How Cloud-Based Contact Centers Deliver More ROI

Businesses across the world are getting leaner, keen to reduce their managerial and infrastructure responsibilities and boost productivity. This trend is being witnessed in the niche of contact centers too. Conventionally, contact center activities have delivered a decent ROI. This explains why they have become a worldwide phenomenon. However, this ROI can be raised further. This happens when typical contact center activities are performed using a cloud-based IT infrastructure.

Cloud-based Contact Centers and Scalability

Businesses are fast realizing the enormous potential of a cloud-based contact center. For starters, it offers the unique advantage of quick scalability. Sometimes, it is difficult to approximate the volume of business activity in the near future. Here, contact centers need an IT infrastructure that can be expanded as and when the need arises. Contact centers fill this requirement perfectly. There is no need to buy expensive software packages to upgrade cloud services.

Most cloud service providers offer easy-to-run bundled packages. Contact center managers merely need to request a bigger bandwidth of services. Increased scalability offers another advantage—businesses apprehensive about the ROI of a typical cloud-based contact center can opt for a condensed, smaller package at the start. When decision-makers feel convinced about the effectiveness of services, they can easily scale up their cloud-based services.

Cloud-based Contact Center ROI and Customer Service

Contact centers are among the most consumer-centric workplaces. The quality of work and even the ROI is calculated in terms of the level of customer service delivered. However, customer preferences and behaviors can change rather abruptly.  To ensure that their agents are at par with changing consumer mindsets, businesses need a cost-effective and dexterous resource. This requirement is holistically addressed by cloud-based IT infrastructures.

With cloud fueled functionalities, agents are better equipped to handle a bigger volume of customers without compromising the quality of customer service. Systematically managing daily customer traffic, quickly resolving customer concerns, and engaging customers with relevant information helps to reduce the rate of abandonment. This helps to sustain a bigger pool of current and probable customers, directly contributing to the ROI.

Cloud-based Contact Center ROI and Overall Costing

Cloud driven contact centers help to lower the overall IT costs. Usually, businesses face challenging infrastructure, training, and learning costs when adopting a new technology. Periodic updates and maintenance costs further add to the burden. However, contact centers driven by cloud services don’t face such costing predicaments. A business using cloud-based infrastructure benefits from minimal costs, including negligible IT recruitment requirements or maintenance costs. The entire range of functions related to keeping the cloud-based infrastructure running is the responsibility of the cloud services vendor.

Higher ROI & Better Outcomes with Cloud-Based Contact Center

With lesser running costs and better customer service, a cloud-based IT environment allows businesses to concentrate upon different aspects of organizational efficiency. This includes executing protocols for employee training, performance, and evaluation. Again, this helps employees to perform better which means more satisfied customers and a higher ROI.

With the assurance of minimal IT glitches, businesses can reduce their downtime and the threat of losing customers. As businesses realize the larger-than-expected ROI delivered by a cloud-based contact center, they can allocate more resources towards handling unpredictable customer traffic. This includes identifying different methods for customer engagement.

Leads Direct provides quality business leads at 40-80% off retail prices so you can grow your business quickly and increase your ROI. Contact Leads Direct today!

How to Provide Better Service to a Customer Who Calls

When customers contact your support center, they deserve nothing but the best treatment. If the customer is unhappy with the telephone support they receive, they are unlikely to buy your products or services again. Still, many organizations upset their customers with poor phone handling.

Both small and large organizations commit this mistake. The truth is that most companies don't want their customers to call them. They would like the customer to check out the FAQ section on their website. And if they can't find the answers there, they would like the customer to use the live chat facility on their website or communicate through social media.

 

Companies just don't want the customer to pick up the telephone. However, most customers who call the help desk have already tried one or more of the three methods mentioned above. They picked up the phone as their last resort. And if they still don't get the answer, you can imagine how frustrated they will be.

If you are guilty of annoying the customer with poor call handling methods, you need to review your practice. You should get the process checked by a team of qualified professionals. Here's what you need to do.

Imagine that you are the customer and try calling the support center

Listen carefully and try to analyze the experience. You have probably already done this. You need to do this again.

If your telephone system provides useless information remove them. For example, when a customer calls your phone system might ask them to listen carefully because your menus have changed. The truth is that customers don't care whether your menu has changed or not. All that the customer wants are solutions. The customer wants to be able to talk to the right person without any delay.

Try to minimize the steps involved in getting to the right person. Don't frustrate the customer with numerous instructions. Instead, simplify the process.

