Ever thought of a nightmare where you buy a product or sign up for a service and it utterly doesn’t live upto your expectations, and you have no means of reaching out to the vendor or the supplier?
What would you do if you had no contact center or support number that is provided along with the product? Who would you call/message/complaint? How would you return the product or know the procedure for returning it, when you have nothing over your email or there’s no option for a chat support? Yes, it would be a nightmare.
Love them like we do!
That’s why we love contact centers and you should too! Besides just providing us ‘the customer’, service support and listening to our endless rants, lodging complaints, contact centers and contact center agents are also responsible for a fair share of responsibilities, which includes them being the middlemen and voice of a brand. When you face an issue or are bombarded with some challenge, the first thing that comes to your mind is to call up an agent or a contact center and get it sorted, without creating a huge ruckus out of it. After all, who wants to leave the couch and stand in long queues to get their query addressed? I personally would prefer the comfort of getting my issues addressed over the phone or mail. A contact center makes it easy for us to know the inside story and functioning of a brand or a product. Facing some trouble or have appreciation to share, just call them up and you are good to go!
A profit support system
Not only contact centers are a reason for your customers to experience better service support, it is also a reason for contact center managers to consider it as a profit support system. It is just not a simple add on to your existing operational costs, but it is an effective strategy to cross sell, up sell and engage more customers and get more revenue.
Word of mouth publicity
Your contact center agents interact more with customers as compared to all your sales reps, this creates a huge window for them to enhance customer engagements and make your brand more likable. If a customer experiences superior service experience, chances are that he would talk about your product with his friends, relatives and get you more references. Word of mouth publicity actually works well in a service industry. Though it can come across as a cliché, but it does great deal of good for the company.
Window for up-selling, cross-selling
Usually a call lasts about a minute, though some calls can even span up to 8 minutes or more. This gives your agents an edge over other departments, as they get to spend more time trying to figure out customer’s needs and requirements. This also widens their scope to provide them better solutions and eventually pitch them about a service or an offer which your company is engaged with. So consider a scenario where they take on an average of 15-20 calls a day, and they pitch a product by identifying the latent needs of the customers, this increases the scope of your business by 5 times. This is of course a hypothetical situation; the numbers in a real-time scenario can be bigger and more promising.
Forward players of the game
So, if till now you have been considering your contact center just a means of handling customer complaints and nothing more, it is time to invert that bottle and look in through with a different lens. Your contact center agents are like the forward players in a football match, while the pressure is immense on the goalkeeper, but the major moves are made by them.
Remember, every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to learn more about them and can, ultimately, help you upsell. Your agents hold the success of your business in the palm of their hand – use that power to improve your business and you will love the contact center too.
Explore contact center technology to improve agent’s productivity and business performance.
If you have more points to add or feedback to share, do let us know in the comments section. I would love to hear from you!
