Customers are the driving force of a business, and customer service is a critical aspect of a business that ensures buyer satisfaction and encourages repeat business. The best way to ensure good communication with customers is via a call center. However, this communication channel comes with many challenges ranging from agent absenteeism and turnover to reduced customer service quality and workflow inefficiency.
While business needs may vary, many of these challenges tend to be recurring across different sectors. Thankfully, there are viable solutions for handling them. This article explores proven strategies for overcoming significant call center challenges.
Low Customer Satisfaction
Customer service is the direct interaction between sales agents and customers. Today, a significant portion of the customer service process is handled by innovative automated solutions, and most customers expect retailers to provide sufficient options for interacting with call center agents.
This is the reason why on-site and phone support remain critical communication channels for many organizations. Technological advancements have streamlined and automated call center processes. Today, you can incorporate call center software into your contact center platform. Essentially, the best call center software helps organizations manage communication with their customers over a variety of communication channels. Some notable digital channels include email, webchat, SMS text, social media, live chat, voice, and messenger apps.
Adopting a robust cloud call center solution seems like a good fit for your business in today’s digital world. A virtual agent can adequately operate the virtual call center from anywhere in the world. The bottom line is that the best call center solutions globally are designed to provide a great customer experience. Today, companies like Bright Pattern are noted as some of the best call center software providers in the market. Lastly, when choosing a good call center solution to streamline your call center activity, ensure it offers CRM integration to unlock the possibilities inherent in a CRM platform.
Lack of Knowledge
Call center agents have the most direct contact with prospective and existing customers. Keep in mind that effective customer service can significantly impact a company’s ability to earn. Furthermore, the primary role of call center agents is to advise customers and find solutions to their problems. For example, if a customer has an inquiry about a smoke smell eliminator or ways to get rid of cigarette smells or other smoke odors from upholstery or rooms, the customer service agent in charge of the phone support should provide a seamless customer experience and offer the right information about the differences between air purifiers and odor eliminator sprays to target smoke molecules.
Hiring knowledgeable agents can help solve this problem. Also, try to evaluate your business needs to determine the number of agents you need to optimize agent productivity. Finding the right agent can be frustrating at times, given the number of different agents who may apply. You can engage the services of a recruiting agency to help you recruit agents. As a rule, ensure the agents you hire have excellent interpersonal skills.
Too Many Tools
Digitalization has revolutionized customer service in more ways than one. Many contact centers leverage outdated multichannel systems and tools to streamline their daily operations. Sometimes, agents have to open and close up to 10 different software programs to diagnose and resolve a single query. This practice takes a significant amount of time and effort and can impact the delivery of an excellent customer experience.
The obvious solution is to consider integration when implementing new technologies. You may decide to adopt a solution that integrates with your existing call center. For example, think about providing interactive voice response (IVR) capabilities for your call center. You might also want to adopt Zendesk, which is a unique cloud support platform that allows agents to handle multiple solutions from one source Learn More
