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Customer service is a critical aspect in ensuring a company’s and brand success. Naturally, the best approach to maintain an exceptional level of service is to serve customers through a contact center.
Furthermore, being present for its clients and providing a rapid, immediate, and timely return remains a key lever to reinforce any company’s business goals. Given the ongoing evolutions in the online and digital worlds, using telephony, Webchat and social media to maximize business development is ideal for improving your company’s customer service and also the customer experience.
Of course, it doesn’t come without its challenges and difficulties!
In this article, we dissect Customer Service 7 pain points in call centers, and how to tackle them.
Call queues simplify callers to obtain telephony services, while ACD queues relieve call center and service workers.
Additionally, there are specific agents whose phones are always plugged into the call queue. Some call queues additionally support dynamic agent connections. During call peaks and high-volume phone calls, extra agents can connect their phones to queues to help other agents and ensure smooth service for callers. As the number of calls in the queue lowers, new agents can detach and return to other activities.
The value of customer service in call centers
Customer service is a key aspect of business development. It enables you to build a trusting connection with your consumers, understand their needs, and take the required actions to meet all of their requirements.
Customer service, on the other hand, is a dependable means for a firm to track the progress of its operations as well as the productivity of its workforce in real time. Customer feedback is one of the most important factors in a company’s ability to achieve its goals by making the required modifications and improvements. Furthermore, favorable feedback will serve as inspiration to continue the challenge and improve his performance.
Customer services also plays a signification role in customer engagement in call centers. A happy consumer will return for all of his future purchases and requirements. You may easily expect repeat and regular purchases if you take a personal and supported approach to each consumer. To do this, customer service must be flawless. To meet and assure good customer service, it is critical to have a good, professional, and serious workforce as well as efficient and effective tools. Especially when it comes to dealing with pain points.
Pain Point 1: Call center peak hours lead to long average waiting times
An overburdened call center is the worst possible business card for your organization and you! In general, it is acknowledged that a wait time of more than five minutes is significantly damaging to customer satisfaction, as the client has the perception of waiting 2.5 times longer.
Beyond this tolerable waiting period, a caller is significantly more likely to give up and hang up the phone, leaving an easily solved problem unresolved.
For example: Long average wait times can have a variety of causes, including insufficient motivation or productivity among agents. And also, during special times during the year ( Christmas, New year eve, new product or service launch etc. )
However, you will discover that your helpline is frequently overburdened by tiny, repetitive, and low-value-added requests that may be managed in another way due to self-care.
How to solve it:
- Size your call center correctly: The organization must guarantee that it has a strong prediction from the start, namely through evaluating the past. The end result ensures effective call center personnel planning and distribution (the right number at the right time).
- Implement a strong IVR solution : The goal is to better disperse clients based on the reasons for their calls. The overflow becomes spillage. Agents who are less busy on specific requests are assigned to assist other teams in need
Pain Point 2 : Lack of call personalization
Call scripts may be effective in guiding agents and assisting them in providing consistent and uniform service for customer care teams that rely on the telephone channel. However, depending entirely on a call script and reciting it mechanically is one of the most common blunders in customer service! Customers today want spontaneity, sensitivity, and adaptability. Of course, this must be tailored to the brand’s image, but authenticity is always a plus.
A good agent must be entirely capable of adjusting to each customer situation and status in order to totally satisfy them.
To be able to deliver a personalized answer to the consumer, call center agents must have the means and/or tools that allows him to reference the information concerning the customer and any contacts they may have had with the brand at a glance.
For example: Imagine calling a customer service and having to repeat, your name, information and nature of your problem.
How to solve it?
Use a platform that allows agents to access customer information at a glance and customize their answers based on what they see there. Another way is to use a software tool that helps you build your own customer profiles and then answer calls accordingly.
These solutions can be very effective in making sure that your customer service agents are always providing personalized responses and helping customers feel like you really know them.
Pain point 3: Low average handling time
Agents are frequently constrained to deadlines for processing requests; thus, they may be anxious to handle a problem and fail to listen closely to the consumer. As a result, they have less average handling time.
When a consumer contacts a brand, they should be heard above all! As a result, the agent must encourage the consumer to explain his problem and sentiments without interrupting him. With complete understanding of the facts, they will be able to recap the situation and identify a solution that satisfies their demands.
How to solve it:
- At the initial point of contact, update the client profile. This eliminates misunderstanding when providing feedback to customers on services requested.
- Ensure that the caller history includes all past discussions with the consumer, regardless of which agent talked to them.
- The inquiry may then be taken up, making the process easy for the consumer. When there is a large volume of calls, staff can log in from multiple locations to reduce call handling time.
Pain Point 4: Inadequate call center agent training
It is critical that all of your agents are trained, so that your customer service meets or exceeds the expectations of your clients. And really embodies your contact center vision.
