A call center’s success is determined by its process, rules and regulations. For these reasons, a call center should ensure that proper rules and best practices are being implemented and adhered to. The faster they act, it is better for them.
Many people may ask how that is possible. But thanks to easy availability of real-time information and technical advancements, retaining customers has become a bit simpler and easier- you can achieve it through customer service and best sales transactions.
The more difficult task is to achieve and maximize customer satisfaction and ways of implementing a mirroring framework.
Here are some of the call center rules and best practices that you can implement immediately to get excellent results.
#1. Hassle-free IVR
Have you ever booked your airline tickets through a call center? There will be many people who will be more than willing to share their horrible IVR experiences.
Many-a-times customers are transferred from one queue to the other. Some are often put on hold for a long duration that can drive the customers literally mad. This is precisely the stage when your IVR can be a deciding factor for dictating whether some of your customers switch over to your business rivals. So, you need to be extra-smart.
When some of your customers are put on-hold and are on the waiting mode, you can offer them the option of automatic callbacks. In case you are transferring calls to some other representative, your customer should still be explaining their requirements only once so that they do not get irritated repeating their entire problem.
#2. First time call resolution
First impression matters a lot and the same goes for resolving the problems of your customers when they call for the first time. Make sure your customers get connected to the right call center agent when they call for the first time so that possibilities of retaining them go up.
#3. Call routing should be based on agent specific skills
When the rules of your call center is strategically laid down and communicated, customers will spread a positive word about your level of commitment towards resolving their problems.
Each team member in your call center will have specific skills. These abilities should be utilized by appropriately routing the customer calls. When qualified agents interact with the customers, the possibility of your customers fleeing to your rivals comes down.
#4. Importance of implementing multichannel sources for accessing your call center
There may be a heavy inflow of customer calls and it is crucial to implement the best practices with respect to multichannel contact points in your call center. Responding faster than that of your rivals is the key to retain your customers with you. Check out some of these preferred channels for contact.
- Functionality of Live Chat– Live chat is one of the most important mechanisms for establishing best practices of multichannel contact point. When you deploy the functionality of live-chat, it becomes easier for your agents to interact with several customers at the same time while receiving calls simultaneously. So it is an important means for increasing efficiency.
- Text messaging– Use of SMS has become one of the major tools to communicate with the rest of the world. So it makes sense to implement the SMS functionality in your call center. The call center technology can route the text messages all through the call center so that your agents are immediately connected to your customers.
- Use of emails– When your agents interact with your customers via emails, getting valuable feedback relevant to your business becomes simpler. However, the most important thing to note here is that agents should be very prompt to assume ownership of these emails and should be responding to them very fast.
#5. Measuring contact center metrics as best practices
When you want to measure the success of your call center, the metrics should be in sync with the broader organizational goals. The idea should be to implement a solution so that your end users can get the best possible leverages.
Having the metrics in place and measuring and taking actions on them, your teams at the call center can be held responsible for their jobs.
#6. Complete agent interactions
You need to hold the agents accountable as compared to their colleagues. When your agents are productive, they will yield profits for the call center. Thus, it becomes imperative to reward and recognize your tier-one team members who outperformed others in the same team.
#7. Conduct employee surveys
If you have enough data at your disposal, it is easy for you to hold your teams responsible for the actions taken by them. Conducting post-call surveys and analyzing them properly will go a long way to provide useful insights to you about your employees’ actions.
#8. Reports on agent utilization
You need to do constant monitoring of the agents so that loopholes or weaknesses in the work environment are easier to detect. Call center best practices and rules are good as long as they can be enforced properly. Make sure that there is proper transparency in the call center’s work environment too.