Find out which category of customers calls you more often

If you are running a physician's office, the people who are more likely to call are patients. In this case, you should tell them to press 1 to make an appointment. Don't ask them to press 5 or 6. The option that applies to the category of people who call more often should always be stated first.

Don’t refer them to your website

Don't ask customers who have called your support center to visit your website to find a solution to their problem. In all likelihood they have already tried that method.

Revise your customer representative scripts

Perhaps you need to make your team more engaging and respectful. Customers don't want to listen to programmed scripts. Instead, they want to listen to a real human being who can understand their problems and suggest appropriate solutions. Remember that for most customers their problem is unique and they expect you to handle it with the seriousness it deserves.

Hire the right people and provide them the right training

If your customer care team is efficient, there will be fewer issues. You also need to invest in the right hardware. Provide an empowered environment for your team members to work in. This will help you earn the loyalty of your employees and customers.

Remember that the way you handle customer calls affects their level of satisfaction. When they call you, make sure that they are greeted by a real person with real answers.

LeadXL provides accurate, actionable information and analysis, resulting in increased conversion of leads from ALL sources. Lead XL was built for lenders following a clear path to success: Analyze. Revive. Enhance. Contact Lead XL today!

Proactive Ways to Deal with Bad Customer Service

Bad customer service can happen when an organization lacks the resources or insight to handle unforeseen happenings. For example, if you are a courier company, bad weather can upset your consignment delivery plans. In this case, do not expect your consumers to understand your predicament. They will want the best service no matter what.

Customer care and its impact on brand reputation

Great customer service will build brand reputation and customer loyalty. It will also prevent negative reviews. Review sites like Trust Point and Review Center allow angry customers to give way to their frustration online. This can cause a great deal of damage to your reputation and credibility.

If people are happy with the service they received, they will probably not bother to leave a positive review. But if they are angry or upset, they will readily leave a negative review. This explains why your organization needs to provide excellent customer service all the time.

Bad customer service – a case study

An independent courier company recently learned this lesson the hard way. Due to bad weather, they couldn't deliver shipments on time, but the company didn't bother to inform customers beforehand. Consequently, thousands of angry customers took to the internet to voice their dissatisfaction with the service they received. People complained that the courier company's tracking system was not working properly and that they had not received their consignments even after waiting for weeks.

Many people felt that publishing a negative review online was the only way to invite attention to their problem because speaking to a customer care executive or receiving a reply via email was simply impossible - the company had no dedicated customer care team. In the end, the company's sales and marketing manager had to make personal calls to angry customers to ease the situation.

The courier company landed itself in a soup because it had not anticipated the problems. Worse still, it had never really understood the need to have a dedicated customer care division. The company did have a small team of agents, but they only catered to its clients who were mainly retailers. The end-user was nowhere in the picture. So when problems arose and people started complaining there was no one to listen to them.

An important lesson that all organizations should learn from this incident is that everyone who wears the company badge has a responsibility to provide customer service when the situation demands it.

Multi-channel contact

Ideally, your customer support should incorporate multi-channel contact. People should be able to contact you via multiple channels. If they can't reach your agent via telephone, they should be able to reach them via email.

Social media is also a great platform to provide customer service. In this particular example, the company made no attempt to contact its customers or the recipients of the shipments. Retailers promised their customers that their shipments would arrive on time, but when that didn't happen, people became furious. The company should have at least provided a phone number and an email address. This would have allowed customers to contact them. If they had proper workforce management, their existing customer care team would have engaged with people sooner. In addition, they could have recruited temporary staff to meet demand.

It is true that all organizations cannot have a full-fledged customer care division. Still, resolving issues quickly is imperative in this age of information explosion. Coming back to the courier company, an inability to take prompt action made them look like they just didn’t care about their customers. They are unlikely to regain their customers' confidence anytime soon.

Leads Direct provides quality business leads at 40-80% off retail prices so you can grow your business quickly and increase your ROI. Contact Leads Direct today!

Benefits of Hiring Part Time Employees for Your Contact Center During Peak Season

Many organizations employ people on a temporary basis. If you run an in house contact center, you can utilize your part time employees during peak seasons to handle the extra volume of calls. Call volumes can fluctuate. During peak seasons there will be extra work. In this case, the organization cannot continue working at its full capacity without hiring more part time employees.

Part time employees usually have a flexible work schedule. Many of them may have full time jobs elsewhere. In addition, since these employees have to complete the assignments in less time, they might work at a fast pace. This will benefit the organization.