Indeed, your agents must speak clearly and use verbiage appropriate to your brand’s viewpoint. Similarly, a call center agents must be taught and well aware of the liberties he or she may or may not take, such as when paying or praising a client.
When an agent is engaged, he must also acknowledge his responsibilities – and hence the obligation of the brand! Indeed, admitting a mistake is already a sign of a customer service that is eager to appreciate the consumer. Whether the problem is the product of an individual or corporate fault, agents are brand ambassadors who must treat consumers with kindness and goodwill.
How to solve it: call center agent sensitivy training is critical to your success. For example: if an agent is taught to speak clearly and use appropriate words, he will be able to provide better customer service. Similarly, an agent should be aware of his responsibilities as a brand ambassador, which include admitting when a mistake has been made on the part of the company or himself.
By teaching all agents about these issues, you can ensure that your customer service meets and exceeds the expectations of your customers.
Pain Point 5: High call center agent turnover rate
Even the most efficient and motivated team would fail to satisfy the customer satisfaction challenge if its ranks are too thin!
In recent years, particularly after the 2008 economic crisis, many businesses have opted to reduce the budget allotted to customer interactions, both in terms of staff and equipment expenditures. In the medium run, this strategy may be disastrous. If you believe your organization is in this predicament, you should request reinforcement.
A call center is also a challenging work environment, with frequent medical absence. If more than 10% of your personnel is on sick leave at any given moment, you must perform a thorough examination of your agent’ social situations.
Finally, high agent turnover costs the contact center money because it must continually educate new recruits: a loyal team improves the quality of service to clients.
How to solve it:
- Set up a reward and recognition system, where you regularly recognize your best performers
- Promote a culture of team building so that team members feel needed and valued
- Build in incentives and penalties for performing against high standards
- Offer training to build awareness of customer needs and expectations
Pain Point 6: Managing bad customer reviews
Offering your customers, the opportunity to provide feedback, whether through a telephone survey at the end of a call to the customer service department or an e-mail survey issued directly by your software, will help you to discover areas for improvement. It will also discourage unsatisfied clients from venting their frustrations in public venues such as social media.
How to solve it:
- Handle complaints as soon as possible! When an unhappy client sees that someone is instantly attentive to their concern, you’ll have a simpler time working with them.
- Interview disgruntled customers: The primary purpose of contacting unhappy customers on the phone is to prevent a bad impression, so the first question you should ask is, “Is there anything I can do for you today?”
- You may also minimize customer discontent by handling more calls and lowering customer wait time: the real-time call queue management function, for example, allows you to pool calls and balance call queuing system among your agents.
Pain Point 7: Lack of social media communication channel
Smart contact centers use social media as a means of communicating with all of their clients, not just those that complain.
Engaging with consumers is an excellent approach, and its impact is amplified on social media, where customer feedback – and your reactions – are visible to everyone. It’s critical to answer swiftly when a consumer writes about an issue or asks a question, in addition to responding to praises and complaints.
How to solve it:
Customers’ favorite means of communication is the phone, but it should not be their only choice. With the advancement of digital technology, client contacts have expanded beyond the phone to include social media, webchats, and more.
CCaaS solution greatly simplifies Omnichannel communication with:
- Tools that enable Contact Center agents to be more responsive to client requirements.
- Unified dashboard that gathers all communication channels into one.
- Real-time dashboards can assist agents in determining which channels consumers are utilizing.
- Reports created to track performance across all of these channels.
Conclusion: Customer service is THE department that will always be on the customer’s side
Above all, customer service serves as a link between a brand and its customers. The latter communicate their emotions, make demands, convey their discontent, but also their excitement!
Finally, the customer care department will be THE department that will accompany the consumer throughout his relationship with a business, from his first order or travel, through his first parcel delivery, and all subsequent ones… And this is to ensure that efficiency and client happiness are constantly combined! Customer service is now being recognized as a value creator and development driver.
At NobelBiz we value our clients’ voices. And we have 20 years of expertise providing comprehensive and tailored solutions for call centers around the world. Regardless of size, industry, or activity, our telecommunication services and cloud contact center solution can satisfy the demands of all sorts of contact centers (Inbound, Outbound, or Mixed). That is why we are renowned as the industry’s promise keepers.
Our Cloud Contact Center Solution NobelBiz Omni+, can combine all contact channels (phone, social media, webchat, and SMS) into a single, unified platform. This will provide your customers with a smooth and outstanding customer experience.
For your contact center telecom needs, NobelBiz voice carrier network is built on a highly redundant architecture that ensures every call is delivered without interruption, offering you 99.99% uptime.
Abdelmounim Benharouga has always had a strong passion for writing and digital marketing. He started as a Digital Content Writer part of marketing department then moved to being Customer Success Manager for the African Region within the Nobelbiz team.
