Here to walk you through a day in the life of a Universal Phone Agent in our Customer Assistance Center (CAC) is Roxanne Duman, a service star who has maintained top scheduling placement for the past quarter due to her skill and proactive attitude.
From the moment a new associate begins orientation, servant leadership and placing customers first are two of the biggest concepts we try to instill.
It’s a concept that is at the heart of all our various departments, from incentive travel for numerous Global 500 companies to technical automotive assistance for car dealers. But often it’s a collection of little moments where one’s customer service reputation is forged, and there are arguably few other departments that provide so many of these opportunities on a daily basis than our CAC.
“I usually start my day in case work. I check my voicemail and go through all my activities to make sure any Notify CRMs, emails or escalations have been taken care of,” Roxanne explains. “When I work morning shifts I will check customer time zones to make sure I am not calling them outside 8am to 9pm business hours. Then, I look at my list of calls for the day to determine which ones need a dealership contact and I will try to contact each dealership before calling my customer so that all of my information is the most up to date that I can get.”
“Once my morning routine is done I begin calls to my customers. If I am able to get all of my calls done early then I reach out to other advisors and see if they need help with their calls.”
Every day, CAC agents act as arbiters of factory-approved fixes, generous goodwill and building great customer relationships on behalf of our clients and their customers. It’s not a stretch to say that unless a dealer or customer knows to seek a specialty line like SPAC or TAC first, our CAC team is usually the very first center they reach. With that level of exposure to a variety of problems to solve comes an equally wide latitude of freedom to provide customer solutions.
In light of this, Roxanne believes the single greatest factor to succeed in CAC is self-motivation: “You can typically get a lot done in your day if you plan well. Be prepared for your plans to change. Don’t plan anything for Mondays except taking inbound calls because then you will have late calls and other obligations that get pushed aside.”
“Know that your schedule can change without warning. You can plan your calls for your case time the night before, but the next day you come in your schedule may look a little different.”
Even before the pandemic, there have been times when calls from all over the country sometimes threaten to overwhelm phone lines depending on the time of day and week. Today, hold times for customer escalations have only increased, which means more complicated matters tie up Team Leads and other veteran agents.
That’s when the entire CAC team comes together to find a right-fit solution no matter how big or small.
“Every bit of this job is teamwork. You have to work with your individual team, you have to work with the dealership, you have to work with the customer. Your team members are invaluable. They are very knowledgeable and are usually the first place I will go if I have a question.”
“I also feel documentation needs to be mentioned. Documentation is one of the most important things in a case. If documentation is lazy or lacking it can seriously slow down a case and impede somebody from assisting you to make your case move along.”
Ask any CAC agent about their time interacting with customers and they will tell you that some callers are in less than pleasant moods when they reach Morley. And understandably so: If your vehicle had a one-in-a-million breakdown, you wouldn’t be all smiles. When they call, it’s up to our CAC team to deliver the assurance and options that can turn a proverbial blizzard into a breeze.
“I have had one customer who has been without her vehicle for four months and could not have been more pleasant to deal with,” Roxanne recalls. “She had an older vehicle so there was not much that could be done about the part delay and the fact that her vehicle was down. She was always nice and I wish I could have done more for her.”
“She is the reason I love working in customer service.”
Through it all, the freedom to find the correct solution for our customers – and having the time to do so – is what Roxanne appreciates the most about CAC. “I like the case work time. I like having the time to devote to the customers I am trying to help,” she says. “I feel like I make a difference when I take inbound calls and try to work the case as if it was my own; I don’t just simply tell the customer I will document that they called and leave a Notify CRM. I will read through their activities and see if I can find an update for them. If I can’t get an answer from the advisor notes then I will ask the customer if they would like to wait on hold or a call back while I try to get an update from the dealer.”
Continuing to find little ways to expedite cases when there’s a chance to do so may be the largest X-factor that guarantees Roxanne’s success. She continues: “I also like to work on Advisor lag cases or No Socc cases, where the customer’s case hasn’t been touched. You start by calling the dealership and trying to find out the most up to date information. Then reach out to the customer and apologize for the lag in attention to their case.”
“Doing these simple things matter to people and shows them that you care not just about having a job, but caring about your job.”
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