When you hire part time employees, you need to take into account the specific nature of the jobs. Hiring the right people is crucial. During peak seasons when extra work is readily available, many people express a desire to undertake part time jobs after their regular jobs. Unfortunately, many of them are inexperienced and do not possess the required skills. However, this problem can be solved by hiring employees through a contract staffing company. These staffing companies have trained employees who are ready to work part-time. In addition, they can supply the exact number of people required to handle the extra work.

Since training agencies also screen potential employees, an organization can hire people possessing the right skill set. If these employees deliver satisfactory performance, they can be appointed as full-time staff. As they have already received training, the organization does not have to train them again. However, there is a problem with this arrangement. The staffing agency which trained these employees has greater control over them, so they might leave the job if they find a better job elsewhere.

Why outsourcing is better

A better solution is to outsource your call center activities during peak season. This eliminates the need to hire more employees. Also outsourcing your contact center activities is much more cost effective because it eliminates the need to provide training to part-time employees. It also eliminates the need to invest in expensive infrastructure.

Organizations can hire a call center to handle the overflow of calls during peak seasons. They can handle the rest of the calls themselves if they already have a full-fledged contact center. However, remember that a larger outsourced company has better experience in handling call volume. An in-house contact center may not be able to handle the extra volume of calls that it receives during peak seasons.

The agents in a call center are also better at managing calls than your in-house team, because they have received specific training. They are also well-experienced.  What's more, when you outsource your call center activities, you will get service 24 hours a day 7 hour week. You can rest assured that no matter what time of the day your customers contact your call center, they will be greeted by a real person.

The biggest problem that companies face while hiring temporary staff is that they don't know how many employees are required to handle the extra volume of calls. By outsourcing your call center activities, you can easily overcome this difficulty. Hiring temporary staff is another viable solution.

Need lead product solutions? iLeads delivers results that fits your needs! We are a lead solutions provider with lead generation covering Insurance, Lending, Real Estate, Direct Marketing, as well as Lead and Data Analytics. Contact iLeads today!

The Psychology of Customer Anger

Call centers must inevitably deal with angry customers from time to time. Let's face it, these situations can get ugly! Before you fly off the handle right back at the customer (which is a huge no-no), put yourself in the customer's place.

The key is to understand- really understand- the customer's point of view. After all, it's all about psychology! Check out this video on how to understand customer anger:

 

LeadXL provides accurate, actionable information and analysis, resulting in increased conversion of leads from ALL sources. Lead XL was built for lenders following a clear path to success: Analyze. Revive. Enhance. Contact Lead XL today!



How to Communicate with Customers Effectively

Call center agents can show off their phone skills using the helpful tips in this short and informative video:

Need lead product solutions? iLeads delivers results that fits your needs! We are a lead solutions provider with lead generation covering Insurance, Lending, Real Estate, Direct Marketing, as well as Lead and Data Analytics. Contact iLeads today!

How to Deliver Great Customer Service

Organizations that provide great after sales service will have no difficulty retaining customers. This explains why every organization wants to deliver exceptional customer service.

Now the question is: How can an organization provide high quality customer care and keep its customers happy? Here are some tips:

Know how to deal with unsatisfied customers

You may be selling a great product or service; still, problems can occur. And when things go against their expectations, customers can become unhappy. You cannot deliver a great customer experience if you do not know how to deal with an unhappy customer. Make sure that your agents are aware of the happenings.

If there are recurring problems and your company is already taking measures to solve these problems, your agents should be aware of that. This way they can assure callers that your employees are working to resolve the issues.

By fixing recurring issues, companies can prevent future customers from facing the same problems. This will also improve customer satisfaction.

Let your agents know how they are performing

Run a few customer satisfaction surveys and share the outputs with your agents. Let them know that their hard work is being recognized. And if they ever go off the track, you should let them know that as well. When your agents realize that their performance is being rated, they will be motivated to work harder.

Develop your agent's Emotional Quotient (EQ) skills

Your agents are dealing with real people and not bots, and hence developing their EQ skills is important. This will help them deal with frustrated and angry customers better. Your agents should be able to empathize with the customer and see things from their perspective.

Good EQ skills are essential to build better rapport with the customer. You should also train them to ask the right questions that will help them get a complete picture.

Encourage your call center agents to own up

If there are problems, your agents should admit it and take responsibility. This gives callers the impression that they are talking to a person responsible for solving their problems.

If the agent merely passes the problem over to another agent, the customer will get frustrated.

Quality is as important as AHT

While monitoring the performance of your agents, you should definitely consider average handling time. If the agent takes too long to resolve a problem, it is not a positive sign. However, quality is equally important. The agent is not supposed to rush through the calls. They should show enough patience to hear what the customer has to say. This is necessary to ensure that problems are being resolved properly.

