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9 things all contact centres should do to make answering queries easier
There’s nothing worse as a customer than dealing with poor service and under qualified staff. According to a recent study, 50% of customers feel that most companies need to look at improving their customer service and support.
When your customer has an issue or query, they’re looking for a quick and easy answer and when you provide exactly that you’re strengthening your relationship and loyalty with them. But it’s often not that easy, is it?
We’ve put together 9 ways you can make answering customer queries easier for your call centre agents and help your customers to love you.
1. Single view of all contact channels
One way to make dealing with queries easier would be to provide an integrated view of the customer and their interactions across all channels. This would make the easy day-to-day queries so much easier to answer as all their data is together and easily available. This will also give agents an instant view of the type of customer they are, their relationship with you along with histories of interactions between the customer and your company.
2. Easy to use interface
Similarly, having an easy-to-use interface, accessible independently or through Microsoft Teams will give agents a more streamlined way of working, with information easy to find and view. Rather than having to switch between communication systems, you can integrate Microsoft Teams into your agents’ contact solution so they can view colleague availability and chat to them seamlessly while also conversing with your customers.
3. Secure and compliant data
Customers like to feel like they’re in safe hands with your company, so supporting PCI compliance to ensure customer security is key. Trust is a huge factor when it comes to customers choosing where to spend their money, so providing that layer of security and confidence in you as a supplier will strengthen customer loyalty. With so many data breaches in recent years, be a company that your customers feel confident in.
4. Accessible from anywhere on any device
With ‘hybrid working’ being a huge buzzword in recent years, being able to access your systems from any device is imperative for consistent customer service. Not all agents will be able to work in the office 5 days a week, so instead of them having to compromise on their life balance or manage office hours that don’t suit them, they can work from home. Catering to your agents needs will increase job satisfaction and employer loyalty, whilst also giving you more options when hiring.
5. Seamless customer experience
By having a simple and easy to use communications solution, your agents are able to move customers seamlessly between channels and agents, making it easier to help your customers. There’s nothing more frustrating than being told you’ll be put on hold or transferred and then getting cut off. Making it easier for agents to collaborate and talk will free up more time to talk to customers waiting in the queue, decreasing wait times, and increasing customer satisfaction. 48% of customer service teams feel that creating a great customer experience is their topmost priority and the key to generating more revenue, so providing that seamless experience is very important to revenue and brand loyalty.
6. Collaborate better with your teams
Collaborating with colleagues and internal systems is a must when trying to find the right solution for your customers. Others can often provide different insight into the situation that maybe you don’t have, all working together so that the customer receives the best service possible. Software like Microsoft Teams can be great for this as you can see colleague availability, add collaborators on projects, share files, communicate in real-time with colleagues, and view what tasks other people are getting on with.
7. Gain real-time call analytics
From a management point of view, it can be difficult to view call stats of agents that are working from home, so being able to view these, regardless of location is very useful. Providing real-time stats and data can be useful to other agents too, as seeing how many people are in the queue or average call times could change the way you work during busier periods. Being able to assess these stats and data can also help you identify patterns of number of callers during certain periods, allowing you to plan ahead for these busy times.
8. Easily scalable with your needs
Along similar lines, companies need a system that allows for scaling agents as needed to meet demand for busy/quiet periods. With traditional legacy phone systems, temporarily scaling agents isn’t really an option unless you want to pay more to have spare seats for these busy periods. Our solutions are fully flexible, allowing you to add and remove users easily allowing you to quickly respond to customer demand and save money.
9. Introducing AI tools
Chatbots are a great new feature that many companies are using, however you can’t always talk to someone if they speak another language. Integrating AI chatbots that can talk to customers in their own language are helpful in widening customer range and allowing agents to focus solely on helping customers on the phone and on social media. Many contact centres find this difficult due to a lot of centres being designed before social media marketing was a big thing, however 43% of customers prefer call centres and contact centres that offer bots to simplify customer service, so making these changes towards an omnichannel approach is vital for keeping up to date with modern technology.
A contact centre to help you answer every call easier
Omnichannel contact centres and AI is the future of technology and will benefit you in both the immediate and longer term, especially if you don’t get started soon there will be even more advancements to keep up to date with making the adoption curve all that steeper. If you need any assistance or would like to talk through anything in more detail, please feel free to contact us and we can help you.
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