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.

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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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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.

Why Small Businesses Should Use a Call Center

Being a small business owner is tough. You have to play multiple roles and still you may not get the kind of results you hoped for.

You may be selling the best product in the world, but if you are a small business owner, you do not stand a chance against your big counterparts. So how can small businesses capture their share of the market? If you run a small business, making the best use of available resources is the key to retain your competitive advantage.

Small businesses have limited resources and hence they need to leverage what they have. One way of doing this is to outsource business activities that do not require special expertise. You can, for example, outsource your customer support.

You can hire a call center to communicate with your customers. Call centers now do much more than forwarding calls. By utilizing these services, you can break into the big league.

Benefits of outsourcing

Call centers provide round the clock customer support. That means there will be someone to interact with your customers 24 hours a day 7 days a week. This ensures that your customers will be greeted by a live agent whenever they contact your customer support. This improves customer confidence in your brand.

In addition, when you outsource your customer support activities to a call center, you get to devote your time to more pressing issues. Small businesses are unlikely to employ a large number of people; therefore, it is imperative that they use their employees' skills in areas where they are required. Though important, customer service is not your core business activity.

Outsourcing leads to higher satisfaction levels and more sales

Consider this situation: Your call center agent easily solved a problem your customer had. Now that the customer is happy, you could perhaps use this opportunity to ask them if they would like to use one of the new products you have launched? Most call centers now provide this service.

Besides interacting with your customers, call center agents can complement your sales team and help you attract more customers. Better still, call centers guarantee 24/7 live customer support. This is far better than having an automated messaging tool because the personal touch will increase your sales and profits.

Professional customer service

Small businesses can also use call centers to manage their logistics. When you hire their service, you will have a team of highly trained and courteous representatives working hard to improve your company's public image and reputation. You just need to teach them how to use your company's ordering software and process sales.

Most importantly, these professionals are trained to respond politely to customers under all circumstances. When you outsource your customer care activities, you do not have to worry about having to turn down a customer request at 2 in the morning. No matter what time the customer calls, a 24/7 call center will ensure that the call is attended.

To conclude, by outsourcing your customer care activities, you are giving your startup a chance to compete with the big players. Customer service has suddenly become big business. Companies can no longer ignore the need to provide great customer support all through the day because an unhappy customer will never return to them.

 

How to Deal with an Angry Customer

Check out this helpful video on effectively dealing with irate customers during calls for a positive outcome:

Call Centers Must Comply with Changed TCPA Regulations

If your business uses a call center to market and generate leads, the revised TCPA regulations must be complied with. According to an article on Chief Marketer, the regulations set forth from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act “will require unambiguous written consent before a telemarketing call or text message,” and an established business relationship “no longer relieves advertisers of prior written consent.”

The changes in regulations are connected to the rise in mobile phone usage in the form of text alerts. Apparently, some marketers created problems when they “processed a large number of mobile leads and automatically put them on recurring text alerts."

Experts recommend that marketers employ tracking to avoid making mistakes. The new TCPA rules may make marketers nervous, but experts say that they can ultimately improve the way businesses generate leads.

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.

How Will the Recent TCPA Rules Impact the Predictive Dialer?

The call center arena welcomed the predictive dialer’s arrival. It proved to a game changer of sorts in the industry. A large number of manual activities of the agent base were eliminated. An agent was assured of getting the right contact connection when he ended a call and was ready to take up another one.

However, there’s a challenge associated with this technology. It is subject to the scrutiny of governing bodies responsible for protecting the rights of consumers. Because of this, call centers are required to pay careful attention to which technologies they use. They need to first ascertain whether they are allowed to deploy a specific technology. Then they need to find out the appropriate methods in which that technology can be used.

To help with this process, LeadiD recently introduced a new Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) software application. The trustworthy media transactions arbiter provides a sound and effective way for organizations to keep themselves on the right side of the law. They can now get and display proof of proper TCPA disclosures being in place when they conduct their activities. The emphasis here is on demonstrating that they had the consumer’s express consent regarding receiving their call.

This TCPA app offers an access route to consent records that can prove legal compliance. It also allows lead buyers to confirm that they had obtained consent before dialing the lead.

The contact center environment has found this app considerably beneficial. No disruption is required in predictive dialer activities and the advantages of speed-to-contact are preserved. Because of this, the contact center can be sure that only people who have given their consent will be included in the list of numbers that will receive calls.

To put it briefly, the TCPA app presented by LeadiD offers conclusive confirmation of proper declarations. It makes sure that all dialer operations continue smoothly and without interruption. This is probably the first option that’s built with scalability in mind. It is likely to benefit industries related to short term loans, education, insurance, mortgage and others which are affected by changes in the TCPA rules.

The changes in rules are making it very important for lead buyers to ascertain definitively whether there were acceptable disclosers present on lead forms. In addition, such organizations need to be able to precisely document consumer consent details. They have to state whether or not they had the consumer’s express consent for receiving contact from the lead buyer. For complete legal compliance, companies will need to allow access to all their authoritative consent records. The TCPA app LeadiD helps with this process.

