Acquiring a new customer is more expensive than retaining one. With this, it is important to nurture the relationship with all your clients since they hold the key to your business’ success. You can do so by making sure they have the best experience not just during the actual purchase of the product or service, but even after that.
You might have a call center team work on various complaints, inquiries, and other concerns from your customers, but are you satisfied with the way they handle things? Be sure to check their performance from time to time and avoid these common mistakes for the best customer experience.
Directing the client or customer to your website or social media platforms
There’s a reason why a client chose to call your hotline, and not just browse the website in the hope of some answers! They need immediate solutions, and they know they would get that when they speak to a call center agent who is ready to help. If you tell customers to simply head to the website, then you’re making a big mistake!
The key is to make the experience as smooth as possible. Since you’re already on the phone with them, it’s best to work on their issues right away! You can still use the websites or social media platforms to your advantage by letting them know that they can get more details, and be on the lookout for more announcements such as promotions (if applicable) there! The thing is – you just don’t want to give the impression that you’re not interested in helping your clients.
Unbelievably long queues
Having long queues is inevitable – every customer service team knows this. However, you still need to closely monitor the current call volumes so you can assess whether you need more people on your team to handle a certain account. You can’t just sit pretty while the problem gets worse, do you?
Customers would lose interest, trust, and loyalty if they can’t even have a simple concern fixed. They are calling your company’s hotline because of an urgent matter. With this, there’s no reason for them to hold for over 30 minutes or try back at another time. Treat your clients like VIPs, and you’d be nurturing a relationship that would last a long time!
The long queues are good indicators of your company’s current status too! Do you need to hire more agents to accommodate huge volumes on a peak season? Perhaps you can benefit from getting the help of on-call workers!
Failing to show empathy
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think how frustrating it would be if someone you thought would help you solve your problem rudely speaks to you, or shrugs off your concern completely! If a call center agent gives off the “I don’t care” attitude, then there’s a good chance that the client would just stop patronizing the company. Worse, he or she would just decide to do business with another company.
It is best to educate the agents about the proper way to build rapport, show emotional support to the clients, and fix their issues as quickly as possible. One way to do that is to anticipate requests for different concerns too!
Being redundant
It is a protocol for agents to get the personal and other relevant details of the client during the call. However, it would be a mistake to repeatedly ask about it as it would mean that the representative was not paying attention, or the system is also inefficient.
To help solve this problem, the company should have an application that their representatives can refer to when they need to check a particular customer. It should contain all the data so that they can focus on the issue at hand instead of frantically getting all the information they need. This leads to increased efficiency and overall satisfaction for both the client and the agent, as the process would be smoother, with the call not taking longer than it needs to.
Failing to provide call recording or monitoring disclosure
You’ve probably already heard this several times, “This call is being recorded for quality assurance purposes…”
This is because companies require their agents to record calls to ensure that they are giving the best customer service possible. Not only that but these calls are also used for educational purposes (as a reference for new joiners who are supposed to do the same task), and further identify the company’s areas of improvement without the whole “he said, she said” dilemma.
The customer service team is then legally required to protect not just the customers, but also the company against risk. To avoid human mistakes or slip-ups, companies would benefit from investing in a system that automatically tells customers about the call recording or monitoring disclosure, and collects their consent right after.
Not providing support
The clients are on the phone for one reason alone – to quickly get a resolution on a concern that’s been troubling them for a time. Whether it’s a status update for a requested service, refunds, repair issues, security inquiry, or any other matter, call center agents should focus on giving them what they came for.
It is impossible for every agent to immediately solve all concerns, but they should at least clearly explain the process or manage the expectations of customers as they share updates. If the clients are supposed to make a follow-up after some time, closing the call with a helpful tone would also be good!
Providing inadequate training for new agents
The company needs to identify how they can be more efficient with their tasks, and all the more if it’s linked to customer service. While it is important to have many agents available to pick up calls, give superb customer experience, and reduce the long queues, quality should never be compromised. This could be avoided by providing adequate and in-depth training for new joiners.
When they are trained better, this reflects in their performance.
Handing the call to another agent
It could be really annoying for a customer to be passed onto another call center agent because of the possibility of going through the details you already shared with the first representative.
This might also give the impression of a longer call time, and give a bad light on the company’s level of competency. Your agents should all be trained to handle as many situations as possible to improve overall efficiency, and customer satisfaction.
If you are looking to outsource reliable and goal-driven call center agents for your business, worry no more! We can provide you with a powerhouse team guaranteed to improve efficiency for your company.
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