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.

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Top Reasons To Embrace Cloud Technology

Modern customer contact centers employ technologies that allow them to talk to a large number of customers from one center. Customer contact centers need to be innovative. In fact, call centers have been adopting innovative technologies for some time. Most centers already support call recording, automatic dialers, and sophisticated routing.

In most cases, the company owns both the software and the hardware and hence they have complete control over the technology they use. While several companies still prefer to own the technology, this approach has several drawbacks. First, purchasing equipment is costly. Second, proper maintenance will be difficult without expert guidance.

Many industry analysts feel that the need to own the technology is actually holding the industry back. But this should change when the cloud technology becomes more popular. Cloud services eliminate the need to own expensive hardware. Moreover, it allows customer centers to improve the quality of their services.

A recent report published by Gartner confirms that when call centers use cloud-based technology, their total operating cost reduces. Furthermore, most cloud solutions permit the integration of several channels.

Customers themselves have already embraced cloud technology. Apple customers enjoy the benefits of the cloud-based service iCloud. It allows them to store their data in the cloud and access it from any device they like. The popularity of cloud services will only increase in the coming years and then firms that do not possess the same capability will look outdated.

If cloud technologies are better why should businesses obsess with the idea of owning technology? This can be attributed to the natural conservatism present in the IT field. That also explains why IT departments are unwilling to adopt wholesale changes without assurance of the benefits.

There are some other reasons as well. IT professionals are responsible for ensuring that the technology will provide the desired results and that it will be constantly available. Consequently, they seek control over the technology they use.

Fortunately, cloud technology advanced so much during the last few years that service availability is no longer a cause for concern. In fact, several providers of cloud services now guarantee 99.99% service availability.

Moving your customer contact centers to the cloud has several benefit:

·         Cloud technology allows the consolidation of contact centers across different sites. This improves overall efficiency and reduces operating costs.

·         Cloud technology also provides the ability to utilize data from various sources. This helps frontline agents to serve their customers more efficiently.

·         Greater flexibility is another advantage. Cloud services allow you to scale your operations up or down. At any given time, you only pay for the services you use. When your requirements increase, you can upgrade to a higher plan. This flexibility helps save money.

·         You get access to expensive software and hardware without having to invest in them. Since the equipment is owned and operated by the service provider you do not have to worry about maintenance either.

 

·         When you use cloud services, you can upgrade to newer technologies as they arrive.

Hopefully, when a heavyweight analyst like Gartner confirms these benefits, and assures companies about the availability of impressive services, we will see many more organizations adopting cloud technology in the coming years.