at not just the contact center but all the tools that we now have that we didn't have. So it's basically like replaying this Firestone recall with the CX tools that we have today and seeing how we could make it better than really what it was.

Speaker 1: 5:12

So we're gonna basically say that you know, we have this company called Tire Plus. They have the let's call it the Ultra Grip Tire and they just found out that they have 15 million of these that are getting recalled because the scenes don't work. They don't work on certain cars, they're blowing out, maybe there's, you know, some really bad accidents that have happened with these. So you know we have an issue here and we're in charge of the contact center at Tire Plus. That's kind of our theory. So that's kind of the background and let's go kind of what we're gonna do here.

Speaker 1: 5:48

So the first thing is and I know we didn't have this back with the Firestone recall is you have to be. I would be extremely careful with self-service. I would have minimal self-service, right. So we would have a website that would automatically go up that anybody on our going to our website we would have that first. We're not gonna have anybody search for anything. We understand that we're in crisis mode right now. We're just gonna have information on this issue that's going on with the recall, so we may have some type of AI chatbot. It's going to be able to answer like three things right, it's gonna be able to give the number to customer support. It's gonna maybe say if you want to know if your, if your Tire is part of the recall, right, and then how you can actually apply for your refund. That's about it, though, right, I don't want it to this thing to be a huge long thing. This is a very empathetic, emotional issue.

Speaker 1: 6:54

I think a lot of people make a lot of mistakes when it comes to self-service, when it comes to these types of things, because they're getting bombarded with calls. Right, oh, sorry, is it? Ultragrip? That's what let's call it, the UltraGripper, right? Just something totally different. I don't mean to say anything. This is totally fictional. So Patrick Dwyer just came, just talked to me on LinkedIn here for those of you guys on the podcast and said that that's already a tire, that good you have. So, yeah, I'm not really into the tire scene, but anyway, again, minimal self-service, a 24 seven dedicated hotline dedicated to the recall. I mean, I think those things are pretty obvious. Website's gonna have step by step of the recall process, video demonstrations, checking for the tire models. Our agents go through training with this.

Speaker 1: 7:45

Let's talk about how do we influx our agents, right? The first thing is, if it's a total emergency, we're gonna try to get as many Thameson as we possibly can, and then we have to hit a BPO network, right? So if we don't have that network, I'm talking to a couple of brokers and I'm saying, hey, listen, we're in emergency mode. Now I need 24 hours to set up X amount of agents and have them really push and work for me to do that. We're never gonna be able to do this internally with the amount of people that we need. So having those even doing that ahead of time, right? Always having kind of that broker network that you can reach out to to really have some of the. I love when contact centers, even with us as a BPO, have kind of an emergency overflow deal with us. So we do have a couple of clients that just say, hey, listen, we're gonna keep 10 agents with you, no matter what, and if ever we have an issue because these things in our industry happen a little bit more we're gonna keep you on. You understand the product, you understand the staffing, you understand how to utilize it and then you can scale. So there's a couple of things that you can do from a preemptive standpoint if you're larger, but if not, then I think that broker network is huge.

Speaker 1: 9:04

One of the things that we did not have in 2001 was social media, and maybe that's good, maybe that's bad. It probably was good overall, but I think with social media today, when used properly. So not only is our C-Cast platform going to be monitoring Facebook, twitter, tiktok, all of these different channels, we're going to have a team that's going to be responding to these as quickly as we possibly can. Nobody wants to have a somebody say something on social media and have it linger, especially when we're in crisis mode. The other thing I think that we would do and I would highly recommend is do what I'm doing right now Is to do TikTok lives to go on live on Twitter, to go on live on Facebook, to go live on LinkedIn, host Q&A sessions, have the product team there address concerns in real time, get as many customers to join these type of things before they call in and absolutely bombard our contact center, especially when you're talking about a retail product.

Speaker 1: 10:14

You're going to have customer segments in all of these different channels, whether it's IG, tiktok to LinkedIn, and I would be in almost every couple of hours hosting another Q&A session. Again, you're going to take a beating. Understand that. I think, though, if you have a good voice, if you have a good tone, if people understand that you are being very proactive with this, you might get a little bit of the benefit of the doubt. The other thing that I would do as well is I would have a massive email campaign so we know everybody is registered for our product. I would send something out there that again gave them all the details of what's happening, where they can go, who they can talk to.

Speaker 1: 10:53

We don't want people at this point searching for things, the frustration that they're going to have is already going to be pretty high. So let's try to alleviate as much of the pressure as we possibly can on them and let's give them as much as we can. So here's the links to all of our TikTok lives and what we're doing from a streaming standpoint. Here's all the videos that you're going to need to see if your issue is part of this, and here's the 1-800 number. If you need to talk to our agents, let's talk about the agents and how that I think that should work.

Speaker 1: 11:28

So first thing is the IVR. This is another huge mistake. The IVR needs to absolutely change. That first touch point needs to change to number one. If you're calling about the recall, press one, right, all other things, press two and all of the things are gonna. You know they're gonna take a back seat, we're gonna probably take some people off, but we know that number one is there. The other thing is we want to be very light in the IVR. I don't want a ton of questions. I want this to get to a live agent as quickly as possible.

