Great customer service is a vital part of any successful business, and it should be one of your highest priorities in a world where the customer has more options than ever. Effective customer service leads to good experiences and customer retention. It can also earn you referrals and positive word of mouth. It also boosts employee morale, and employees who feel like their jobs matter will be more motivated to exceed expectations. All of these things lead to great profits in the long run.
Your call center is the first line of your customer service efforts, and you need the best equipment and strategies to help your customers quickly. Timeliness is the most important factor for most customers, so getting to quick resolutions is your best bet to earn repeat business. It’s also important to keep in mind that stories of bad experiences spread even more than good ones, as 95% of customers share bad experiences. Here are some tools you need in your call center to ensure as many good experiences as possible.
CRM Integration
Customer relationship management (CRM) software is crucial for your agents to resolve problems as quickly as possible. With call center CRM software, a customer’s number is displayed along with a profile that details any history with the company, so your agents can create a more personalized customer experience.
The Bright Pattern CRM solution can be easily integrated with any solutions you’re already running including Microsoft 365, Zendesk, Salesforce, and more. This ensures easy installation and operation for your agents. It also uses an AI solution to enhance automated responses and speed up resolutions for common issues.
This is a true omnichannel solution, meaning customers aren’t limited to voice calls. They can contact your agents through any preferred method like email, text, online chat, and more. Even better, customers are able to seamlessly alternate between channels if the need arises while staying with the same agent. This saves everyone’s time, and it saves the customer from the frustrating experience of having to explain their problem multiple times.
With an easy to use unified Agent Desktop, your agents can easily keep track of interactions across all channels. This means they can prioritize tasks based on urgency and choose the most qualified agents to handle specific concerns. This leads to significantly improved productivity without the loss of job satisfaction.
Customer Analytics
Keeping an efficient call center running requires managers to constantly keep track of important metrics like call volume and trends as well as agent efficiency. If any customer calls are going unanswered, or are being kept on hold for too long, the underlying issues can be found and sorted out.
It’s common for call centers to record calls for quality assurance purposes, but going back over calls takes time and may not be the most efficient way to get answers. This is where speech analytics can help. By monitoring calls in real-time, it’s much easier to find inefficiencies and make any necessary changes. Text analytics is also important now that customers contact you through so many methods. You’ll need to check both the messages sent to customers as well as the messages customers are sending the company to ensure great experiences and fast resolutions.
Reverse Lookup
If any calls do manage to slip through the cracks, you can use reverse phone calls to find information about the caller. This includes any information on public records, which may be especially helpful if the call was from a number that isn’t already recognized in the system. Alternatively, it could be a priority customer with a new number, and now you’ll be able to form a plan when returning the call.
With the right tools at your disposal, you’ll be able to create call center strategies that work and ensure great, personalized customer journeys.
