Your contact center is possibly an essential part of the company. Whenever a customer calls in, their satisfaction is on the line. Your center could determine how long they are a customer, how much they spend with the company, and whether they bring other customers to you.
It’s remarkable to meet customer service expectations and exceptional to exceed them. Your effective leadership, great managers, and extensive agent training have certainly set you on the path to excellence, but some extras can take your customer service to the next level.
Let’s chat about a few things you can do to provide a next-level service.
Increase Self Service Options
Customers love how they can efficiently resolve simple issues like paying a bill or adding a service option. Gartner has identified that 70% of customers prefer to solve problems independently. Interacting with an intuitive AI that can make their interaction quick while resolving the issue fosters customer satisfaction.
One option is using an AI-centered IVR system that allows verbal instructions to fulfill the customer’s request. These systems are no longer the system being yelled at by the actor in a comedy movie but practical tools that understand what customers are saying and know how to get them where they need to be.
Chat AI is an outstanding tool customers show tremendous happiness with using to resolve simple issues. They can use it while performing work on their computer; it is easy to deal with and quick. Chatbots have reached an excellent level of service and text recognition.
Another beneficial option is as simple as a robust knowledge base on the company website that helps customers find answers to their issues and resolve them independently.
Create a Unified Experience
A customer might call in with an ongoing issue or have experienced other frustrating problems. Empowering agents to talk to customers with information relating to past interactions helps them better interact with the customer. Furthermore, the customer appreciates that the contact center agent knows the past interactions and reaffirms a commitment to service on this call. Not having to repeat the reason for a call earlier in the day is very appreciated and interpreted as a higher level of service.
Making a CRM universally available and giving contact center agents access to notes, emails, and other interactions makes this possible. Customer service is tremendously boosted, and the center moves closer to higher first-call resolution (FCR).
Shorten Hold Times
A robust IVR system can quickly route customers where they need to go and to the contact center agents best able to help. These systems may be broken out by contact type, optimal navigation, and appropriate request options. Getting people to the right place the first time shortens calls and fosters FCR, which results in fewer calls and shorter holds.
In periods of excessive calls, a customer call back system can ask the customer if they’d prefer a call back in an estimated period. Callbacks delight customers that do not wish to be held to the phone while helping contact centers smooth call volumes and extend the call period in a way that puts them in charge instead of these extreme call volume outlier events.
Unify Sales and Service
With a substantial move to digital care, using contact center agents to provide service and sales is tremendously more efficient and substantially increases the chances of closing sales. An agent that has provided excellent service has gained tremendous customer trust and is the best person to recommend products or services that solve additional customer problems.
Retain and Develop the Best People
The days of customer care talent that is inexpensive and easy to replace are long gone. As issues become complex and competition increases for skill, your company needs to seek to hire and retain the best people possible.
Foster your best organizational culture that motivates and builds trust with employees. Encourage leaders to listen to employee feedback and reaffirm employee value.
Monitor Metrics and KIPs
An effective VoIP system offers tremendous tools to see the performance of your contact center and modify it as needed. Interactive dashboards provide data in real-time, meaning no more getting information at the end of the day.
Sentiment analysis is a fantastic tool for judging the quality of interactions in the center. An AI uses natural language processing with deep learning and machine learning to determine whether call comments are:
- Satisfied or unsatisfied
- Positive or negative
- Low priority or very urgent
- A question or suggestion
All of this comes down to how customers feel on calls. This knowledge is pure business gold for customer-centric contact centers and gives your customers a greater seat at the table.
Knowing things like brand sentiment score or customer sentiment score helps contact centers know how well they are performing in providing an excellent customer experience and enhancing the brand reputation.
This data is much more than a small sample study; it is a score of all customers calling your contact center.
Call Monitoring and Recording
A VoIP service that lets supervisors monitor and record calls fosters improved customer experience as employees can be guided and trained in methods that better serve their customers. Contact center agents can be listened to remotely or side-by-side for real-time coaching or post-call feedback, in which case the employee was unaware of the monitoring and behaving normally.
Call recordings can be listened to with employees to quiz them on what they would have done differently or played in group training sessions to model a great call.
An opportunity exists to improve and reward performance, whether monitored or recorded.
Live Team Communications
Teams that use communications tools that allow them to chat in real-time have access to the knowledge of other team members when they need help while on a call, significantly increasing response time and creating a true FCR. It is one less call that needs transferring.
If another contact center representative or supervisor overhears an excellent call, they can celebrate the accomplishment over group chat. It is also a fantastic way to rally the team without interrupting calls or pulling a team off of the phones.
Customer service is everything, and the foremost goal of all contact centers is to increase customer satisfaction with every call. It isn’t enough to solve an issue or make a customer happy; take it to the next level and delight your customers.
Tremendous technological tools from VoIP technology exist to help foster customer service improvements for contact centers. They are crucial to take advantage of when customer loyalty matters more than ever.
