Seven Call Center Mistakes You Can Fix Right Now to Improve Your Customers’ Experiences
1. Customers can’t get to humans.
While much is made of self-service and many customers love it, don’t let customers get frustrated in IVR or automation hell. Make sure there is an exit to an agent, even if the customer might have to wait in queue. Customers will remember you later for being able to get their needs handled the way they wanted.
2. Customers complain about hand-offs and transfers.
Every hand-off and transfer is an action and a reaction – either from your process design or how you measure and incentivize your agents. Ensure your agents know how to handle the right calls and only move a call to another department if they cannot solve the issues themselves.
3. Customers say dealing with you isn’t worth it.
Revisit your service design – support the customer journey that you want the customer to have and that your customers need with a service design that helps them get there. The journey is from the customer’s perspective; the service design is how you deliver that operationally. Most cloud-based omni-channel platforms have a variety of capabilities, so know your options or get some external help to show you.
4. You just saw a demo and want to buy a new application.
It’s so tempting. But don’t do it. Demos are designed like birthday cakes – beautiful to look at but not always great tasting or easy to digest. Think in terms of capabilities and insist on a proof of concept or meetings with current platform users for honest feedback. No demo will tell you that; you need real-life examples from existing or former customers and a chance to play in the sandbox.
5. Your data tells you you’re succeeding and failing at the same time.
Get to one vision and one source of truth. This means knowing the vision for the customer experience, understanding the design for delivery, and ensuring your data and metrics support that design. In a world of text and voice communication, this means deciding on a system of record for key customer and contact center information and on an architecture that supports it.
6. Stop thinking more technology reduces your staff headcount.
With cloud-based platforms, you can probably do most everything from an operations perspective yourself – from setting up new agents, changing menus, figuring out speech analytics, implementing new channels and even automating quality assurance. With all the technology in the world, you need people on your side to make things happen. Set aside at least one person on your team to know your platform inside and out so you can implement changes quickly.
7. IT is not (always) the enemy.
Whether it’s for data and dashboards, queue changes or plenty of bandwidth to make things work, your IT team can be your secret weapon to ensure your platform is performing optimally. The key is roles and responsibilities. Your IT partners will love knowing what ownership you can take on your own for business operations, and you can relax knowing they will take care of bandwidth, security, and things like APIs or single sign-on to make things work seamlessly.
Want to brainstorm your needs and approach? We’re happy to share our experiences and help you plan for success.
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Melissa Copeland is the Founder and Principal of Blue Orbit Consulting, a firm that specializes in effective strategies, targeted metrics and tailored programs to drive transformation in customer service and IT environments.