If you think your call center has little to do with increasing your business' bottom line, think again. When your customers interact with your call center agents, it can either reinforce your reputation as a caring, customer-oriented company or damage your brand's reputation, perhaps permanently!
Of course, the quality of a call comes down to many factors, including the performance of the CSR. So, one way to increase the likelihood of regularly providing a positive experience for your customers is to invest in quality call center technology that will properly support your CSRs when they are helping customers. So, how exactly can call center technology help your business succeed?
More Efficient Customer Service
Some customers pick up the phone and call your agents directly, however, many communicate with you via email, text, or chat. Modern call center technology can blend all your channels into a universal queue and efficiently route them to available CSRs.
With this technology, you can use a single team of representatives to field all call types or you can create separate queues for different channels. This decision may well depend on the volume of each channel and where you have critical mass to dedicate a team. Today’s contact center phone systems allow you to manage all inquiries in a timely manner, because calls can be prioritized by channel type. For example, voice calls can be answered in real-time, whereas emails can be handled within an hour or two. Live chat is real time, but each CSR handles several chats simultaneously.
The multi-channel system feeds the appropriate next contact to the CSR based on desired metrics for each channel. This allows customers to receive a fast response and helps CSRs use their time most efficiently.
Better Quality Assurance
Quality assurance is vital to any call center. One way to measure quality assurance is by manually monitoring an agent's call — listening for accuracy, efficiency, friendliness, and helpfulness. Another, far more efficient way to measure quality assurance is through voice analytics.
Voice analytics can run every recorded call through an automated system that creates a complete transcript of the call and automatically grades the call based on predetermined factors. It gives you the ability to check thousands of calls, maybe even 100% of your calls, each day. This allows you to provide feedback in a timely fashion and helps your agents improve more quickly, ensuring an ever improving experience for your customers.
Making the Old Work Like New
Customers expect a seamless experience no matter what channel they use, and they expect CSRs to have answers. That means CSRs need quick access to customer history and product or service information.
Older, legacy CRM systems can be slower and many companies have separate systems for each channel. Often, the interface is inefficient, requiring agents to jump from system to system to perform convoluted and/or repeat data entry to find and enter necessary information. Process automation software can be incorporated above these legacy platforms.
With no help from the IT Department, process automation software can be installed on the CSR desktop. It can then be set up to learn how the legacy systems work, what inputs are required, and then it will ask the CSR for the input and then perform all the functions automatically, greatly speeding up and simplifying the process. Less errors from the CSR, quicker responses for the customer, and quicker turnover of your call queue means big wins all around!
Happier Customers Drive Revenue
There are many ways to measure customer satisfaction, and they don’t need to be expensive. Knowing how your team is performing and where they can improve enables you to continuously upgrade service quality. We recommend using both customer satisfaction surveys (post-call IVR or post-call email) and voice analytics that allow you to monitor calls in real time.
Happier Employees
Finding and retaining good employees is a huge challenge for call centers. The work can be stressful, and outdated technology can make things more frustrating. Arming your CSRs with better, more high-tech tools that simplify and streamline their work creates a positive work environment that supports retention.
Ultimately, a good buying experience is almost as valuable to customers as the quality of service and/or product. So, think of call center technology as an investment in the success of your business. It integrates your operation and puts information right at the fingertips of your CSRs, allowing them to be more productive and to deliver a faster, more satisfying experience to customers.
Not only will your customers appreciate the efficiency, but your CSRs will be happier and more productive as well.
