How to drive best customer services from your call center
Every time a customer calls you up, it is due to some issues or concerns. Moreover, if you mistreat or them try to pitch them unnecessary products and services, it will drive them insane!Customer forms the centerstone for any business which makes it important to absolutely avoid call center bloopers. Especially, when you are working in and working for a solely customer based domain – call centers. Neglecting interactions or not providing great customer experience can lead to severe loss in the average number of returning customers. If an agent manages to improve his quality of service, the business can boom with more happy customers. And who would not want that? This is the golden rule for running any business – having happy customers.
Let’s suppose your customer feels and tell someone regarding your customer service that
“This is very good organisation where i really enjoyed to talk with the support or service executive that solved my problem” .
This will not only make the good impression of your organisation, this also help your business to go on the top very soon.
Just think you as being a customer what happened when you call to customer care regarding any issue you face.
Never Talk in a Scripted Manner
The tone and pitch of your voice can convey a lot of your emotions. As, I have mentioned earlier, they are not bots. They seek your compassion, your empathy. Even if there is a strict protocol for you to follow, talk in modulation. Don’t just go about reading a sentence like a machine. Also, using the correct sentence structure, being polite, and making him feel that you really want to provide him the best customer service experience there is, are some parameters to avoid call center bloopers. This way you have more happy customers, which is great for business.
- Never Ask a Customer to Repeat Information
Sometimes, when a customer is frustrated and really paranoid about something, there is a great chance that he might just overwhelm you with his query and resolution in one go. In such scenarios, the best possible tactic you can adopt is be to pay attention. Listen very carefully to what he has to say. Try and make quick notes about his query and the issue he is facing. This will do a lot of good, as you would not have to ask the same questions repeatedly, hence saving both of your time. When an agent asks a customer to ‘repeat’ information, this just highlights his lack of attention in their conversation, which of course no one likes.
- Agents should not always turn as Sales person
This is the most annoying habit which by default all agents have! I understand that sales are an important part of your job description as you have a target to keep up with. But it is not mandatory to pitch your ‘valuable products and services’ on every call. There needs to be a profound base for you to pitch products and services to your customer. If they are in a hurry or have 10 different problems to be taken care of, you can just be the best agent for them that day. Assist and just walk them through all the guiding procedures and let them experience excellent customer service. While training agents, making them aware about identifying the needs of the customer and then bringing in an option to pitch a product is very critical. Otherwise there will be a whole pool of customers you will lose, eventually.
- Never use The Tricky World in IVRs
Calling on many call center’s IVR number, the first welcome statement used to play as , ‘Listen closely, as our options have changed.’ This is making customer even more frustrated. Intelligent self service applications means that a customer can navigate easily exactly to the information he needs, get through the ‘right department’, and voila- problem solved. However, in reality most of the IVRs are way too complicated for customers to help themselves. The options are mostly vague and too many for an average caller to pick from. Callers often feel that they still need human assistance and end up waiting for up to 20 minutes before any live agent picks up. Therefore, having a complicated IVR system setup doesn’t necessarily mean you have won the hearts of your customers.
- Live Agents, Dead Space
Let’s have an example for a scenario when
An already frustrated customer calls up to know why his debit card isn’t working. He has been in queue for over 7 minutes now; his call has been transferred to the ‘right department’ too many times now.
In the scenario above, Service executive did not pay much attention to her customer’s query. If he/she would have, she would have been a bit more sympathetic. Perhaps apologised? Another huge mistake was to place the call on hold without the customer’s consent and and muting the connection. Customers are human beings, they are not bots. They feel every bit of mishandling and mistreating. ‘Dead air’ is a term which is often used while training call center agents. Not responding, long holds, not telling the customer what is taking so long? What are you seeing on the screen? What should be the next step of action etc., all this adds up to customer’s frustration. It is supposed to be a two-way conversation. You must avoid dead air at all cost. This is the worst call center blooper for any person.
An already frustrated customer calls up to know why his debit card isn’t working. He has been in queue for over 7 minutes now; his call has been transferred to the ‘right department’ too many times now.
