When a customer calls into your business, the representative on the other end of the phone can make or break their experience. Depending on the flow of the conversation, your customer either hangs up with a happy resolution to their problem or more frustrated than they began, ultimately resulting in the loss of their business.
Due to the negative connotation that is associated with call centers, an unfortunate number of clients are immediately disenchanted with the idea of calling in for help. This is unfortunate, as call centers are the frontline to a business’ customer service and the backbone to their engagement strategy. Geoff Stecyk, COO of RAKBANK, believes that optimizing your call center falls into three categories: Agents, Experience, and Technology.
Agents
Cultivating an environment of happy and engaged employees translates to better customer experiences over the phone. Like sales, when call center agents are unhappy, it can directly influence the customer’s opinion of the company and favor negatively in the long run. When people are happy with their job, it reflects in their performance. Keep your employees engaged, make sure they feel properly trained, and give them the ability to openly bring up problems or difficulties that can arise.
Experience
When it comes to the customer experience, agents have a direct impact on the customer’s feelings about the company and the product. However, factors like long hold times, and too many automated menus can have a huge impact on the customer experience as well. Relying too much on your CEM and not on the actual needs of the customer can hurt you. Just as businesses equate their time into dollars, customers too value their time. Minimize hold times as much as possible.
Technology
The direct function of a call center is to handle large quantities of calls at any given time throughout the day. By having heavy amounts of incoming and outgoing calls, it is vital to a call center to have the most efficient system for call flow management. Create a quality, technology-friendly environment that helps your call center become as unified as possible. This means the ability to transfer/forward calls between agents, seamless holding queues, and much more. Having the proper software to manage your call center can go a long way in improving the quality of your call center and overall customer experience.
Finding the proper synergy for your call center can take some time. With his years of experience in the banking industry, Geoff Stecyk has seen firsthand how businesses that have implemented these keys into their strategy are able to improve the efficiency of their call center.