Speaker 1: 12:02

You know I would do some schedule callbacks. I'm fine with schedule callbacks with this, because you're going to be in a deep queue. Make sure that you are doing a good job with how you're routing calls to your VPO's. Are you gonna be the kind of the first point and then you're gonna send things out, or do you have a VPO that is more technologically advanced, like a lot of times we have more know-how than maybe this tire company does? So we would say, hey, send all the calls to us, let us do all the cool routing right To all the VPO's and to all the other centers that you guys have. Let us handle that because we can do it better.

Speaker 1: 12:41

I think when you are in this crisis mode, a lot of times you have to think you know who has the expertise for this as well. So KMS this reminds me of COVID. Right During COVID, we had all of our two one ones, because things were changing so rapidly, like during the peak of COVID right when schools were starting to shut down, when masks were there, when we had businesses were being locked down Every time the governor gave us talk, everything changed. So having a real-time KMS that agents can constantly be looking at for real-time updates that you don't have to do a Slack or send hey, guys, make sure you look at this is extremely important. Getting feedback from the agents every single day, from a crisis management team to say these are kind of some of the things that customers are talking about. Hey, we need more help with this. Right. Being very proactive to listening to agents, I think is extremely important.

Speaker 1: 13:34

And then, obviously, using analytics right. Seeing what customers see. Maybe you can see what models are actually calling in more. You can see where the frustration. Maybe it's in the Northeast that people are a little bit more frustrated, so we need to give more information out to there. Right To utilize analytics, I think in this type of scenario, is absolutely the most worthwhile thing to be that you can do and really get some insights into what is happening and how you can make it better from more of a proactive standpoint, from all the customers that have not called in yet.

Speaker 1: 14:08

Scripting is also something. Again, when you're talking about multiple VPO's or maybe multiple contact centers, making sure everyone is on the same page, right? So if you have some type of dynamic scripting, if you have, at this point, paper scripts that you need to get out, at least maybe in the first couple of hours before you can get things done, everything needs to be the same. So when a customer calls in once and they talk to somebody in Idaho and they call in something they call in Erie, pennsylvania, kind of we're all on the same page. With that understanding that that's kind of a comforting thing for a customer, and if you guys are all talking from the same sheet of music, I think it's really, really important. The other thing that I think would be something that's a little bit off the wall here too is talking with the mechanics in the garages that we have Maybe we have you know whatever tire plus dealers all over the United States and to have them at this point almost give demos of kind of hey, this is what happened, here's the tires that we're gonna replace your thing with, giving discounts to those tires, bringing people in and making them feel very comfortable with the other tires from a safety standpoint, talking those things through. I think being honest with that stuff would be huge. Transparency in this, in these kind of scenarios, are very important.

Speaker 1: 15:34

A lot of companies want to hide right and just kind of give the minimal amount of information where I'm kind of the opposite and again, I think, with the large number of calls that are coming in, it's utilizing a broker network. It's setting up BPO's as quickly as you possibly can. A lot of times when you talk to a consultant or a broker, there are contact centers that will be able to get set up within 24 to 48 hours, whether that's near shore, whether that's here on shore. I know we've done it. We've done it a lot of time for hurricanes right. So our hurricane's going to hit Florida. There's a contact center with 25 agents or 50 agents, whatever that is. They need support within the next 72 hours. We've been able to stand up things with maybe some of our friends contact centers and our friend BPO's.

Speaker 1: 16:21

Again, I think, when the volume is hitting you hard, making sure number one, if you're using a CCAS platform, make sure you have enough ports. That's one of the things that you normally get about two ports per license. So let's say you have 600 agents. Let's actually say you have 1,000 agents. So you're going to get roughly about 2,000 calls can be in or in queue. Now they can adjust that, so I would make sure that you have enough bandwidth there to queue where you needed to queue. Scheduled virtual callbacks are going to be a lifeline for you as well, understanding that you need to be 24-7. Understanding that you need to bring temps in and understanding that it's not going to be pretty the first couple days, but you're going to have to kind of just kind of weather this storm, whether that is also bringing in and talking to maybe some of the mechanics and some of those guys at those places that really understand the tire.

Speaker 1: 17:16

I think, though, too, you have to try to eliminate the amount of calls that come in, not by using self-service, not by hiding a phone number, but by being as proactive as you possibly can on social doing, q&as, having a. You know, when the CCAS partner that we rarely go down, but if there's any huge outage there's a, basically a conference call that's set up, and every 15 minutes they come on and they say, hey, here's the update, this is what's going on. So everybody's always in the know-how. I think more information. You just got to give as much information out as you possibly can on all these different types of channels to kind of weather the storm, for that first, you know, 72-ish hours.

Speaker 1: 18:00

I think that's kind of the main point and the difference that we couldn't do back in 2001. In 2001, it was just we're getting bombarded. People are going to be waiting for 45 minutes to two hours. When they get on the phone they're already furious because they're waiting and there has to be, you know, a little there was. I remember there was a lot of agent venting that we had to go through, where we had to give people smoke breaks. They had to go. You know, just get away from this for a minute.

