Provide Ethical and Human-Centric Customer Service

Center Human Experiences

For service reps, this means focusing on contact center technology use cases that help them find, generate, and capture information, but that don’t get in the way of what the service reps do best: creating positive customer interactions. For customers, it means understanding that many of them still seek human interactions, so don’t force them through challenging bot flows without an easy way to reach a live human.

For example, let your best service reps stress-test your automation and self-service flows: they know better than anyone what’s likely to break or succeed!

Build Trust with Transparency

Give supervisors the right tools to monitor and measure productivity, without robbing service reps of flexibility and autonomy. Be clear about when reps are being tracked, and why. Clearly communicate when customers are interacting with a bot, and be explicit about interactions—whether with bot or human—that are being recorded.

This means never leading customers to believe they’re chatting with a human if they’re really chatting with a bot. On the service rep side, if you’re monitoring an interaction, provide feedback about the call shortly after it ends to show reps the value of monitoring.

Evolve KPIs to Fit the Moment

Avoid over-reliance on metrics that may not be appropriate for a remote setting or don't tell the complete story of an interaction. Routinely evaluate what you measure and why. Build new metrics that include service rep perspectives and help them grow their proficiency and product expertise.

For example, consider measuring the impact of a positive service rep interaction on customer lifetime value (CLV) and loyalty. And, recognize that as automation increases, the calls making it to a service rep are likely to be more complicated, so consider reducing reliance on average handle time (AHT).

Train Intentionally

Develop a training program that considers the difficulty of virtual learning and the loss of side-by-side shadowing. Find ways to give new remote service reps confidence to handle difficult situations. Use workforce management tools to provide upskilling opportunities and positive feedback throughout a shift.

If you’re already using call monitoring, for example, you might use the same tool to help junior reps virtually shadow more senior ones. Likewise, use badging and certifications to help support reps upskill, and make sure you intentionally carve out time for them to complete bite-sized training modules.

Protect Personal Data at the Source

Implement training and technical guardrails to protect sensitive personal information collected in service interactions. Use data classification to limit how personal data gathered in a service context is used for other purposes, like marketing. Regularly remind remote service reps to protect data by securing their devices. Limit access to data—including employee data—to only those who need it, and if your organization uses video chat or visual monitoring, be sure remote reps don’t leave sensitive personal information visible. Finally, honor customers’ requests to delete their data.

Learn More About Ethical Customer Service

For help with transparent data management, human-centric customer communication, and other elements of ethical customer service, check out this documentation.

Note Service Cloud is now Agentforce Service. You may see references to Service Cloud in Salesforce applications and documentation.