A well-managed and efficient call center can be a big help in attracting more customers and retaining existing ones. Call centers are directly responsible for maintaining the company’s image in the eyes of the target clientele. In this blog, we deal with strategies to enhance customer experience through your call center.
A call center agent is often the first point of contact for customers. Therefore, they must shoulder the responsibility of customer satisfaction and deliver best-in-class service. While there is no absolute formula for delivering the best customer experience, a few tried-and-tested methods can ensure that every client interaction ends positively for both the customer and the agent.
Customer experience is going to be the buzzword in 2019. Here is why:
- 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience
- 73% of buyers point to customer experience as an important factor in purchasing decisions
- 65% of buyers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising
So, can a call center deliver a positive customer experience that matters? Yes, it can. Here are 5 easy steps for improving the experience of the customers interacting with a call center:
5 Ways to Enhance Customer Experience Through Your Call Center
1. Minimum On-Hold Times during Calls
Putting a customer on hold for a long period of time is a call center bane that drives customers crazy. Customers do not like to stay on hold, period. They don’t care if their issues need time to be resolved, and the agent can’t help but make them wait. To most of them, a call center should be a one-stop solution for all their problems. They want a quick solution, and they want it right now.
While eliminating waiting time is impossible, a call center must try to keep the on-hold time to a bare minimum. Remember, the shorter the wait time, the happier a customer is. It’s that simple.
2. Understand who the customers are
Knowing a customer demographic is not enough; your customer service teams must also know who their customers are. Try putting a face to your customer or creating customer personas—it will help your customer service team understand your customers better.
Your customer personas can be as detailed as you want them to be. By creating personas, your agents can put a face to their customers and better understand how they can assist and improve customer experience.
3. Recognize the stage of customer journey for each customer
A call center agent must not interact with each customer similarly. Rather, they should use the CRM to pinpoint the stage of every customer’s journey and personalize their interaction to improve the customer experience.
Define the customer actions that fall within each stage of the customer journey. This will help your call center customer service team quickly recognize and approach your leads and clients.
4. Forge an emotional bond
The biggest chunk of consumers today are millennials. And millennials don’t just look for a product; they want their values to be aligned with the brands they shop from. They want value for money and a great customer experience.
While your customer service team cannot control pricing, they can deliver everything else. They can forge an emotional connection with the customer by empathizing with them, telling them their side of the story, and even throwing in a much-appreciated surprise. This connection will help your agents better anticipate the customers’ needs and deliver a better experience.
5. Make it easy for customers
In this age of competition, customers are spoiled with one-click checkout, instant customer service through chatbots, and next-day shipping. These services simplify the purchase process for customers and reduce customer effort to maximize sales. A customer service team, too, can reduce customer effort in so many ways. They can-
- Offer to call back in case of disconnection
- Clearly Understand customer queries
- See to it that the customers do not have to repeat themselves
- Provide helpful material after service
- Solve customers’ issues the first time around
- Offer to answer a customer query through the preferred communication channel of a customer.
A customer service team can make the purchase or issue resolution process a breeze for customers, resulting in a high-quality customer experience.
In today’s competitive world, customer experience is gold. As the first point of contact for customers, it is up to the call center customer service team to deliver the customer experience each customer deserves. While their interactions can be short, they can be an excellent opportunity to boost customer experience.
