Five Ways To Improve The Performance Of A Call Center

Too often, efforts to improve the performance of a call center are based on business objectives, such as increasing work efficiency or reducing operating costs. But the contact centers are not designed to serve the managers; they are designed to serve the clients. Based on a survey of more than 2,000 consumers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, the following data are derived:

• Nearly half of all incoming contact center interactions are for help.
• Two out of three respondents prefer to interact with a live agent than with self-service tools or chatbots.
• Only about one third of consumers are happy with their last interaction.
• Most interactions occur over the phone. However, those who use chat tend to be more satisfied because chat is considered a quick and easy way to contact.
• 81% of respondents say they would change to another company if they have a bad customer experience, but more than 80% also say they would be willing to reward companies that offer a great service.

Five Ways To Improve The Performance Of A Call Center: 

1) Be There When Your Customers Need It

When customers call, they want their problems resolved quickly. Fight for an occupancy rate of around 80%. Therefore, it is important to be able to accurately forecast the volume of calls and create an adequate personnel plan. By implementing these two actions, it is likely that callers will receive the help they need quickly. For this, it is very useful to implement software for call centers, since it will help to improve the results.

2) Focus On The Results That Your Customers Want

Your customers want convenient access to people who can help them solve their problems quickly and be treated with respect. Therefore it is necessary to strive to have an average response speed of less than 10 seconds and a resolution rate on the first call of 70%. To carry it out it is necessary to have a good reporting system to monitor many of the KPIs of the call center, such as ASA and FCR.

Once again, seamless integration with the contact center software is key. Older systems often do not provide convenient access to KPI metrics. In addition, the consistency in the following processes of the contact center is key to optimize FCR. In this sense, we must consider a quality management solution that allows to observe the agents when they interact with customers, as well as to rate the interactions through a standardized evaluation form.

3) Let Your Customers Communicate With Your Company In The Way That Works Best For Them

We live in a digital world. More and more communication is now happening via email, web chat and SMS. Is your contact center compatible with these communication channels? These digital channels are highly preferred because they are considered more suitable. If you have not added digital channels to your call center, you should consider upgrading your contact center software to a solution that offers real omnichannel capabilities. This includes not only digital channels, but also advanced routing and offers agents the ability to simultaneously handle voice, email and chat sessions simultaneously.

4) Listen To What Your Customers Are Trying To Tell You

You need to hear what the boss tells you. No, not the CEO, your customers. When it comes to qualifying the call center service, what really counts is the voice of your customer. If your customers are happy, your business benefits. Customers will buy more and recommend to their friends. But if they are unhappy, you lose them, perhaps forever. For this reason it is necessary to learn to listen more carefully using advanced analysis that can extract nuances in the interactions to identify feelings and tendencies.

5) Train Your Agents

Working in a call center is difficult. The work is stressful and highly repetitive. Each call is different and offers the possibility of placing an agent in a situation for which he may be ill prepared. If we add to this that agents must often interact with dozens of applications and commercial systems to investigate account history, order status, returns, billing and payment errors, support recommendations, etc., then, it is key to give agents a single unified interface in their company’s systems. Better still, we must consider the use of new artificial intelligence tools that facilitate agents to locate and quickly access the information they need to help customers.

There are many ways to improve the performance of a call center. Certainly, controlling costs and improving efficiency is important, but so is providing great customer service. Smart managers know that as call quality increases and service improves, efficiencies and cost reductions will continue to grow.