How to Drive Contact Center Performance

For many companies, great customer service can be a costly and exhausting endeavor. However, if you improve the way your customers interact with your contact center, you can reduce a lot of issues. A primary objective of a contact center should be to build the type of employee engagement that will result in enhanced customer loyalty and satisfaction, as well as improve the impact on the bottom-line of their business.

Optimize agent performance

The best way to enhance customer satisfaction and contact center performance is by optimizing agent performance. Companies should find ways to reduce average handle time and call volumes while increasing first call resolution. Companies must ensure that their agents fully understand the use of various channel options such as chat, calls and email, and that all these channel options are properly optimized for customer interactions.

Encourage creativity in the agent

Many professionals in the contact center are attracted to the nature of their occupation, which is customer interaction. However, companies restrain them from engaging with customers emotionally, and instead force them to follow strict scripts. By allowing contact center agents some creative liberty companies can improve their performance as this will let them create emotional attachment to the task, which will ensure that each interaction with customer will become a personal interaction, rather than a generic corporate experience.
Prepare business cases for change

Companies must prepare business cases that include illustrations of various problems with compelling facts. Also, these cases should clearly state the parameters of ideal performance and how to achieve them. Measures and metrics that align operations to a department, a team, or an executive must be clearly provided as it’s vital to achieving key performance objectives.

Increase awareness among agents

It is vital that contact center agents must always be motivated as it will allow them to accept new day-to-day work challenges. A monotonous work environment can be highly regressive for a contact center agent. Companies should encourage agents to make contributions to their work processes, and continually teach them new skills and abilities. This way, agents will never feel that their skill sets are diminishing, and this will not only reduce employee attrition rate, but will also enhance their performance.

In many organizations, the drive for efficiency is often seen to be at the expense of the customer. However, a knowledgeable employee  who has been with the company for some time and has the ability to deal with multiple queries on one call will offer the customer a one-stop shop approach to their query. Organizations who spend the time and energy to include the above mentioned principles of contact center management find that their employees are better capable at delivering consistent positive, quality, branded customer experiences that build better customer relationships.

How Computer Telephony Can Benefit Your Call Center

The main focus of a company is delivering service and making sales. The key is to make it easy for customers to get in touch with a business’ services. Computer telephony—sometimes referred to as computer/telephone integration or CTI—is a technology that was created to enable better contact between companies and customers.

Computer telephony is not one piece of equipment; rather, it involves interlocking technologies and combining two streams of information through open and standards-based systems: data and voice. It’s used in all areas of business today, but it really shines in the call center. Computer telephony has the potential to improve the way your company interacts with customers.

Here are some other benefits that computer telephony can offer your contact center:

Make more sales. You can build customer loyalty when you have more information about the caller. You can appeal to them on their terms with information in the corporate database.

Improve customer service. With more information in the hands of the customer, they can sometimes even serve themselves, costing you less for labor.

Reduce your telecom usage costs. You can also have shorter call times and cut hold time as well.

You’ll have happier customers. More of the customers’ problems will be solved the first time around.

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 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!

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!

 

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.

 

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 Customer Contact Centers Are Going to Change Over the Next Few Years

Thanks to the credit crunch, companies have realized the need to adopt a customer centric strategy. However, contact centers are unlikely to undergo major changes over the next few years.

What are the possible changes?

Now that new and innovative products are making their foray into the market, we should definitely see an improvement in customer care. Several organizations have already turned to cloud-based systems to improve the performance of their contact centers. There are also many organizations that have not yet woken up to the challenge.

The problems facing the contact centers

The most important factor that is still preventing many companies from upgrading their contact centers is the lack of budgets. Another reason is that organizations have not yet felt the need to change. Contact centers have been around for decades and have established a certain way of doing business. They just don't feel the need to embrace change anytime soon.

It is true that all organizations now want to be customer centric, but very few have got the right technology and people in place to deal with an empowered customer. Budget constraints are another major problem. Most organizations allocate nearly 90% of their operating budget to run existing systems. They do not have enough money to invest in newer systems.

Furthermore, running a contact center is hard work. Agents can go sick and customer problems can go unresolved. As a result, call center managers do not have enough time to explore the market to see if new technologies or products are available. All of these factors prevent them from adopting change.

The slowly changing face of call centers

The biggest change so far is the adoption of VoIP technologies. Now nearly 50% contact centers use VoIP. However, this change is largely fuelled by a desire to reduce operating costs. What's more, those contact centers that use VoIP do not use all the available features.

Another area that witnessed growth is the deployment of automated tools like IVR. Unfortunately, these tools have not yet been able to significantly improve the customer service.

Contact centers of tomorrow

Things are unlikely to be all that different 3 or 5 years from now. Over the next few years, the most likely changes will be the investments in VoIP technologies. There will also be some workforce optimization.

The two things that give hope to people expecting a sea change in customer care are the rise of cloud solutions and the increasing empowerment of the customer. Most companies now realize the need to improve their customer service. This will definitely encourage companies to invest in technologies that support multiple channels.

Gone are the days when letters and telephone were the only tools customers had at their disposal. Now they can contact the support center via multiple channels including text messaging, chat, and video. Applications that can personalize web-based interactions will also be popular in the future. There will also be an increase in the number of companies using smart desktop and web-based systems.

As we have already seen, the biggest change will be the adoption of cloud-based VoIP solutions. When companies use cloud systems, they do not have to invest in expensive hardware and software. Using a cloud-based solution is as simple as using a traditional web browser. As a result, agents and customers can use them easily.

Social media

Customers are increasingly taking to the internet to voice their complaints. Tools that allow companies to integrate social activity to their customer handling strategies are also likely to be popular.

In short, customer contact centers are unlikely to change much during the next five years or so. However, customers are more likely to receive better service.

How to Deal with an Angry Customer

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

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 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.