Give People More Than They Can Expect
Customer service and customer management play an important role in development of every business. An organization owes its success to good customer service, as it is the one factor that easily elevates a business. The customer-provider relationship reflects the bottom line of the company. Any business that goes beyond the conventional ways to improve their customer experience creates a strong long lasting customer base.
Know Your Heroes to Win the Fight
Call center agents or representatives are people entitled to provide for all the customer queries and questions for a company and maintain strong relationship between the customers and the service providers or with the product manufacturers. Every business organization looking for a customer-centric growth or resourceful profit depends on the customer services.
The pandemic has changed consumers’ preference for communicating with businesses: 51% still preferred to use voice call to contact companies for customer service, 18% through email, and 11% via other means such as letters, social media posts, and push notifications. Ref: Vonage, 2020 |
In this post COVID-19 world, most of the people are unsettled or upset about any given situation. Providing customer services has become tough to provide and difficult since COVID-19 has pushed call centers beyond their limits. For all these insecurities that COVID-19 has devoured people with, customers do not expect to be served by AIs or chatbots. Providing top-class customer services has become a challenge because of these reasons. Agents are frequently working to provide the customers with all the necessary information and through new tools and support system and helps troubleshooting common customer issues and company processes. During any crisis, customer centricity is one crucial factor as well as human connections. In this era, very few companies have managed to work disregarding the option of providing improved customer care service. Call center agents work with most of the companies to provide the customers with the best services they can within any business acting like the unsung heroes of this modern time.
The Cruxes
- Call center agents work to strengthen the customer-supplier relationship for the company they work for.
- They provide good customer service to establish the brand loyalty among their customer base.
- Though for the basic call center services automation is an actual option, in major cases human connectivity is not at all disposable.
Know The category: All the 6 Types Explained
Call centers offer a wide range of services based on the category they fall into. There are majorly six different types of call center which are d3escribed below:
- Inbound Call Center: inbound call centers are responsible for handling all the incoming calls to a company. This service is provided to existing customers or to new customers who are trying to make a purchase. Inbound call centers provide the customers with different services, like-
Processing orders, providing dispatch services, offering help desk support, answering and transferring calls etc. - Outbound Call Centers: Outbound call centers contact customers on behalf of the company they are working for. It is a way of reaching out to potential customers and increase sales.
- Automated call Centers: An automated call center is the one that allows the company to cut off costs of call management by handling all the calls with computerized system. The basic uses of this type of call center are managing voicemail, helping customers find location, interactive voice responders etc.
- Multichannel Call Centers: A multichannel contact center allows the customer to contact through any of the multiple channels without the agent being aware of any previous contact the customer had through any other channel. Customer interaction via different channels is not visible to the agents from other channels.
- Omnichannel Call Centers: This type of call centers can be built upon multichannel offerings and enhance the coordination and customization that lets all the departments assigned to a client communicate and learn from the phone calls and vice versa.
- Virtual Call Centers: Virtual call centers allow their staff to work remotely from home and specializes in outbound marketing and sales calls. It reduces the operating costs for a company, and lowers overhead costs.
Purposes that Make Your Business Grow
The basic purpose that a call center serve is making business operations easy. Some the un core business operations can be handed over to the call center agents and offer your customers the best possible services at your hand. Some of the services that a call center might provide are as follows:
- Call center agents will make outbound calls to existing and potential customers to raise sales rate.
- They will ensure rapid response to any problem regarding the provided products or services, including replacement, reimbursement etc.
- A call center agent offers technical support to the customers by guiding them through troubleshooting to identify the root of a problem to uproot it and prevent it from recurring.
- Call center agents respond to emergency calls when any need of immediate services and delegates the response to assist the caller.
- A call center agent also conducts market research, survey for specific client base or conducts surveys across all broad groups.
- A call center agent offers dispatch services like taking and transferring calls to remote sales staff, delivery staff to assist in the coordination of outside workers and improve efficiency for outside staff.
- An agent has to evaluate the problems and complaints made by the callers and offer appropriate solutions to them.
- They also take notes for customer interaction to identify any problems with which any customer might struggle with and report customer feedback.
- A call center agent has to manage and update customer databases
- An agent should also follow-up on the customer’s calls
- They help to boost customer loyalty by offering a proper customer service.
Make Quality A Habit: 8 Qualities to Look for
Ensuring quality means to provide all necessary services for your customers in a rapid speeded up manner. Any happy customer adds to the growth of your business.
18% of global customers expect an immediate response, 28% demand response within 1 hour, 37% expect a response within a day, and 17% of them expect none. Ref: Statista Research Department |
To ensure providing required response to the customers, you should have an expert team of call center agents. Qualities you should look for in the agents you’re going to appoint should be as follows:
- Creative Problem Solver: A call center agent has to handle varieties of calls from different people with different temperaments. This bounds them to face newer challenges every day. Moving away from scripted solutions and being a creative problem solver is the way to fit in the new age of customer service provider.
- Empathy: Since it is tough to handle unhappy or sometimes rude customers, any good call center agent should possess empathy in them. If the customers can feel like the agent is listening and understanding, it becomes easier to handle them and provide the best services to them.
- Organization skills: Working in a reputed company with strong customer base needs strong organization skills. Quick and accurate multi-tasking is a must for any strong call center service providers.
