What will the call center service look like in 2025? Let’s talk about the call center in the future. As we know, today technologies are becoming popular day by day. Every year, it comes with something new that makes call center life easier. Agree? To begin with, it is improbable that there will ever be a physical 'center.'
These days, cloud technology is on the boom. Right? So, it is predicted that it will lead to an increase in remote working. However, this migration outside of the office does not imply that organizations are abandoning the contact center. Customer service has risen to the top of the priority list as a result of the ubiquitous eye of social media, which has put businesses into the limelight — for better or worse.
As a result, customer service will look different from now onwards. And in this strategy, call centers will be at the forefront.
What is the Call Center?
A call center is an integrated department that handles or manages inbound and outbound calls from new and potential customers. It can be located in the same organization as well as outsourced to other organizations that are pro at handling calls.
A call center service is a customer service center where customer representatives deal with queries, handle or manage technical support and take sales through the telephone. Its key purposes are handling incoming calls, making outgoing calls, and/or receiving and sending emails or web chats.
What Do You Understand by The Term Customer Services?
Customer service is the help you give your customers before, during, and after they buy and use your products or services. It will help them to have an easy and pleasant experience with you. You must give exceptional customer service if you want to maintain clients and grow your firm. Customer service is now much more than just a phone call center.
Email, the web, text messaging, and social media may all be used to access it. Many firms now provide self-service options, which allow customers to get answers at any time of day or night. Customer service is more than just answering queries; it's an important part of your company's promise to its customers.
How Does Call Duration Affect the Customer Experience?
The term call duration refers to a particular time when customer representatives contact the customers or customer contracts with agents. So, what do you think? How long a call duration should be for a call center? You may be surprised after knowing this answer.
According to the experts, the average call duration for a call center should be 5.97 minutes, which is either not too bad or too good. To be on the safe side, you can say that there is always a chance to improve when it comes to customer service. And, all of these things can be started with call center best practices.
Today, approx 86% of customers are ready to pay more for a better customer experience. Therefore, you can improve the customer experience by leveling up the process of your call center. As we know, today there is a range of technologies for the call center. So, what are you waiting for? If you think the present setup of your contact center is enough, then you should think again.
According to the recent studies -
- 60% of customer representatives believe that their company does not always provide the technologies that workers need to deal with the problems they face when servicing customers.
- When it comes to customer data, 34% of customer representatives say they don't have it at the time of the request.
- Only 31% of firms keep a close eye on the better quality of the customer relationship with their targeted client.
Well, here we summarized a list of the top contact center best practices that will help you improve customer experience and satisfaction. Have a look at them!
1. Constant Focus on Customer Experience:
Before focusing on the importance of the call center best practices, it is essential to know the basic purpose of the call center services which is to provide a better customer experience. If your customer will not get proper satisfaction from your service, then it means your call center is not performing well.
Therefore, organizations are looking for some new strategies to enhance customer experience. And, if you also think the same thing, then ask yourself, “Will this strategy help your organization to improve customer experience?” Hence, consider this question as to the topmost when you are making decisions regarding your call center.
Well, here are a few stats that you should keep in your mind which will let you know why customer experience is most important. They are mentioned below:
- If you provide an exceptional customer experience, customers would willingly pay a 16% premium for your products and services.
- 61% of customers say they've stopped doing business with a firm due to bad customer service.
- 59% of customers will leave after numerous bad experiences, and 17% will leave after just one bad experience.
2. Shift Your Whole Process to Cloud ASAP:
As we discussed above, cloud technology is on the boom. So, have you already moved? If not, then it is the correct time to move your whole call center process to the cloud. This is because according to a survey by Call Center Helper, 21% of contact centers have already moved to the cloud, with nearly three times the number in the process, planning, or considering it.
COVID-19 is hastening the cloud networking shift, with the global cloud-based contact center market expected to reach $44.86 billion by 2025. Migrating to the cloud has several advantages, including being more mobile-friendly and efficient than previous PBX systems.
