Do you think your customers are happy seeing a call from your call center expecting a great experience? Or do they picture spending hours on hold and navigating through a complex labyrinth of agents to get their query resolved?
If your answer is closer to the latter, this article is for you.
Providing a reliable and rewarding experience to your customers will not only make you stand out from the competitors, but will also result in high and relevant customer engagement. Also, more revenue from repeat sales.
Do you know, 78% of people rave about great experiences with brands to their family and friends? And, 90% of customers will trust a brand based on its recommendations, even if they are from strangers. This shows how strong of an impact good customer experience has on the overall outcome of any business.
Although there are multiple ways for call centers to improve their offerings and enhance customer experience, let’s focus on the five top techniques.
1. Pay attention to the customer’s journey
You cannot create a great experience without having a strong understanding of your buyer persona. The first step to achieving the same is by understanding the customer journey. Your call center engagement with the customer might just be a part of the journey but to make it a pleasant one, call center experience counts.
To best assist the customer with their queries, agents must understand where each caller is coming from. For this, business intelligence can help you gain a thorough understanding of customers’ footprints.
Many times it might happen that your customers find the business online before making a purchase through a call. Therefore, to extract all the data that comes along the customer journey, tracking of calls and conversations is important. Once your agents know the source of the call, for example, paid or social, and the issue to be resolved, you can optimize all those channels to drive desired business outcomes and improve customer experience.
2. Work on building customer trust and loyalty
When you consider that just a 5% increase in your customer retention rate can boost your profits by 95%, the importance of building and maintaining customer trust and loyalty is massive.
While it is impossible to build customer’s trust overnight, there are actionable steps that can help you get closer to winning loyalty.
#1 Start with getting yourself a verified business caller ID.
For instance, you can list your business numbers on the Truecaller Business Program and display an authentic caller ID when calling customers. With the green screen, non-editable brand name and logo, verification badge, and business category tag, you can establish a credible brand identity. This way you can enhance your calling efficiency, as customers would instantly recognize you.
#2 Have transparent customer communication.
Maximize your customer retention by being transparent and straightforward in your customer communication. For example, if voice call is your primary touchpoint, then you can set the right expectations for customers even before the call is picked. You can also use an advanced feature like Call Reason, which is a part of Truecaller Verified Business Caller ID solution, and inform people about why you are calling them.
#3 Reach customers at a suitable time.
Calling customers too many times a day (assuming they have missed your calls) can backfire. It’s important to identify your high-intent customers and reach out to them at a suitable time. By using a feature like Call Me Back (a part of Truecaller Verified Business Caller ID solution), you can enable interested customers to request a callback, so that your representative can connect with them later.
3. Streamline your call flow management
If your call flows are managed, your customer experience job is half done. Therefore, investing in the right technology can improve this process manifold.
A great example can be using a phone system to help the call flow work more efficiently. Easy call transfers between agents, virtual receptionists to attend to the callers, and such features makes the process of call flow much more streamlined.
Technologies like Natural Language Processing (NLP) can also help manage the call flow. It is being used across a wide range of sectors for both inbound and outbound calls. For instance, auto attendants are gaining traction in the call center industry. They can manage the call at the initial level and after gauging what customers need using NLP, they can even transfer the call to the right agent or provide an automated response.
4. Save customers’ time
The best way to do this is by minimizing the wait time and hold time on call. Customers are usually running short on time and having to wait on calls to get an issue resolved is the last thing on their mind.
For this, Artificial Intelligence can come in handy. AI powered self-service tools like chatbots and efficient call routing solutions, reduce wait times and also capture and analyze data.
They can deal with easier issues without any human intervention, thereby saving time for the call center as well as the customer. Moreover, agents are then able to focus more on high priority and complex issues. They can also spend more time delivering a higher level of customer service.
Additionally, this could also be a great opportunity to promote your website by offering relevant resources from your website that might assist them.
5. Be where your customers are most present
Choosing the right channels of customer communication is vital to long term success of customer relationships. Instant customer service is the backbone of a great customer experience–whether over the phone, social media or live chat–your customer needs confidence and credibility in your brand.
A call center equipped with cloud call center software should always focus on resolving the customer’s issue on the first point of contact, regardless of the channel. Try to find the right balance between self-service versus calls. More importantly, any information coming in from either of the sources needs to be viewed in an omnichannel view by support agents to understand the whole customer journey and minimize the back and forth between agents and customers.
The bottom line
Basically, the key to building a great customer experience for your customers is to put them at the heart of everything you do. Using these tools and processes can help you understand and focus on their needs. This helps you provide a better experience, improve your brand image, and in turn bring in more sales revenue.
Ultimately, your business will thrive and stand out from the rest of them.
Truecaller for Business and MyOperator have partnered to power up verified business calls for enterprise call centers. Read more