In spite of the new laws, contact centers continue to depend on the predictive dialer for assisting with crucial calling campaigns. With the predictive dialer from SpitFire Enterprise, both inbound activities as well as outbound ones are possible. This offers a completely integrated solution with unlimited lines that’s designed to be cost-effective and user-friendly.

This comprehensive software package offers all tools required for launching an integrated campaign. At the same time, it manages to adhere to all rules and regulations stipulated for the industry.

How to Offer Superior Call Center Service

It always makes smart business sense to give high quality customer service, especially in tough times. We’ve listed some proven principles that you can use for improving your customer service quality.

Understand that customer expectations change

Your customers’ expectations are likely to rise and change over a period of time. What worked last year might not be good enough at present. Use interviews, focus groups, and customer surveys to figure out customer needs accurately. Try to understand their thoughts regarding what they feel they’re not getting from your business.

Use superior customer service quality to get an edge

Even though your products are great and your delivery systems efficient, it’s quite likely that your competitors’ offerings are great too. So how can you get an edge? Make a long lasting difference through personalized and responsive customer service quality. Customers should feel that you’re ready to go an extra mile for them and they’ll appreciate you for it - and not forget about it soon.

Improve customer service quality in a sustained manner

Try to go beyond basic service levels and pleasantly surprise customers with the interactions they wish for but don’t really expect. Generally determine your industry’s customer service quality and figure out how you can offer something better. Offer more options and flexibility than is normal. Try to be above average in terms of delivery speeds and product warranties.

Your customers will appreciate your high standards. Eventually, competitors will also match the steps. So keep up the pace and try to step up service quality in a sustained way.

Strike the right balance

Try to manage customer expectations in the best possible way. You need to strike a balance between their expectations and what you can deliver.

A great way to do so is by creating a good reputation. Make clear promises and deliver accordingly. Once you have your customers’ trust, even when you cannot service requests right away, they will be willing to be patient most of the time.

Make amends effectively

Things may go wrong sometimes. In such cases, try to quickly set things right and demonstrate high quality customer service. Display sincere concern for any inconvenience or frustration. Go a step ahead with something positive like a gift or a discount coupon for future use.

Treat complaining customers as business building aids

It’s a fact that customers having complaints can offer new insights to your business. They point out the faulty areas of your system and weak, problematic procedures. Through them, you know which of your products and services are below par.

They prove to be vital aids to building a strong business by highlighting areas in which your competitors score better or your staff is lacking. You can regard complainers as free consultants who help you raise your customer service quality!

Take responsibility

Blaming other members and departments for shortfalls does not help. No point blaming computers, the budget, or the system either. In fact, this makes things worse. The customer is not interested in your internal problems; he wants a solution to HIS problems. Just focus on ending your customer’s pain as soon as possible and make the required changes.

Common Myths Related to Small Contact Centers

In the world of contact centers, bigger centers are in a position to offer visible benefits like a potential for voluminous sales and better profit margins. Most vendors look towards these for solutions and the small to medium enterprise (SME) contact centers get afterthought and hand-me-down products.
We thought it might prove useful to discuss some misconceptions existing in the market in the context of small contact centers.

Small contact centers are small just because of their size.

This is not true. Small contact centers face a unique set of business challenges. Their rewards are measured differently too. They need to be managed with much fewer resources than their larger counterparts. Their functional operations are also quite different.

Having a smaller workforce facilitates more training activities.

Large contact center solutions often require comprehensive training. It is imparted to all agents in a systematic manner. In contrast, smaller contact centers require most of their agents to play multiple roles. This leaves them with very little time to get formal training.

The SME contact center workforce needs solutions that are intuitive, easy to administer, and quick to implement. Big contact centers have specialized personnel while SME contact centers have many generalists.

It’s easier to manage problems in small contact centers.

The quality of customer service expected of smaller contact centers is much the same as that of larger ones. No direct correlation is possible between the number of agents and the volume of problems.

In fact, the many hats that an agent is required to don makes handling problematic issues even more challenging.

You can remove features from large technology solutions and sell them as small contact center solutions.

Though this tactic is commonly adopted, the end result hasn’t gone down too well with members of the SME contact center industry. The products appear more as token efforts with many gaps instead of being specialized ones.

Small contact centers cannot offer customer service on par with large contact centers

Enterprise size is irrelevant. Contact center organizations of the smallest size can largely impact businesses of all sizes. What’s critically important is maintenance of customer goodwill.

Challenges faced by SME Contact Centers

According to the manager of an SME contact center which services relatively large companies, the biggest issues they face revolve around technology solutions. She said that almost all the solutions available at present are very big, very cumbersome and very high-priced. It’s not possible to scale them as required so options become really limited. They do need similar resources, but smaller dimensions are required.

She said they also faced training issues related to new technologies and products. There weren’t enough agents to handle calls and putting them through intensive training was not possible. The team needed to depend largely on its own creative thinking abilities.

In conclusion, you can say that there’s definitely a market for specifically designed solutions for SME contact centers. It’s time the market stepped up to fulfill this need.