Personality Matters

We all know that the best product or price does not always win, the most convenient solution is not always selected by the buyer. Buyers are people. People act based upon personality and behavioral factors that occur during business interactions. Personality matters. There is no denying that the people in your contact center can be the difference in a competitive marketplace where consumers have many choices and no shortage of information.

Enlightened enterprises are now establishing processes and deploying technology to effectively leverage personality, communication styles, and behavioral characteristics to improve the customer experience and business outcomes. Mattersight believes that understanding and leveraging the impact of personality and human behavior will be the first truly transformative customer relationship management (CRM) innovation in decades. We believe using personality data will create a dramatic, new level of personalization to enhance customer experience which will, in turn, drive meaningful benefits from a cost, revenue, retention, and customer satisfaction perspective.

Behavioral Analytics is Now a Reality

Today, the technology, linguistics analysis, and application of psychological models are all now advanced enough to make behavioral analytics in the enterprise a mainstream reality. One such example is the commercialization of communication and psychological models for behavioral analytics. It is possible to determine a caller’s personality and communication style, emotional state, level of engagement or distress, and other behavioral characteristics from the way they interact with a contact center agent. We can also now analyze how our employees perform with customers based upon those behavioral characteristics. Most importantly, these new insights are also now actionable.

Here’s how it works. Each person has different behavioral characteristics that, in essence, define an individual’s "human operating system." These differences in personality drive the differences in how we interact with others. Starting with the research of world renowned psychologist, Dr. Taibi Kahler, evidence strongly supports the premise that recurring patterns of language come from a common set of personality parts. Kahler’s work was used in the 1970’s by NASA for astronaut selection. NASA could not afford personal interaction issues negatively impacting a mission and potentially endangering lives. Similarly, if we can understand the personality and communication style of each customer, we can more effectively communicate with them and increase the likelihood of a positive business outcome in our own enterprise.

By listening to a number of customer service calls about a common problem - for example, calls about account statement changes - you can easily identify a number of the common personality styles and how they are manifested in different language patterns. Common examples might include:

• "this account information is so confusing to…I just don’t understand it."
• "this is the third time I have called about this issue; this is so frustrating."
• "man, all this paperwork is such a hassle."
• "what kind of a company would keep making the same mistakes on their statements?"

Each of these language "choices" comes from a different personality style, but they evidence a common level of customer dissatisfaction regarding account statement information. Further, these statements give meaningful insights into each customer’s individual "human operating system" which can be leveraged to more effectively communicate.

Meaningful Business Impact

Mattersight, a leader in enterprise analytics focused on customer-employee interactions, offers analysis showing that a behavioral mismatch between a customer and employee, as opposed to a favorable behavioral connection, has a significant impact on business outcomes across industries, even in highly specialized contact center functions:

Personality in the Enterprise Contact Center

Innovative companies with some of the most successful customer experience programs have already begun to capture, analyze, and act upon personality, communication styles and other behavioral characteristics. A government healthcare benefits manager that has repeatedly been recognized by JD Powers for exceptional customer service has been using behavioral analytics for years and has seen consistent improvements year after year. They analyze customer-employee interactions to identify member personality types and communication preference, as well as employee strengths dealing with different caller types. They route callers to the best available agent for handling the personality type for each specific caller. As a result, they:

• Reduced average talk time (ATT) for calls by 16%Improved beneficiary satisfaction levels and improved first contact resolution (FCR)
• Met service levels during a very challenging period when new government mandates were being implemented
• Developed a business case demonstrating 651% ROI and break even within 4 months for deployment at all 6 call center hubs

Make the "Right" Connection with Mattersight

Each individual customer has different expectations and behaviors. Similarly, each individual employee has different strengths and weaknesses handling different types of calls. As a result, the success of a given customer interaction is often determined by which employee handles that interaction and how well their competencies and behavioral characteristics align with each specific customer’s needs.

Mattersight^® Predictive Behavioral Routing automatically routes calls by using advanced algorithms that predict the best available agent to handle each specific caller based upon performance, personal strengths, and behavioral characteristics such as personality and communication style. At time of call connection, we respond in milliseconds with a ranked agent availability list.

Mattersight® Predictive Behavioral Routing integrates with common industry telephony systems and infrastructure, requiring only minor call routing script changes. No process changes or staff re-training are required.

More Information

Mattersight is the leader in enterprise analytics for and customer-employee interactions. For more information, please visit www.mattersight.com/PBR or contact us at info@mattersight.com or call 312-454-3585.

Special Offer for CCIQ readers:

CCIQ readers who visit www.mattersight.com/CCIQ-trial-offer and register for our trial offer are eligible for a $50 gift card for Amazon, iTunes, or Starbucks upon completion of an initial meeting to discuss how Mattersight Predictive Behavioral Analytics can improve performance at your contact center of 100 or more seats. Sorry, offer valid only to U.S. contact center professionals.