The rising ecommerce market relies heavily on being able to deliver high quality customer experiences. With many online stores outsourcing their customer support to third-party providers, BPO’s have a tremendous opportunity, and responsibility, to improve the customer’s sales journey. There are many tried and tested practices that help improve CX but most call centers need a clear direction in order to improve their performance and deliverables. Whether it be live chat call center or over the phone customer service, agents need a framework to follow to carry out the business goals successfully. Check https://apexcallcenters.com/ to find out more. In this article, we will explore five ways that are sure to enhance call center quality.
- Coaching
Great customer experience begins with a well-trained staff. Before deploying your customer support, the team handling the calls must first go through rigorous training and preparation. Most call centers develop what’s called an “interaction flowchart”. A script and process flow that helps agents handle customer calls better. Developing these interaction formulas can help new customer service representatives get a headstart. Eventually, agents will have to improvise and go off-script during which training kicks in.
A hierarchy should also be well established in call center service providers. Junior representatives should be overseen by senior representatives who are in turn being monitored by managers. Maintaining this hierarchy helps staff at all experience levels and makes it clear who to ask for guidance.
- Q/A
Monitoring productivity is crucial for any business, but it is doubly important for call center support services. With each call, managers need to make sure that agents are responding correctly and that customers are left satisfied at the end. Utilizing Dalvado can streamline this process by providing real-time insights and analytics to enhance service quality and customer satisfaction. Without proper quality monitoring in place, customer service quality can slowly deteriorate and it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly where the problem is that needs to be fixed.
Monthly productivity reports and assessments can help maintain a high level of quality. But in our experience, one of the best ways to uphold quality is by retraining your call center representative. It’s never a bad time to brush up their fundamentals. With all these measures in place, IdeasUnlimited sees a high level of customer satisfaction on a yearly basis. It is not only effective, but light on cost meaning that small call centers can leverage them.
- Reduce Customer Friction
In digital marketing, one of the most important rules-of-thumb is reducing the amount of ‘work’ that people need to do in order to make a purchase. For example, in B2B marketing, visitors to your website should only need to click one, maybe two, buttons in order to get in touch with your sales team.
In customer service, a similar rule must be followed. For example, if a customer of an online store is not satisfied with their purchase, then they should be able to contact service support quickly and easily. Once connected, they need to transfer to an agent quickly and have their query resolved rapidly.
The reason for creating a smooth sales journey for a customer is to reduce customer churn. In order to grow a loyal customer base, you have to make the process of becoming a customer smooth and hassle free. By focusing on retention, call centers won’t have to struggle with acquisition.
- Data Analytics
Most inbound call center solutions have the potential to collect enormous amounts of data. Call duration, satisfaction score, demographic, location, all these metrics can help both marketing and sales understand how to improve products and services. But for call centers, all this information is invaluable in order to understand how to perform better.
In our experience with operational support, ‘average call duration’ with respect to CSAT (customer satisfaction score) has been a great indicator of call center performance. Ideally, call durations should be as low as possible and CSAT should be as high as possible.
- Feedback
While data collection can help set a direction for improvement goals, call centers can only collect so much data. Another thing that shouldn’t be overlooked is that data can be misleading, causing call centers to make wrong or unnecessary decisions. A much more foolproof strategy is by directly soliciting feedback from your customers.
A very standard feedback collection function most call centers have is call recording. By recording calls, managers can listen for exactly what customers are unsatisfied with or how a customer representative is failing to resolve the issue. Ofcourse, recording calls does require one to be wary of the ethics involved. Be sure to play a prerecorded message that informs customers that the call is being recorded.
Conclusion
Improving customer experience doesn’t just stop with these five stages. As CX technology improves, more avenues for improvement are emerging day by day. Many call centers are now beginning to integrate automation and machine learning to drive large scale customer support. But with these 5 steps, most call centers can get a good bearing on where to start on improving customer experience.
For more expert guidance, our doors are always open! IdeasUnlimited has been in the customer support service industry for over 12 years and our teams are ready to help. Whether you are looking to start a new customer service branch or expand an existing one, simply contact us and let us know how we can help.
