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August 31, 2019

5 proven ways to improve the call center experience

Call centers have become a routine thing these days. Television not working? Call the customer care number. Your order is delayed? Call the customer service people. These are just a couple of examples of our frequent encounters with call centers.

Having said that, it does not mean everyone has a good experience while interacting with the customer service representatives.

The one thing you must know to ace the call center experience is the ease of use.

What do we mean by lease of use”?

The purpose of any call center is either provide support or do sales. In both cases, it is important that the call center software that the business is using makes it easy - a) for customers to reach them, and b) for the agents to support the customers.

Ways to improve the call center experience

Simple IVR

In simple terms, an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is used for inbound calls. A pre-recorded menu is played for the caller to choose the relevant option. Now, the idea is to keep the options limited to reduce confusion and faster resolution of the customer’s problem.

Additionally, having multi-level IVR is good as it allows the caller to choose an option specific to their query. Having said that, care must be taken that too many levels are not there as that wastes the caller’s time and tests their patience.

Intelligent routing

Do not make the caller wait for answers. The longer the caller waits, poorer the experience and less chance that they will return to your brand. Moreover, if the caller is connected to the right agent at the first time itself, it has two-fold advantage - the customer is happy and the agent is productive.

Let us understand this with an example. Jack calls MoneyLending Bank with credit card lost complaint. He goes through the IVR and is connected to an agent. Once Jack explains his problem, the agent puts his call on hold as it needs to be routed to a different department.
This spoils the experience of the customer and wastes the agent’s time. Thus, having good routing algorithm in place will direct the call to the right department in the first attempt itself and make things smooth.

Single screen for all activities

Call center agents have a lot on their plate on a daily basis. They do not need more chaos due to incomplete customer information which leads to angry interactions or having to toggle between multiple tabs and windows.

Having a unified desktop which provides the agents with a holistic view of the customer puts them in a much better position to answer customer queries faster and with satisfaction. Moreover, with a single screen interface, the agents can perform all their activities there itself, without having to switch multiple tabs. This further improves the response time and allows the agents to multitask as well.

Creating a knowledge hub

If the agents have all the information ready to go, it makes their life and job a lot easier. A knowledge base is a repository of all important documents, articles and FAQs will allow the agents to quickly search for the required information and answer the customer queries.

For instance, a customer calls to inquire about insurance plans - what’s included, any add-ons, etc. For an agent, who handles hundreds of calls in a day, it becomes difficult to remember the details of all the plans. With a knowledge base system, the agents can simply search the query using certain keywords and get relevant content.

Encouraging collaboration

Another way of making things easy for faster resolution of a customer issue is to encourage other agents and even the supervisor to help each other to work as a team.

Understanding this with an example, if a caller asks a question which is out of the agent’s purview, the agent can have a conference call with the customer and her/his supervisor. Doing this will ensure that the customer’s problem is addressed and resolved in that call itself rather than making them wait or delaying the problem.

Concluding thoughts

Call centers are one of the easiest and most common ways through which the customers reach out to companies. By implementing the above options, the brands can look to significantly improve call center experience for both, the agents and the customers.

A call center software provider which understands the business requirements and customizes the solution accordingly is what one should look for.

Some of the must-have features to excel at delivering exceptional customer support is integrating the right call center functionality as discussed here.

With the right integration, any organization can make use of any existing system in addition to deploying any new CRM or other third-party systems. After all, it all comes down to simplifying things for better call center operations and the customer service experience.

— Shambhavi Sinha is a technical blogger & product marketer and has been writing for 3 years. She is into technology and writes tech-based stuff. Her aim is to provide knowledge to users by sharing tips and tricks about new technologies, DIY, and knowledge about call center software.

• Posted 8.31.19 at 04:40 am by Roy Osing
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