3. Grab Flexibility of Omnichannel:
Are you familiar with the term “omnichannel?” If not, then let me tell you. Omnichannel call center services help the customer representative to connect with their current and potential customer via various channels at their convenience. Those channels are such as phone calls, web chat, emails, social media, self-service options, or other digital channels.
Always remember that customers want to connect and communicate on the channel at their convenience, at the time they choose, and also from any location. Well, here we summarized some of the scenarios which help you to know which channel works well for a better experience:
- While someone is on your website, asynchronous chat or message will be the handiest.
- It is preferable to be able to escalate to voice when someone is driving.
- Send a message to someone who is using your mobile app right from the app.
- When someone visits your Facebook page, avoid unwanted voice participation and keep the discussion going on social media.
By using omnichannel customer service, you can offer various channels for communication with your customers. Keep in mind that 64% of companies in the industry believe that clients should be able to speak with a live agent.
4. Offer Zero Waiting Time with Virtual Holds and Skills-Based Routing:
You can't talk about call center best practices until you've solved the problem of long wait times. Long wait times have long been a source of annoyance for both customers and businesses. We've all been there, and the disappointments will stay with us forever. How can we reduce long wait times so that customers don't feel ignored?
Expand your contact center to include virtual holds as a first step. With virtual holds, customers do not have to wait in a large queue. Customers are instead given the option of waiting in line and having a person call them back.
Second, reduce resolution times by quickly connecting customers to the proper agent. No one wants to be transferred to 10 different agents and have their information repeated. In fact, 33% of consumers say that resolving an issue in one visit is the most crucial feature of a positive customer service experience. While 31% believe that a knowledgeable customer service representative is the most important factor.
5. Improve the Way of Interaction:
Have you ever sat in on a customer representative call just to know the way they interact with customers? You should start analyzing, monitoring, and recording the agent's calls to know their way to interact with customers. It will help you to know the area for improvements.
Additionally, you should listen to those calls carefully which will help you to get the agent's performance along with customer experience. Therefore, this process will help you to teach your agents how to provide better customer service.
6. Better Performance with Minimum Efforts via Automation:
There is a range of automation features that can be used to enhance your call center. Don’t be afraid, automation will help you to improve your customer experience. It will not replace your agents.
Self-service features can be used to allow customers to do routine tasks over the phone and express their wants for more personalized support. Consider how much time this feature might save your clients as well as your agents.
Consider hiring a virtual assistant. This is because an AI-powered virtual agent is more effective in comparison to a standard chatbot. After all, it uses technologies like machine learning and natural language processing (NLP). AI virtual agents actively participate in the conversation and act more like a human. Virtual assistants may be able to respond to common questions more rapidly.
7. Evolve Gamification:
Well, gamification is the best solution to inspire and engage your agents. You may use gamification to liven things up by providing agents assignments, badges, and prizes for achieving certain goals.
As a result, managers will be able to track how agents are performing in contrast to the rest of the team, and agents will enjoy the rewards. For both managers and agents, gamification is a win-win situation.
8. Provide Support and Training to Your Agents:
Doesn't it appear to be straightforward? If only it was that easy. Agents require ongoing support in the form of suitable tools, coaching tactics, and training sessions. To better understand your agents' issues, get feedback from them on a regular basis. And, once you've gotten their feedback, don't just sit on the fence; take action so they feel heard.
Provide your agents with easy-to-use tools in addition to active listening. This is especially important given the contact center industry's 30–45% typical turnover rate in the United States. Therefore, you must need the best contact center solution that will be easy to learn for new hires and also engage the current employees.
But, to get a better solution, don’t guide the wrong direction with a difficult contact center solution to the agents. This is because it will make them want to run out the door.
Read More: A Vista on Call Center Best Practices
Bottom Line:
Well, every organization wants to know how they can provide better call center service. For that thing, you have to shift your whole call center process to cloud technology. In this era, cloud technology is on the boom. So, you will save lots of costs as well as time in comparison to the traditional way of call center services.
This is because today every customer prefers those organizations who provide better customer service, zero waiting time, various channels to connect, and various things. Therefore, the cloud is the best solution that fulfills the customer requirements and also helps in a better customer experience.
