The 9 Best Call Center Practices for 2022

For most contact centers, surviving the first months of COVID-19 required rapid operational restarts that began with major transitions such as telecommuting.

Throughout the pandemic, call center leaders have faced the challenges of these unprecedented times. We have seen that organizations that are not only surviving, but also beginning to gain the momentum necessary to prosper in the long term, have consistently prioritized best practices for their contact centers that will withstand the test of time and a global pandemic.

The 9 Best Call Center Practices for 2022

1) Focus On Customer Experience (CX)

A focus on the customer experience is the most important practice for any successful contact center. Brands that set themselves apart by creating exceptional CXs rise above the competition.

That includes a global pandemic. In fact, the customer experience has never been more important. This crisis has presented the rare opportunity to provide customer interactions that build unwavering loyalty.

Now is the time to get the most out of every customer interaction and deliver loyalty-building experiences. How?

• Addressing long wait times. To improve customer interactions, now is a good time to look at all the ways you can take advantage of an advanced IVR and free up agents to address the more complicated needs that require human contact.

• Avoiding asking customers to repeat information. Consumers want integrated experiences. Across all channels (call center phone number, chat, email, SMS, social media messaging), using contact center software provides agents with a complete history of customer interactions across all channels.

• Optimizing the customer experience journey.

• Monitoring agent calls for coaching opportunities to improve CX metrics such as average time to service and first call resolution (FCR).

2) Get On The Cloud

A cloud contact center solution is the default choice for call centers focused on improving the customer experience, and its benefits have never been clearer than now. In these uncertain times, the cloud has proven to be a straightforward way to future-proof a call center and improve CX under all conditions.

The effects of this pandemic have shown that a cloud solution is needed to adapt to an ever-changing world. With cloud technology, call centers can expand to scale and maintain business continuity in crisis situations, regardless of where agents work. And that’s good news for customer experience, agent productivity, and the long-term survival of your organization.

3) Optimize the Native Workforce

Native Workforce Optimization (WFO) software is becoming a call center requirement for an optimal customer experience. When stress is high and change is safe, fully integrated WFO software is the most effective way to ensure workforce satisfaction, stability and productivity.

4) Manage Quality Intelligently

Quality management (QM) is a key factor in improving the customer experience because it identifies where the team is performing well, as well as areas for improvement. Comprehensive contact center quality management solutions record agent calls, capture desktop screens, assess customer interactions, and identify training opportunities to improve customer satisfaction.

5) Support and Motivate Agents

Businesses around the world have focused on supporting and keeping customers during the pandemic. But resilient brands know that beyond customer satisfaction, supporting employees through anxiety and uncertainty is equally critical to business continuity and long-term survival.

When workers feel supported, they perform better, making it easier to maintain business continuity in crisis situations. Employee care programs also have a long-term impact on employee engagement, turnover rates, productivity, loyalty, and retention, all of which have measurable financial benefits.

6) Offer a Unified Omnichannel Service

In an ever-on-the-go world, where mobile devices stand out for their importance, omnichannel should seem like an obvious best practice for a call center. The rise of social media, smartphones constantly in hand, and choice means that customer experiences that win loyalty are those that are delivered where customers are.

With each customer service channel that opens, more facilities are being offered. But users expect all channels to reflect the best levels of service and efficiency. So make sure that mobile apps, websites, text messages, chat, email, and agent desktops function as a coordinated system within an omnichannel call center.

7) Focus Metrics on Customer Experience

Historically, the focus of contact center metrics has been on improving agent behavior with the intention of positively influencing customer service results.

Incentivizing agents to achieve call center KPIs, such as low mean time to handle, is widely used. But it can have unintended consequences, such as causing agents to quickly terminate interactions before customer issues are successfully resolved. Likewise, a high average handling time can also mean that agents have difficulty accessing the correct information.

Contact centers that embrace customer experience metrics that drive loyalty and service win. Before, after and during the crisis.

8) Be Clear That the Smart and Efficient Self-service That Increases, Does Not Replace The Agents

Customers often prefer self-service to solve simple, routine problems. But not all problems can be solved in this way.

For customers, it is a nightmare when they are trapped in an IVR system and struggling to reach contact center agents when they need it. When clients are faced with problems that they cannot easily solve on their own, it is necessary to ease the transition to an agent.

9) Stay Open to Change

In a world that is rapidly evolving in unprecedented ways, don’t lose focus on time-tested call center best practices amid the chaos. At the same time, it is convenient to be open to new approaches and emerging technologies.

For example, chatbots powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) can go a long way in handling surges in contact volumes. And the shift to omnichannel contact center solutions in the cloud has accelerated for good reason: to facilitate communication with customers.

The most successful call centers consistently choose cloud solutions, include native workforce automation, use smart quality management tools, support and motivate agents, and focus metrics on customer experience.