8 Tips to Boost the Operational Efficiency of a Call Center

In a fast-paced world, first impressions matter and have a significant impact on the customers who contact a call center.

Ensuring high-quality customer experiences (CX) should be at the top of a contact center’s priority list. Customers want instant and reliable service through the digital channel they have chosen to communicate with the company. Therefore, the operational efficiency of a call center must be at maximum performance, or there is a risk of customer dissatisfaction.

What Is the Operational Efficiency of a Call Center?

Operational efficiency is defined as the business methodology aimed at maximum productivity and the optimization of available resources with the aim of generating the highest possible profitability for an organization, financially and productively.

According to a recent PwC survey of 1,300 CEOs, 77% of them say that their primary focus is creating operational efficiencies and driving revenue growth. If the processes work optimally, it will improve the commercial impact and will result in an optimal CX.

What Is the Importance of Improving the Processes of a Contact Center?

Every day, a call center carries out hundreds of processes: managing customer interactions, meeting attendance, team training, etc. To measure the operational efficiency of a contact center, it is necessary to analyze the amount of effort invested and the results obtained.

Small improvements to any call center process can significantly increase your operational efficiency. Therefore, the tasks and areas of the customer service center that can be improved more quickly and easily must be identified.

8 Tips to Boost the Operational Efficiency of a Call Center

1) Develop a Strategic Call center Quality Control Framework

Establishing a quality control method is essential to improve the customer experience and build brand loyalty: the success and productivity of a contact center depend on the accurate evaluation of agent performance and the use of that information to improve the CX.

A strategic QA framework will help assess agent performance and training, collaborate effectively, understand CX, and increase operational efficiency.

2) Focus on the Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS is the gold standard for measuring customer experience and loyalty. To achieve this, the Net Promoter Score is based on asking the customer a simple question, which may vary in style and formulation, but always maintaining the same essence: What is the probability that you will recommend our service to a friend or family member? According to Recur, NPS could help outperform the competition by 2.5x and increase revenue by 24%.

3) Put Omnichannel Efficiency Tips into Practice

According to a recent Verint contact center study, 55% of customers use at least seven channels in CX programs. But unfortunately, only 13% are satisfied with their ability to use data to manage customer interactions.

Providing omnichannel personalized customer service improves the overall call center experience. To drive customer engagement, the customer needs to be directed to the agent who can help them. However, if users are sent to the wrong department and need to be redirected multiple times, traffic becomes congested and slows down the call center’s operational efficiency, as well as creating user dissatisfaction.

4) Optimize Call Center Agent Workflows

According to a study conducted by Aberdeen, agents spend 14% of their time searching for information to help customers. These also face obstacles when it comes to:

• The ability to collaborate (39%).
• Outdated technology and infrastructure (26%).
• Lack of budget to update technology and processes (25%).
• Rotation of high performance agents (25%).
• Lack of real-time access to relevant data (25%).

Worse yet, 74% of contact center agents are at risk of burnout. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize their workflow so that they manage customer service with positive results effectively.

5) Develop an Effective Call center Management Team

Unfortunately, the majority of companies (77%) are currently experiencing a leadership gap. They don’t have a strong management team to perform even the most basic tasks: recruiting, satisfying customers, and increasing profits.

To change this, the contact center must first hire managers who are exceptional communicators, detail-oriented, and have a deep understanding of customers, agents, and service. Thus, it will be possible to increase productivity, maximize efficiency, promote profitability, analyze data and guide the call center towards achieving its objectives.

6) Implement Feedback Loops for Call Center Agents

Empowered employees are associated with stronger job performance and higher job satisfaction. They are also more committed to achieving their goals, demonstrating initiative, and providing exceptional customer service. And one of the best ways to empower agents is to implement self-assessment performance tools.

Employees should be rewarded and encouraged to work with positive feedback, verbal recognition, and monetary compensation. The key is to reward each agent with what he wants most.

Likewise, it is advisable to ask the agents how they are and find out their needs, both work and personal. This will improve self-assessment and provide a more hands-on management style.

7) Write a Good Script

A versatile call center script can contain the solution to many customer queries, as it enables faster handling of calls and ensures information is accurately explained to the customer.

There is nothing more frustrating for a customer than calling a company to resolve a problem or make a query and feel that they are not being listened to. That means agents need more than just a good script; they also require soft skills and empathy.

8) Improve ATH (Average Handle Time) and Other Key Metrics

For call center performance to improve, it must first be measured. Although the ATH or TMO (Average Time of Operation, a KPI focused on the average time of interactions with customers with an agent) is a metric that could be reduced to improve the operational efficiency of the contact center, it should not be the only approach, as it reduces the quality of calls and the customer experience it can damage the overall brand of the company.

Instead, you need a quality assurance process that looks at customer experience metrics. There are many KPIs that measure everything from productivity to sales, customer satisfaction and quality.

To improve these metrics, you have to capture and share best practices within the call center and highlight what works well.

In conclusion, boosting the operational efficiency of a call center requires analyzing the metrics and detecting areas for improvement. By reassessing your QA framework and measuring agent weaknesses, you can invest the time and resources needed to improve your contact center processes.