Call centers are an integral part of the customer service story. They have been instrumental in helping businesses manage their customer support and thus, impacting their retention and brand loyalty. However, more often than not, call centres have had a notorious image with numerous myths outlining their existence. Today, we will try and burst these myths one by one.
Busting Call Center Myths
1. Agents Don’t Care about Customers
This is one of the most common myths about the call centers which need to be burst right away.Organizations invest heavily in screening and hiring the best candidates to manage their customer support processes. As they also know agents are the front-end people and basically the voice of the brand. So, companies tend to have extensive training programs ranging from software & tools to sensitivity training to ensure that agents are up for the task.
Moreover, agents being professionals themselves want to be helpful.Of course, at times there can be a negative experience but it’s important to understand that sometimes it’s not in the hands of the agent to give you what you want because of various reasons.
2. Phones have become Obsolete
This is a common notion among the millennials who are comfortable in using chatbot, voicebot or social media for customer support. Customer support & service is increasingly moving towards a multi-channel model but phone calls still hold an important place. In case of a complex issue where reading the FAQs on the website or the user manual is not sufficient or self explanatory, customers still prefer to call. Moreover, when time is of importance, and you need quick solution, one might not wait to drop an email or tweet – phone call is the way here.
3. Remote Agents are Less Productive
This is an old-school mentality to think that employees work best when in the office environment, sitting on their seats. Working from home vs working from office has been one of the most debatable topics in the industry – irrespective of the sector. A cloud call center software allows the workforce to operate from remote locations without hampering their efficiency. At the same time, this can also be a cost-effective solution as you do not have to maintain an office location, hardware, servers etc while ensuring no data is lost as all of the call recordings and other data is available in the system itself.
4. Call Centers are Difficult to Set Up
Call centers are inherently deemed as difficult to set up. But in reality that is not the case. For instance, a cloud based call center software can be up and running within minutes. You just need a stable internet connection and laptop to get started. Moreover, one of the major concerns for a business is integrating new systems with the existing ones.
Ameyo’s call center software which is compatible with all the major CRMs and other third party applications takes care of this concern. Integrate with any helpdesk ticketing system or in-house tools and application easily to ensure faster onboarding.
5. Call Centers are Expensive
Just like the setup difficulty, this is also one of the most common myths which makes people perceive call centres as cost centers. But that cannot be farther from the truth. An on-premise call center sure requires infrastructural investment along with other financial and personnel costs but an effective call center has the potential to be revenue generating as well.
Moreover, if you are just starting off with your business then you can also opt for a cloud setup which offers a subscription based model wherein you pay for what you use. The bottomline is, finding a good contact center vendor is the first step towards this journey. Once you have zeroed in on that, all of your costing and setup issues will be taken care of.
6. Robots will Replace Humans
With technology advancing in recent years, it’s a common fear among the people that automation and artificial intelligence will take over the customer support jobs thus, leading to unemployment. This fear is not completely irrational especially since chatbots, voicebots like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant are becoming a part of our everyday life. Having said that, customers still seek the human touch. As discussed in Myth 2, complex queries make the customers seek help from live agent. As long as human touch is still relevant, AI based automations won’t be able to replace contact center agents completely.
7. Call Center Jobs are Easy
The grass is always greener on the other side. People tend to underestimate the work of call centre agents. Whereas, in reality this job requires a lot of patience and enthusiasm. Dealing with the same problems on a daily basis can be monotonous and hamper the motivation level. So, it is important for the customer support agents to be on the top of their game irrespective of the long working hours. Being a call center agent entails listening, understanding the customers’ problem and react to effectively resolve the query.
