Effective Ways to Improve Customer Experience in Call Center

Call centers are pivotal for business to provide enhanced service to their customers. Contact centers also play a crucial role when it comes to enhancing the brand image of a company in the market. Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) who interact with customers, have a chance to not just solve their issues but also deliver an enhanced experience which can go a long way in achieving the company’s goal of building a cohesive brand. While majority of businesses today have call center to respond to their customers’ queries and solve their issues, it becomes imperative for them to manage the setup with a professional approach. It’s because customer service will be the sole differentiator that would define the core competency of a company in the near future. Doing this effectively will not just help them in retaining their existing customers, but also help them attract new ones, that could be the key to survival and growth.

However, customers are humans and hence, unpredictable. Different interactions even with the same person can be dissimilar, which simply means every interaction between an agent and a customer is always unique. A tactic that worked wonderfully on a call with one customer might have a negative impact on the next call with another. This makes direct and constant customer-interactions tricky and idiosyncratic.

In order to ensure all customers are satisfied and happy at the end of each call, trying to search a pattern in this randomness could be the key to find some pragmatic solutions. Even though there are no set formulas that can deliver preeminent customer experience, these exist some proven methodologies that can help in achieving positive interaction. To stay on par with customers’ expectations and match their needs demands these challenging initiatives to be conceptualized. They have to be infused in into the ideology of call center through constant improvements, both technologically and functionally. Discussed below are some of the effective ways to improve the overall paradigm of customer experience in call centers.

Scope Differentiation

Customer experience is about achieving high quality interaction with existing and potential customers across all touch points. It is usually the measure of a customer’s emotions and feelings after receiving the service. Its scope is much wider when compared to customer service which deals with technical acumen to tackle the process related queries. While the level of customer service can be measured based on evaluating the parameters that were dealt in answering the queries, customer experience metrics analyze the overall emotional effect that are based on consistency following the interactions. Businesses which aim to improve this metrics should focus on defining the scope to maximize consistency to achieve desired emotional impact over customers.

Skill Alignment

Regular interactions with customers let agents have access to specific insights into their psyche. This cognizance can go a long way in helping the business in making informed customer related decisions. Involving the front-end employees who have first-hand exposure in handling customers in proposition development can prove beneficial. Aligning their expertise in primary stages of process design to leverage customer preferences can lead to higher accuracy in developing customer-centric solutions and strategies. Closely involving them in every stage of design and execution can also help in avoiding scope-creeps. In addition, when the agents have their skills aligned to the designated propositions, they find it easier to use them in delivering resolutions that precisely match customer-needs. This can lead to enhancement in customers’ experience.

Agent Performance

Customer Service Representatives are the personnel who face the customers on daily-basis. While they form the foundation of all major customer interactions, it becomes imperative to ensure they possess all the required expertise to 1) handle customer-issues appropriately and, 2) deliver desired level of service that meets customer expectations. However, when agents are desired to not just meet but exceed the expectations, they have to get well-versed with various interpersonal skills apart from the essential process knowledge. Equipping them with below fundamental skills is vital.

a. Listening skills

b. Interpersonal skills

c. Rapport-building

d. Minimal holds

e. Relationship-building

This is by no means an exhaustive list. However, combined with the right potential, these skills can go a long way in helping influence customer perceptions and creating successive customer journey maps.

Actionable Insights

At the end of the day, achieving enhanced customer expectations should not just be left to customer service executives, but should be the primary goal of all employees in the company. Radical advancements in contact center technology have enabled businesses to collect feedback, reviews and ratings from customer instantaneously. However, sources reveal that though almost all companies collect customer-feedback, very few utilize these insights and deploy them in improving their service. These can play a pivotal role in ensuring all the departments are on the same page and are working together in tandem with contact centers to enhance customer experience. Further, the CRM platform of the company must be seamlessly integrated with all the customer interaction channels. This lets the customer service data spread beyond the customer service department and enable senior management to drill down specific details. This can also help marketing department to map customer demographics more accurately and optimize the overall enterprise operations at every level.

The technological innovations coupled with lateral perspectives of the customer-driven companies could affect a paradigm-shift in realm of customer service. Insightful metrics driven professional-performances and streamlined business- functions are the key to changing these perspectives, which need to be driven down across all domains and reciprocities. The foundation that is laid by the consequential initiatives, make standout service the top priority of the entire company, and is the ideal way to enhance the overall customer experience.

Key Takeaways

• Most businesses today have call center and it is imperative for them to manage the setup with a professional approach.
• Understanding the difference of scope between customer experience and customer service is vital.
• Leveraging agent-expertise in primary stages of process design can lead to higher accuracy in developing customer-centric solutions and strategies.
• Equipping agents with all the essential skills is vital. Combined with the right potential, these skills can go a long way in helping influence customer perceptions and creating successive customer journey maps.
• Insights gained by innovative technology play a pivotal role in ensuring all the departments are on the same page.
• Integrating CRM with customer-interaction-channels can be crucial.