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A call center is a direct link between customers and the business. It’s also a key part of the overall operations that focus on meeting and exceeding customer expectations. And contrary to popular perception, call centers are no longer just the place to answer calls; they have in fact become a bigger tool to engage customers, answer queries and increase sales.
To better understand what value customer service in a call center holds for business, you need to know how managing every channel of communication is now the focus of these contact centers for customers.
In fact, many call centers now focus on customer service as well as on customer relationship management. Apart from phone calls, they also manage email, social media, and web chat, resulting in an improved experience for customers.
In this blog, we will focus on what it takes to deliver excellent customer service in a call center.
What is Customer Service in Call Center?
Customer service is now a key aspect of any enterprise. It exists to serve, inform and engage customers through live phone calls. The idea behind having a call center is to be always available for customers, guide them through different stages of the purchase cycle, and ensure a smooth experience with the brand.
More importantly, a business that has call centers finds it easy to strengthen its customer communication and witness a positive impact on the bottom line. The real purpose of customer service in call centers is to boost customer relationships and solve their issues instantly.
For many businesses, call centers are also the tool to bolster customer retention, generate leads, drive sales and offer loyalty programs. Some may use contact enters to get market research and then leverage the customer data for improved engagement.
Benefits of Customer Service from Call Centers
Customer service is always a key part of any business. And when the service is prompt and reliable, customers are happy. But sometimes managing calls can keep employees engaged to a certain extent which negatively impacts the overall operations. On the other hand, a dedicated call center can work wonders when employed for servicing customers. It knows what is great customer service in a call center and how to deliver it on a consistent basis.
Some of the major benefits of customer service from call centers include –
- 24×7 Availability – Call centers can stay open round the clock and help people get in touch with the business any time of the day and night, therefore, ensuring reliability for the customers.
- Quality communication with customers – Most businesses are not able to deliver quality service due to a growing volume of calls. In such cases, having a call center not only ensures a steady flow of communication with customers but also more value for the business.
- A Touch of reliability – Organizations that have call centers for answering calls and fixing problems are seen as way more reliable than others as then customers can trust them and would love to engage them whether for sales or other purposes.
- Lead Generation – Call centers not only give employees the freedom to focus more on their everyday tasks but also work as a great tool to generate leads and drive sales by engaging customers.
What Makes Customer Service Excellent in Call Centre?
The quality of customer service touches a new high when the representatives are experienced and presentable. However, issues may arrive when customer service problems are handled by a team that lacks exposure to areas of concern that consumers often face. For that reason, it’s always important to put in place a reliable team so that great service is delivered to customers.
The reasons are many that make customer service excellent in a call center. Some of them include –
1. Know Your Audience
A business can deliver excellent customer service only when it knows the customer needs well. So, knowledge of the audience is always the first step towards ensuring value through support.
The real meaning of knowing the customers is to understand their journey better as only it can allow the creation of tailored interactions. In addition, you can create a buyer persona or profile of the audience only when you know them better.
And when you have a customer profile, there is always a great opportunity to ensure meaningful interactions which often becomes the basis for value-driven engagement.
How to know your audience?
- You can review the current data and feedback to know your audience better and then take relevant measures to serve them in the desired manner.
- Take the help of the buyer persona to get aware of the best things about the products or services they like.
2. Listen Actively to Your Customers
The only thing customers want is to get their messages across in a quick and hassle-free manner. As humans, they expect the support team to listen to customer complaints and then take the appropriate steps.
And they feel bad when the person on the other side shows even a wee bit level of disinterest in listening to their problems.
Make sure your support team knows the art of actively listening to your customers. Only this can help the team exactly know what customers expect or need. It’s also important to value their feedback and show genuine concern for their cause.
Similarly, listening attentively to customers also means letting them know how their opinion is important.
Tips to listen actively to customers
- Never ever interrupt your customers when they are telling their issues as this might give them the feeling that their voice is not valued.
- Always restate what the customer said to show how what they meant is clearly understandable to you and how you value their issues.
3. Maintain a Low Call Hold Time
For customers, there is nothing more frustrating than to be put on hold when they try to reach your business for help. The more you put their call on hold, the more likely it’s to annoy them. And when customers are annoyed, they might even think of switching over.
In fact, 33% of customers feel frustrated when they have to wait on hold.
While customers are comfortable with some waiting time, they find it bad when the hold duration is longer or when the “call holding” has become a habit with the support team. So, your focus should always be on no-call waiting time as this is the only way to keep customers happy.
If a team does not focus on maintaining low call hold time, it means they are not aware of what is excellent customer service in a call center and therefore they may fail to deliver value for the business. To ressolve these issues, you can train your team the call management best practices. So, they can deliver impressive customer service everytime.
How to keep the call holding time low?
- Train your team with product knowledge and give them adequate authority to answer the call without having to put things on hold.
- Make sure the customer service team is familiar with the problems of customers and has exposure to challenges as this readies them for answering calls without much delay.
