Companies build contact centers to take care of their customers- to retain the customers they have and acquire new customers to grow their company. Undoubtedly, customer service is the king in a contact center which helps a company achieve the desired bottom line and profit margin. When customers calls are left on hold, kept in a call queue for long, transferred to multiple agents and propelled to provide the basic information again and again, your organization is not only wastes their valuable time but also risks driving apart key customers.
However by making your contact center customer-friendly, many of these common frustrations can be easily avoided and companies can have more satisfied customers. And more satisfied customers means more business. In order to build a customer-friendly contact center, you need the right planning and execution. With access to flexible and innovative contact center solutions, companies can easily offer a quality customer support at a low cost. Implementing the same will give the customers the best experience and also increase the productivity of your contact center to a great extent.
Adopt these 7 simple strategies, irrespective of the size, revenue level or industry of your organization, to build a customer-friendly contact center:
Set up with your Customers in Mind
Deliver a top-notch service by building a customer engagement technology with your customers in mind. Design a solution which effectively addresses the requirements of your customers by mapping out their customer journey. Understanding your customers properly and then putting in place your customer experience strategy will definitely work out in your favour, thereby increasing your bottom line. This will help you build a loyal customer base and enhance positive word of mouth. As your contact center plays a critical role in building a positive brand image, it is important that it not just creates a pleasing experience for your customers but exceed their expectations.
Implement Self-Service Automation
Customers want to get the information they need as quickly and easily as possible. By implementing a self-service system, you can allow your customers to access routine information themselves without needing any human intervention. Integrating self-service solutions with interactive options enables organizations to better identify their customers’ concerns (for complex queries) and route them to the correct agent. Customers are simply bothered about getting the necessary help as fast and efficiently as possible, regardless of whether they are talking to an agent or availing a self-service system.
Enhance Flexibility with Cloud Solutions
Premises-based or other complex customer service software can be extremely time-consuming and costs a lot of money.
According to 2013 research by Aberdeen Group, companies that deploy contact centers in the cloud spend 27 percent less on their annual contact center costs ($112.5 million versus $155 million) than their peers.
There are enormous benefits of adopting cloud customer service software. A few of them are mentioned below:
- Huge savings on capital investments
- Support agents anywhere enabling you to expand your workforce to any location
- Scale on-demand
- Easily integrate with multiple systems and customize to your specifications
- Improve customer experience by matching customers to the agents who offer the right set of skills to resolve their issues
- Improve first contact resolution rates
Cloud contact center allows companies to integrate silos of customer data that are distributed across various functions. Agents can quickly add additional channels such as email and chat in order to meet customer expectations depending on how they want to interact with you.
Give a Personal Touch
Improve the customer experience by adding a personal touch to customer calls and other support responses. Make sure that your customer data is in place and readily available to make the interactions effective and resolve the issues efficiently. With the facility to integrate customer service software solutions with CRM systems, you can offer a more customized service as you will be easily able to access the related details of the customer such as purchase history, past records and billing information etc.
You can improve customer loyalty by treating your VIP customers well. If the contact center system locates a high-value customer, it will send him directly to the right agent. If a customer has recently ordered one of your products, he can be identified by caller ID and quickly provided with the information they are looking for such as order status, without having to wait.
Coach Agents for Right Attitude
Agents’ behaviour have a big impact on customer satisfaction. They are the front line of any contact center and it is imperative to train them to display the right attitude and behaviour to yield higher customer satisfaction.
According to Frost and Sullivan, 60% of all repeat calls occur due to inadequate training or processes.
Do not make the mistake of evaluating your agents on efficiency metrics like Average Handle Time or Calls per Day. Instead measure their effectiveness by analyzing how their behaviour leads to greater customer satisfaction and how well they take care of the customers. If they are able to handle customer complaints in the first call itself, without transferring the calls to other agents, they are leading your contact center to the right direction.
Enable Cross-Channel Efficiency
In this multi-channel age, it’s crucial for companies to empower their customers to engage on their preferred channel, thus increasing customer satisfaction and reducing customer effort. Companies should adopt a cross-channel view so as to cater to customers when they move from one channel to the next. All channels should work well together and should be available to customers anytime, anywhere. If the customer wants to switch over from voice to chat to continue discussing a query, your solution should be capable enough to offer the same. Providing multi-channel support will authorize your team to easily meet the rising expectations of the customers.
Measure and Assess your Efforts
To ensure that your customer service efforts are moving in the right direction, frequently monitor and measure the processes of your contact center. Focus on relevant metrics related to agent activity and call activity and generate real-time reports on regular intervals to gain the true insights of the overall customer experience. This will help you to leverage your customer engagement technology and improve it’s net results.