Speaker 1: 18:30

I would say in today's world maybe you know, we do have some I know for a lot of the. If you're moderating TikToks and you're moderating Facebook content and you're moderating all of these different things where you could see some foul things, you know there's kind of a psychologist that would come in and be on site to be able to talk to some people. And I think when you're dealing with something like this and this intense, that should be part of your plan as well, from from kind of your crisis management plan. Now again, this goes way beyond the crisis management plan. Is is is huge, right, and that's all company Encompassing, but this really just focuses on the touch points of the customer, right?

Speaker 1: 19:10

So, again, trying to get as much bandwidth as you possibly can, utilizing some of those tools, utilizing analytics to try to be proactive with it, utilizing your social channels, with your agents to To do q and a's and to do kind of the pre preemptive, customer spur, customer service, customer support with, with all that, to try to limit calls that come into the contact center because you're giving out information, sending out emails that give as much information as you possibly can, having that website set up that has every piece of information to have. I think you limit self service. I know a lot of people think you should. You should go also or a ton of self service to try to help with the volume, but I think for a lot of that you just frustrate customers. They're gonna end up opting for an agent right away anyway and you're gonna end up flooding the system even more and maybe to a channel that you don't like Right, because now we have maybe we don't have as many agents that can handle chat, I don't know, maybe in our, in your contact center that can handle voice.

Speaker 1: 20:06

I have to kind of understand that and know kind of where we can move those calls, were those interactions to where we feel most comfortable and have the most bandwidth to handle. You know, and then as the days go, I think you can get better right within the first 2448 hours maybe we're getting a 72 hours, we can start to do some screen pops based on certain customer data to say, hey, I see that you already have this tire. Right, let's get you right away into this. Right, maybe we don't have that right away, right, but those type of things would be would be huge, right, if we knew the customer, we know what tire they had, if we knew it was part of the recall. Instead of asking them and talking about them, we can be proactive with the screen pops and we can start to say, hey, let's get you, let's get this going right away, which is gonna end our lower handle time.

Speaker 1: 20:54

It's gonna make customers happier because at this point we're not here in for, hey, I'm really sorry to hear that your tire blew up or maybe blowing up, were really sorry about that. Nobody wants to hear that. Right, and I think empathy is important. But again, that we talk about that false hustle, right, that false empathy is almost more annoying. Right, so can be a. Hey, I'm really sorry that this happened. Let me see what I can do to help you. Right, like that, that's. That's actually more empathetic to saying doing the fake. Hey, I'm really sorry that you have to deal with this and you read that script that's there every single time, which is pretty annoying. So I think you know that that's kind of the the overall gist of kind of how I would have handled that.

Speaker 1: 21:37

In kind of, some of the things that we would have done a little bit differently If we have the tools that we had today. Again, analytics and reporting would be would be just a massive upgrade into into what we have, what we had in 2001, having that broker network, even if even right now, if you don't think you ever need it, I would reach out to you. Know, if you guys need some broker names, let me know. I just reach out to me like, hey, can you give me, can I have a couple conversations of people I can keep in my back pocket? Right, that you know where you can go to. You don't have to start the process early, I think. I think could be really, really important.

Speaker 1: 22:12

And then you know how do you, how do you want to do, and I still think companies even now should be doing what are spaces in tiktok lives and doing that as a natural marketing aspect. And then so when you get into these type of scenarios, you know you're prepared to do a, q and a to do an a, m, a on these kind of not fun things that that really want. I guarantee you're gonna get a ton of people and I might be ticked at you right, but you're also relieving and taking some for the team from the contact center who's now all those people are gonna might not have to call in if you're giving proper information to, to what they, what they need on their, on their socials. So, alright, so that's what I got.

Speaker 1: 22:54

Guys something a little different wanted to get away from the a I thing we've been talking about it been beating it to death. So I hope that that I hope that this kind of gives you a little bit of insights, especially for some of you, bigger, maybe retailers just thinking through and again, I don't, this is no plan, this is more of a just thoughts to think about. Right, when it comes to how do we deal with crisis management, how do we deal with when I contact centers under fire? I'm from something that's out of our control, out of the contact centers control, but we then now become the, the Kind of the, the biggest, the fuel of the fire, you know, kind of, so to speak, where we're taking all the heat. And, again, this is another reason why it's insane that that people treat their, their contact centers, as kind of second class citizens. Right, when the shit hits the fan were the ones that are going to save everybody's rear. And I think if you can start to treat people that way early on, you're gonna get a huge bump when the kind of the rubber meets the road when we have issues like this.

Speaker 1: 23:52

So, yeah, I hope, I hope you get a little bit of value. This, I know it's a little bit different. Again, please, please, please, please, if you've made it this far, join our auto q a o t t o q a dot com. Join our prelaunch community, join our discord, get all the things that that. Again, I'm just giving a ton of stuff away. You guys, if you've known me, you know we try to add value. Try to give stuff away. We never sell and I think you'll find a lot of value in it. So again, thank you guys for joining and I will talk to everyone next week.