- Effective communication skills: Call center services are all about communication. So, a strong communication skill is a key factor for a quality service. They should be able to comprehend everything in a lucid language, and proper etiquette. It is also necessary to be an active listener for growing strong communication base for the customers.
- Pressure Handling: Another strong side of an agent is to be able to keep calm and handle the customers if they vent and diffuse the situation in affective manner.
- Good Memory: Good memory and strong learning capability can help the agents in helping the customers as they have to provide a huge lot of information to the customer at any given time. Having good memory helps in reducing the time to provide the customers without them waiting on hold.
- Optimism: An agent should always be optimistic and positive about the customers they handle every day. It helps to add positive experience for both the company ad the customer by making them feel valued and heard.
- Team Player: Working along the team, though call center support is a solidary work to do, ca affect the atmosphere in the center and help in providing services to the customers in a manner that increases the brand value of the company.
Learn 14 Tips, Get the Best Out of It
If you are considering to depend on call center agents for your business, there are around 25 existing tips that can help you find the best call center agent for your business:
- Understand the Available Services: Understanding your needs is the main way to choose and find the best call center agents. You should seek out the companies providing call completion and refusal reports. The representative should be able to provide the required knowledge right away.
- Choose between Shared and dedicated Agents: Dedicated agents are assigned only to your service while shared agents handle multiple clients. Sometimes, there could be a semi-dedicated method that blends cost-efficiency and specialized attention span that serves your purpose.
- Keep an eye on AI: the evolving mechanism behind AI trends are speech analytics that is, again, driven by natural language processing.
- Security: Security and data breaches are common in today’s business sectors. It’s wise to consider a cloud-based call center agent for your service. Also, learn about the necessary security measures to avoid any disaster.
- Know their background: If you are contacting a call center service for your business, do a background check on the client about their service. Cross checking the provided information can come handy in avoiding further disappointment.
- Industry Events: Learning from networking and connecting with the industry peers is necessary to exchange all the valuable information in order to find the best call center agent.
- Know your traffic limit and their volume limits: Depending on the type of company and the size of it, the necessity will differ. So, know exactly what you need before you opt for any service.
- Consider location: While choosing the best contact center for your company make sure you have all the needed space for the operation.
- Empathy and Passion: Empathy and compassion are two key qualities that has to be found in the agents to provide the best possible services to your customers.
- Decide thoroughly: Decide whether you can manage to provide the services with domestic call center agents which will be less expensive for you.
- Establish the communication: To provide effective service, ensure establishing the basic communication so that the agent understands all your business purpose thoroughly. It will help them be clear about the issues to meet the requirements.
- Understand different services: You should understand the difference between the existing variants of call center to refine the way you choose the services. This will make your decision efficient.
- Know your numbers: If the service is being outsourced you should know that the main reason for you is to cut off the costs. For that cause, you must be efficient enough to know and learn the details to fit in the right criteria.
- Find a recommended center: It will be better for you if you shortlist the companies you could choose on basis of recommendations and portfolio of the call center services.
Some Barriers of Outsourcing Call Center Agents
1. Language and Communication Barriers
One of the most common challenges when outsourcing call center agents is language and communication barriers. Agents may not be fluent in the language required for customer support or may have different accents and dialects, which can lead to misunderstandings and poor customer experiences.
Solution: To overcome language barriers, it is crucial to select an outsourcing partner with a proven track record of providing agents proficient in the required languages. Regular language training and assessments can also help ensure agents maintain the necessary language skills to serve customers effectively.
2. Cultural Differences
Cultural differences can create misunderstandings or confusion between outsourced agents and customers, leading to dissatisfaction and potential damage to the company’s reputation.
Solution: Provide cultural training for outsourced agents to familiarize them with the customs, values, and expectations of the target market. This will help them better understand the customers and deliver a more personalized service experience.
3. Quality Control and Monitoring
When outsourcing call center agents, maintaining consistent quality and performance can be challenging, as the organization may have less direct control over the agents’ day-to-day operations.
Solution: Establish clear performance metrics, and implement regular monitoring and reporting processes with the outsourcing provider. This can help maintain consistent quality and ensure that performance issues are promptly addressed.
4. Data Security and Privacy Concerns
Outsourcing call center agents can potentially expose sensitive customer data to security breaches or misuse, especially if the outsourcing partner does not have adequate security measures in place.
Solution: Carefully evaluate the security protocols and practices of potential outsourcing providers. Ensure they comply with industry standards and relevant data protection regulations. Implement robust data security agreements and conduct regular audits to ensure compliance.
5. Integration and Coordination Challenges
Integrating outsourced agents with existing systems and processes can be a complex and time-consuming task, potentially leading to disruptions in service delivery.
Solution: Develop a comprehensive integration plan that addresses technology, processes, and personnel. Work closely with the outsourcing partner to ensure a smooth transition and maintain open lines of communication to address any issues that may arise.
Wrapping It Up
The growth of businesses depends on an active and expert call center team who will handle queries and manage the recurring issues regarding the company. Satisfied customers stay loyal to the brand and put steady ratings on the service provided. So, a solid ground is mandatory for your business growth. Choose your call center agents wisely and add to your business value.