4. Focus on Efficient Call Routing
The role of routing is always big in customer service. And teams that understand its value often deliver better service. In fact, much of the success of customer service depends on effective call routing.
If your agents are adept at diverting the call to the right teams and departments, it can solve a lot of problems for customers. This not only improves the response time but also enhances customers’ overall experience with your brand.
In addition, teams that know how to quickly transfer the call to the concerned department are always a valuable addition to any business. Plus, the focus should always be on assuring first call resolution.
A team that regularly assures first call resolution is one that knows what is great customer service in a call center and so it can become a value addition for the business.
5. Use Live Chat
Live chat is one of the key components of customer service because it’s fast, convenient, and efficient. In fact, more customers now prefer it over phone support, social media, or even email purely for the capability to deliver quick responses.
As per an Emarketer study, 63% of consumers are more likely to return to a website that offers live chat.
Apart from adding value to customers, the use of live chat can also boost agent productivity and give data that helps a support team know the consumers better. Many call centers now use live chat to also connect with prospects and smooth the onboarding experience.
The best part, the conversion rate is higher for call centers that use live chat compared to others that don’t use it. After all, there is a whole lot of benefit of being always available for customers and giving them instant replies. You can analyze customer service chat examples and clearly understand how live chats can help your business greatly.
Benefits of using live chat
- When a call center uses quality live chat software, it finds it easy to know the support history and product information in regard to the customer and can use the data to serve them better.
- The support team can easily share the screen with customers or send links and make them better understand the guidelines and improve their overall experience.
6. Automate Tasks Across Customer Service with Chatbot
Chatbots are now a must-use tool in the delivery of customer service. Using them, it’s fairly easy to enhance the customer experience across journeys and touchpoints. So much so, a good chatbot can successfully handle up to 70% of chats or conversations from start to scratch.
When a chatbot with AI and machine learning technology is part of the support, quick and real-time responses are always a reality.
More importantly, teams can put support on autopilot by using a chatbot. The hassles to answering everyday common questions, which are often repetitive in nature too can go away when a chatbot is used. All this can therefore add to the productivity level of the team.
The best part, a chatbot can automate a big chunk of FAQs and your support team can always deploy a live chat together to handle complex conversations.
By automating tasks, you basically take a solid step ahead towards decoding how to deliver excellent customer service and add a new meaning to engagement.
Why to use a chatbot for customer service?
- AI chatbots can continuously learn and evolve so you can train them gradually to handle more complex problems.
- Thanks to the use of chatbots, it’s now possible to personalize interactions, customize offers and deliver omnichannel support.
7. Track Your Metrics and Collect data
Great customer service is never an accident. It is as much the result of meticulous planning as it’s the use of analytics. After all, call center agents can deliver quality service only when they have data at hand.
The good practice for agents is to track metrics and customer data each day so that they are aware of the expectations. Doing this will also help a lot in measuring satisfaction every step of the way.
When your team tracks metrics, it’s able to meet and exceed customer expectations on any scale. Tracking is also key in knowing the things that click or not with customers.
Best practices for tracking customer metrics
- Agents should always focus on monitoring call lengths or similar KPIs to know the time taken for call centers to answer calls.
- It’s important to measure customer satisfaction as it gives a good idea of whether your products or service are liked by people.
8. Request Customer Feedback
Feedback is always important to understand the way customers think about the way their problem is solved. It’s therefore equally important for call center agents to request customer feedback. By doing this, your team shows they care for customers.
More so, asking for feedback also makes customers feel valued as they believe their opinion has bearing on the brand. You can give them a short survey and take their view on the level of service provided.
Similarly, many companies now use live chat or chatbots or both together to seek customer feedback. Whatever way you use it, feedback will always be valuable in terms of understanding a bit more about customers.
Make Your Call Center Customer Service Efficient with the REVE Platform
The quality of customer service improves further when there are the right tools with the support team. And when technology is advancing at such a pace, no business can ignore the value of customer-centric software.
We, at REVE, realize the amazing value that our customer communication tools can add to any business across industry verticals.
Call center agents can also leverage some of the best tools for customer service and stay ahead of the challenge faced by customers.
Our platform brings a wide range of tools such as AI-powered chatbot, video software, co-browsing software, etc. for making customer service more beneficial and more efficient.
Using our tools, agents can know what is excellent customer service in a call center and easily deliver that as well.
Your call center team can combine the chatbot with live chat software and ensure hybrid support.
Use REVE’s Customer Engagement Tool for Great Call Center Service
Engaging customers is an art form and you can excel at that only when you have the right tools at your disposal.
Your business also needs to benefit from the advancements in chatbots and live chat software to redefine the way it does customer communication.
With REVE’s engagement tools, your business can easily meet all the challenges on the customer service front and get an edge over competitors.
So, start a free trial of our world-class and feature-rich customer service products and put your support on the right track.