Put the customer first

Put the focus on the customer. Your goal must be to ensure their satisfaction. Forget about internal processes and do whatever you can to increase customer satisfaction.

Empower your agents

Appreciate your agents' hard work. Reward them. However, this doesn't mean that you should give them time off their work or the phone. Instead, give them an opportunity to work on individual projects that need not necessarily involve calls. This empowers your agents and gives them a better understanding of your business.

Ask your agents to notify recurring problems

Ask your agents if they notice any patterns or trends in the incoming calls. If there is a problem that affects several customers, your agents are usually the first people to know about it. By keeping in constant touch with them you can detect problems early and address them.

Keep your customers informed

Try to increase the number of one-call resolutions. This is not possible all the time, but that should be your goal. Keep the customer well-informed and up-to-date. They should know what is happening in the background. They should know what steps you are taking to solve their problem.

Need lead product solutions? iLeads delivers results that fits your needs! We are a lead solutions provider with lead generation covering Insurance, Lending, Real Estate, Direct Marketing, as well as Lead and Data Analytics. Contact iLeads today!

 

The Key Elements of Knowledge Management in Call Centers

There is more to knowledge management than finding and acquiring the right tool. Of course, tools are helpful and play a significant role in making the call center successful; however, they should be complemented with a properly organized knowledge management program.

A good knowledge management program will ensure guaranteed results. So what are the key elements of a call center knowledge management (KM) program? Here are a few things you need to consider while designing your call center's knowledge management system:

The objective of knowledge management is to enhance agent productivity and customer service. This requires the proper utilization of software. It also involves the analysis of key metrics.

The key elements of your KM program are people, technology, and processes. All three are equally important. That said; the fundamental aspect of any knowledge management program is knowledge itself.

When it comes to call centers, the knowledge can be broadly classified as operational, strategic, human capital, and technical. The objective of call center knowledge management is to ensure that the right people can access the knowledge and manage the day to day operation of the center. Knowledge management also involves the protection of knowledge against unwanted access. In addition, knowledge has to be kept current, comprehensive, and accurate.  This requires investment in the right technology and tools.

Strategic knowledge

This includes the information about important clients, future plans, and organizational goals. Only the top management team should have access to this information. That said; parts of the knowledge can be shared with agents. This will give them a better idea about the goals of the organization.

Operational knowledge

This includes information about daily operations in a call center. For example, information about important client contracts and customer contacts come within the purview of operational knowledge.

This information is usually monitored by middle management executives. However, it should be accessible to top management and agents as well. Top management requires this information for making strategic decisions. And when agents have access to this information, they can ensure effective service delivery.

Human capital knowledge

This is the information that the call center maintains about its agents. It includes training records and individual productivity metrics. 

Technical knowledge

Call centers cannot operate without the right technology. This includes both hardware and software, routing equipment, skill based routing, telephone networks, and software for workforce management. There should be an analytics software tool. Operational manuals and help ticket resolution data also come within the purview of technical knowledge. It is important that the call center invests in technology that is current and up to date.

In most call centers, the common practice is to send some staff members to receive direct training from the vendor. These trainers will then train other members of the staff.

Since attrition rates are high in call centers, this might lead to knowledge dilution, when the trainers who received training from the vendor leave the company. This also reduces productivity. The call center might have invested in expensive software, but due to the lack of technical knowhow, many features of this software will remain unused. As a result, many tasks that can be automated will end up being performed manually. If budget permits, all agents should be given the opportunity to learn directly from the vendor. In this case, even if some employees leave the organization, there will still be enough people possessing the right knowledge.

How to Deal With Angry Callers

A call center has to deal with all kinds of callers. While some callers are polite, some others are rude. Some may be upset; others are simply bad-tempered. Dealing with a sulky caller requires tact.

Since all call centers will have to deal with ill-tempered callers from time to time, teaching your operators how to deal with these callers is imperative if you want to increase your quality scores.

Grumpy calls don't necessarily mean that the call center or the operator is bad at solving customer problems. In fact, many of these calls are quickly resolved. Still, angry callers are a big headache for all call centers. Before we learn how to deal with this issue, we should take a look at standard metrics used by call centers all over the world.

Quality scores

The quality score is a measure of the overall caller experience. Calls are usually recorded for quality control. While measuring the quality of calls, the quality control team will assess factors such as personality (of the caller's as well as the operator's), openness, level of service, and adherence to polite language.

