English is the language of preference in the customer service and sales environments. If your vital customer facing staff can’t speak English clearly and intelligibly then their careers are going to suffer. Research shows that not being able to understand the agent is the number one problem for customers calling in to their service providers.

The problem starts at school because a large proportion of Southern African matriculants do not have an adequate command of English. This is one of the greatest challenges facing our education systems, and it becomes a very real problem for young job seekers who have to express themselves in English in order to enter the job market.

As the demand for customer service and contact centre agents increases, more and more young people are needed to fill the gap. Unfortunately, sometimes the best candidates are not able to speak English clearly enough to work in the BPO industry.

How can these problems be resolved?

If your mother tongue is isiZulu, isiSotho, isiXhosa or any other of the Southern African languages your first language will have a powerful effect on your English accent.

A common feature of the Southern African languages is strong throat resonance. Voice is produced in the middle to back part of the mouth. This results in a deep, full, warm voice. But because of this, when English is spoken there is blurring of the forward, round English vowel sounds, such as er, ar and or.

There are also big vowel (a, e, i, o, u) sound differences. Most of the local languages have between 5 and 7 vowels, and these vowels are formed in the middle to back part of the mouth.

English has 23 vowel sounds. Long and short English vowel pairs can be pronounced differently, e.g. ship/sheep; pot/port.

But lip rounding is uncommon in the local languages, so forward rounded English vowels are pronounced as middle vowels. For example ‘work’ can be pronounced as ‘wek’ or ‘wuk’. There is also no ‘A as in man’ sound in the African languages so this ‘a’ is pronounced as ‘e’ or ‘u’.

The vowel differences often result in communication problems, especially when different words can sound the same – eg much/march/match or paper/pepper.

This is called mother tongue influence. You might say “So what?” But it does matter to a young person applying for a job in the customer service industry.
If you can’t speak English clearly and intelligibly you are at a disadvantage. English is the language of choice for business generally and particularly in customer service environments. A young person who has not spoken much English at home or school is suddenly expected to speak English at a mother tongue level.

It can take many years to learn to speak English well if you weren’t taught well at school. One way for first time job applicants and new employees to play catch up is to take an accent modification course.

A good example produced in South Africa is the Accent Labs e-learning course. The course not only shows you how to pronounce all the English vowels and consonants, but also helps with your audio processing of English, ie the course improves your ability to understand the spoken English that you are listening to.

The course was developed on the Moodle e-learning platform and includes a number of innovative recording and playback features.

If you would like to know more about their online course and the blended options that they offer please get in touch with Andy Quinan on +2783 460 6328, or email him at andy@accentlabs.co.za

Click here to visit their web site.

]]> https://careerplanet.co.za/bpo.-useful-terms/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=useful-bpo-terms Tue, 02 Apr 2019 18:04:27 +0000 https://careerplanet.co.za/?p=120216 Understanding customer service buzzwords

Buzzwords. Those terms that everyone uses, that sound exciting or impressive, but not everyone is quite sure exactly what they mean.  Unfortunately, buzzwords are surprisingly prominent in the customer service sector.

By taking the time to understand the concepts behind the key industry buzzwords, you will give your customer service practices a boost.

Here is a list of customer service buzzwords, and what they really mean.

1.    Accessible customer service

As customer service buzzwords go, this is one of the more straightforward terms. It refers to how easy it is for your customers to reach your business and access your customer service, at any time, via any preferred channel.

2.    Customer acquisition

In a nutshell, this is a term for winning customers. ‘Customer acquisition’ refers to the efforts and processes undertaken to convince a customer to buy from you. You should also watch out for its common supporting prefaces: ‘aggressive’ and ‘intent-driven’.

3.    Customer alignment

Customer alignment is the extent to which the business goals and products are oriented to the values and needs of the customer. As a rule, strong customer alignment means that a business is highly invested in meeting customer values and requirements.

4.    Customer-centric

Perhaps one of the most (over)used customer service buzzwords is ‘customer-centric’. This term is commonly bandied as an adjective describing company cultures and practices. Customer centricity simply refers to placing your customer in the centre of the service experience and prioritising their needs.

5.    Customer effort

Customer effort is a metric for how much time, resource or irritation a customer must invest to reach their desired result. Assessing customer effort helps businesses see where they need to speed or simplify the experience, helping ‘minimise pain points’ and ‘drive an ethos of customer satisfaction’. (To steal another few customer service buzzwords.)

6.    Customer experience

Occasionally shortened to CX, customer experience refers to the entirety of interactions a customer has with a company and its services. This starts right from the moment the customer becomes aware of you, to instances of contacting support, to advocacy and the end of the customer relationship. Again, this term is commonly prefaced by other customer service buzzwords such as ‘streamlined’, ‘holistic’ and ‘immersive’.

7.    Customer relationship management (CRM)

CRM, or customer relationship management, defines the management system of your customer data. It relates not only to the organisation and storage of customer data, but also its strategic use to offer informed, tailored service. With a CRM system in place, every detail about every customer is immediately available. (If you use it correctly, that is.)

8.    Knowledge base

A knowledge base is the content on your site that supports customers that want to serve themselves. It’s the library of content that offers advice and instruction to help customers fix a problem without contacting your service team. For this reason, ‘knowledge base’ is usually found beside customer service buzzwords like ‘customer empowerment’ and ‘the connected customer’.

9.    Omnichannel and multichannel service

Omnichannel and multichannel are customer service buzzwords describing your methods of offering customer service. Multichannel, or ‘many channel’, is the idea that there are multiple ways for a customer to contact your business. Omnichannel is a further extension of this. It means that customers can not only contact through any means they like, but also swap and change between contact channels fluidly.  Expect to find alongside words like ‘seamless’ and ‘synergy’.

10.  Personalised experience

Personalisation, or personalised experience, is one of the most hotly used customer service buzzwords you’ll hear. It refers to the use of personal preferences to make the journey unique to each customer. From using the customer’s name, to delivering relevant content, to marketing based on behaviours and interests – a personalised experience is one data-driven to feel tailored. (In fact, data-driven also deserves a buzzword nod.)

11.  Customer retention

Customer retention determines the ability to keep customers with a business, and encourage them to return for repeat purchases. Essentially, it’s what happens after customer acquisition. First you get the customer onboard, then you try your best to keep them there. You’ll also find ‘customer retention’ used alongside its cousin customer service buzzwords: ‘lifetime value’, ‘customer loyalty’ and ‘leveraging customer relationships’.

12.  Service awareness

Don’t confuse brand awareness with service awareness. Service awareness is the measurement of how aware a company is regarding the impact of their service on the customer. So, it can help customer support teams know when to go the extra mile for a customer, and the effect that doing so will have.

13.  Touchpoints/point of contact

These customer service buzzwords simply refer to when and how a customer interacts with your business. ‘Touchpoint’ or ‘point of contact’ describes the moment that a customer comes into contact with your business. A touchpoint can be active or passive.  Active interactions include a live chat session or phone call, for example. Meanwhile, passive contact includes seeing a review or landing on your website.

14.  Voice of the customer

The voice of the customer is the accumulated insight gained through customer feedback. Acquiring these ‘mission-critical customer insights’ provides information on where customer service is failing and succeeding. Listening to the voice of the customer enables support teams to adjust their service to ‘exceed customer expectations’ and ‘deliver exceptional frontline service’. (To play customer service buzzwords bingo.)

Source: Whoson.com