How to Scale Customer Support Without Compromising on Service
Finding your business at a place in which things need to grow is never a bad thing. It means you’re doing well, you’re meeting or exceeding expectations and goals. At first, the need to expand your customer service capabilities can seem like a negative—if there are more customers that need help, there must be new problems arising with your services. But most of the time, it simply means that your business is growing and you need to do the same to meet the growing demand. However, when the time comes to scale your customer support, it’s critical that you do [...]
Why Your Company Needs Customer Service and Customer Success Teams
One of the primary roles of inbound call centers at most companies is customer service. Agents speak with customers who call in, solving or troubleshooting the issues they bring with the goal of resolving the problem by the end of the call. But at the same time as your agents are focused on delivering optimal customer service, they, or other agents on the team, should also be focused on customer success. Here, we’re explaining the difference between customer service and customer success and why your company needs agents that prioritize both in order to be successful. What is customer [...]
Answering Service vs. Call Center – What’s the Difference?
Despite the fact that call centers exist in numerous industries beyond telemarketing, the average person is not as familiar with them in these other contexts, even though they have likely had numerous interactions with the agents who staff them. Answering services, on the other hand, are something that most people have heard of and encountered. But are they actually the same thing? Here, we are breaking down the difference between an answering service and a call center. In short, answering services are technically call centers but not all call centers are answering services. That’s because the scope of tasks [...]
3 Tips for Managing a Remote Call Center
Being a manager of anything is hard work. You need to have a handle on everything and everyone you’re meant to be managing, balancing your own responsibilities with making sure the people on your team are excelling at their jobs, all while maintaining a positive attitude. Sound difficult? Now try managing a team of people who are all in different locations, dealing with different environments and distractions, all while speaking directly with customers who have the power to make or break your business. Now are you stressed? That’s what it is like managing a remote call center—and if you [...]
Call Center Closeup: Healthcare Call Centers
Many of the most important experiences you will have with doctors or healthcare workers are in person, whether in the office, the emergency room, the operating room or the clinic. But medical care and how you experience it do not stop when you leave that building. There are follow up appointments that need scheduling, questions about treatment that need asking, medications that need prescribing, symptoms that need reporting and more. Indeed, a large percentage of medical care takes place over the phone. And yet, doctors, nurses and healthcare administrators are so busy with the people who are in-person in [...]
The Importance of Internal Communication in a Call Center
In many call centers, excellent agents delivering excellent customer service is the most important thing. After all, customers are the drivers of your business. If they are unhappy with the service they receive from the people manning your phones, your sales and revenue will suffer. But it is possible to put too much emphasis on the communication between your agents and your customers. Making this external communication the most important thing above all else, eschewing the physical and mental toll it may take on your agents, is not the best way to stoke enthusiasm and productivity. Instead, it’s crucial that [...]
The Top 5 Soft Skills Every Call Center Agent Needs
Being a call center agent is much more than knowing how to input data and look up answers to questions. It’s about talking to people and relating to them. Indeed, depending on your industry and the type of call center you are running, many people who call in may be doing so at a time when they are feeling lost, frustrated, or vulnerable and they are looking for a human on the other end of the line to recognize what they are going through and work with them to resolve whatever issue they are facing. With that in mind, [...]
Call Center Closeup: BPO Call Centers
Call centers serve many, many purposes, and that purpose changes depending on the type of company and industry. Some are exclusively dealing with customer service inquiries while others only function as a way for employees to communicate with one another. Depending on the size of your company, your budget and your needs, your core team may not have the bandwidth to handle all the inbound calls coming in. In these cases, you may consider outsourcing certain tasks to a separate call center, a process called business process outsourcing, or BPO. Here, we’re taking a look at some of the [...]
5 Roles of the Insurance Call Center Agent
The agents working in your insurance call center are going to be required to wear many hats depending on the needs of the customers they speak with, some of which require more specialized skills than others. Here are five of the possible roles the insurance call center agent may need to play over the course of a day on the job. Customer Service Representative This all-encompassing role refers to any time a customer calls in with a question that requires an answer. Maybe they have a question about their existing policy and the coverage it provides or [...]
4 Ways to Keep Agents and Customers Happy
It’s true that the agents working in your call center and the customers they are speaking to are distinct from one another in many ways. Customers ask questions, agents provide answers. Customers are buying, agents are selling. Customers are, well, customers, and agents are employees. Despite all their differences, though, there are many strategies and practices that you can put in place in your call center that will actually serve to benefit both of these distinct groups of people. After all, they do have one very important thing in common: They are both incredibly important to the success of your [...]
4 Key QA Metrics for an Inbound Call Center
The success of your call center—and in some cases, your entire business—rests on the quality of the work being done by your agents. Especially given how many agents are working remotely from different locations these days, it’s difficult to keep tabs on this work in real time. However, if you are using a call center software with real time reporting mechanisms, robust quality assurance safeguards and detailed QA scorecards, it’s easy to measure the success and efficiency of your call center. Here are four key metrics you should consider keeping tabs on if you are running an inbound call [...]
What is a Cloud-Based Phone System?
Nowadays, many of the most cutting-edge and sought-after call center software systems are cloud-based as opposed to premise-based. Indeed, these systems provide the flexibility you need to allow your agents to work remotely while maintaining access to all the software and data they need in order to do their jobs. They also offer unlimited storage, enhanced security and safety and serious cost savings compared to a premise-based system that operates using landlines. But what exactly does it mean for a phone system to be virtual, or based on the internet? We’re breaking it down for you. Traditional phone systems [...]
5 Questions to help choose the right Call Center Software
There are tons of options out there for companies looking for call center software for their business—so many that it can be difficult to choose the correct one. For starters, many businesses are choosing cloud-based software, thanks to the way it gives agents and employees the ability to work remotely from anywhere with an internet connection. But even once you’ve decided to go with cloud-based software, there are additional questions to ask to determine the best one for you. Here are five of the biggest ones. Can I connect it to my existing tools? You want the call [...]
When Call Center Agents Should Stick to the Script…And When to Go Off-Book
Scripts are incredibly important to the agents working in any type of call center. At the moment when an agent connects with a customer, the agent has no idea where or how the call is going to go. But what they do have is the script to serve as a framework or at least a jumping off point that will get the call moving in the right direction. Indeed, for agents of all levels of experience, the script provides a safety net that they can rely on to make sure the call moves forward in a productive manner. That said, [...]
4 Ways to Improve Customer Retention
In order to be successful, businesses must grow. While seeking out new business and new customers does play a role in this, retaining existing customers and fostering those relationships so that they become returning customers is equally as crucial. The people working in your inbound call center are on the front lines when it comes to interacting with existing customers and nurturing those relationships, so they also hold the keys to ensuring you turn first-time customers into recurring ones. Here are four ways you can work with the folks in your inbound call center to help improve customer retention. [...]