Each call is scored on a scale of 1 - 10. By analyzing these scores, a company can find out what sort of service the customer received. This doesn't mean that grumpy calls will lower the credit score. In fact, these calls may have a high score depending on the way the agent responds.

Grumpy calls with high scores indicate that they were properly managed by the agent and that they do not require the intervention of a supervisor. As far as possible, agents should try to subvert the need for their supervisor's involvement.

First call resolution

One of the most important metrics used to measure quality score is first call resolution. If there is a first call resolution, the caller does not have to contact the call center again for the same problem. This improves customer satisfaction and quality scores.

Supervisors can easily measure the number of first call resolutions. If there is more than one call from the same phone number, it implies that the problem was not solved immediately. And when the caller has to call again, the operator will have to spend more time dealing with the same caller. As a result, the operator will get less time to manage other callers. That's bad for the call center. Operators who receive grumpy calls should try to solve the issue immediately. There should be no call back or transferring. Again the emphasis should be on time management.

Calls per hour

The efficiency of a call center is sometimes measured in terms of the number of calls it handles per hour. If the agent/operator handles a large number of calls in an hour, it is safe to assume that s/he is resolving issues in an effective and timely manner. And if the operator handles more calls, it means more money for the call center.

Call centers can increase calls per hour by updating software and hardware. This will expedite call transfers.

Stay calm

The agents should be trained not to take anything personally, even when dealing with an angry caller who hurls abuses or insults. Don't drag the conversation. Listen patiently and do whatever you can to resolve the issue at the earliest. Remember that if the agent is angry, the customer will be angrier.

The agent's sole concern should be resolving the caller's problem. And when the agent shows a genuine concern for the caller and tries to address their problems earnestly, the sulky caller may begin to sound appreciative. Let the caller give vent to their frustrations, but the agent should stay calm.

Advantages of Using Quality Monitoring Tools

Quality monitoring is crucial because it allows call centers to take measures necessary to improve customer satisfaction.

What is meant by quality monitoring?

To put it simply, quality monitoring involves listening to an agent's phone calls with the objective of determining if those calls meet the required quality standards.

Quality can be measured in two ways. Supervisors can measure the performance of agents on their own using some predetermined quality attributes. Supervisors can also contact the customers for their feedback either through e-mail or an IVR system.

Quality monitoring tools simplify this analysis by recording and storing agent conversations and then scoring them appropriately. New quality monitoring tools also monitor customer voice through feedback techniques and track workflow.

How it works

Conventional quality monitoring includes reviewing some random calls and then analyzing them for general quality. This way most companies can only monitor less than one percent of calls.

However, modern quality monitoring solutions offer advanced features such as speech analytics, call recording, and performance management. They provide a simple user interface that allows supervisors to monitor all aspects of the calls. More advanced quality monitoring tools also consider aspects such as repeat calls, first call resolution, and failed/successful cross sell /up-sell attempts.

Advantages of using quality monitoring tools

The objective of quality monitoring should be achieving a link between business results and quality measures. Effective quality monitoring programs are known to result in increased sales. Using quality monitoring, supervisors can give feedback to agents and that will improve the rate of first call resolutions.

Call centers that use an advanced quality monitoring software tool also see a 50 percent improvement in the efficiency of team leaders because these tools eliminate the need to manually pick random calls from tape. This frees up the time of supervisors.

The objective of quality monitoring is achieving performance improvement. When organizations use quality monitoring programs, they can reap many benefits. As call quality increases, sales conversion rates too will increase. This leads to improved client retention. Agents also enjoy working in more efficiently managed environments and hence failure rates will drop.

As you can see, quality monitoring tools benefit the call center in many ways. Since call quality plays a significant role in determining customer satisfaction levels, this is an important metric that call centers cannot ignore. When buying quality monitoring tools, you ought to look for the following features.

Automatic call delivery

If the system supports automatic call delivery, supervisors will have more time to work on improving the performance of agents.

Contact management

Proper contact management will facilitate easy retrieval of stored interactions between agents and callers.

Contact recording

This allows organizations to record email, chat, and voice interactions with customers.

Data recording

This data allows the supervisor to know which desktop applications the agents use during interactions with customers.

Actionable learning

By closely analyzing quality monitoring scores, this tool can identify agents who need training in specific skills.

Performance evaluation

This includes customized reports, forms, and graphs that allow supervisors to measure the performance of an agent.

Comprehensive reporting

Comprehensive reporting allows contact center supervisors and managers to make informed decisions.

Speech analytics

Speech analytics examines customer interactions with the objective of identifying calls that meet specific business criteria.