Is An Offshore Call Center Right for You?
Offshore call centers can be an incredibly helpful tool for companies. They offer a significantly less expensive option than in-house, onshore or nearshore call centers, they are typically available during overnight hours in the US, the market is more competitive and the labor force is larger. But in addition to these considerations, if you’re deciding whether or not to use an offshore call center you also need to think about the tasks you need the call center to do. Indeed, some tasks and jobs are better suited to an offshore call center than others and a lot of it comes [...]
4 Ways to Improve Virtual Training
Now that more and more call centers are staffed by agents who are working from home either part time or full time, it is critical that the virtual training provided by call centers is just as comprehensive, engaging and helpful as in-person trainings were in the past. Not only does high-quality training guarantee that customers are getting the best possible service, but it also dramatically lowers agent attrition rates. Here are four strategies that will help you improve your virtual training. Offer Technology Training Before the Training It can be easy to forget that even with the highest [...]
The Case For and Against Short Wait Times
No one likes waiting for anything. Especially in 2023, when everything from a random fact to a full meal can be accessed in seconds or delivered within minutes. People today seem to look for instant gratification and prioritize speed above all else, so it makes sense that call centers should prioritize it too, right? That the shorter their wait times, the more satisfied their customers will be? In some cases, this is true, but not always. Here, we’re breaking down when you should prioritize short wait times and when it’s okay to push it further down the list of [...]
3 Ways to Take Customer Service from Good to Great
It’s become increasingly clear in recent years that the quality of your product is no longer the most important thing when it comes to securing and keeping customers. Indeed, the quality of your customer service is just as important, if not more crucial—especially when it comes to holding onto existing customers. According to a recent survey from Emplifi, 86% of consumers said they would leave a brand they were once loyal to after only two or three bad customer service experiences and 63% said they would leave after just one. All that to say, good customer service is no [...]
4 Ways to Reduce Customer Complaints
Customer complaints are, sadly, inevitable when you’re in the inbound call center business. Even if your agents are offering top-notch service, you never know what sort of emotional baggage a customer is going to bring into a call that you will need to contend with. Or maybe a customer is perfectly patient and civil, but in the end you just can’t offer a satisfactory solution to their problem. Either way, customer complaints are going to happen. And while you likely can’t eliminate them completely, there are strategies that will drastically reduce the volume and frequency of customer complaints. Here [...]
3 Steps to Handling a Customer Service Backlog
Backlogs are an inevitable part of running a customer service call center. No matter how well prepared you are or how well trained your agents are, things happen that will stretch your waiting times and increase the number of customers in the queue so much that your agents start to sweat. The good news: If you take the proper steps to calmly and efficiently handle a backlog, you can keep agents from becoming overwhelmed and quickly work through the lengthening queue. Here are the three steps you need. Determine the Cause Backlogs can be surprising and unexpected in [...]
Call Center Closeup: Dispatch Services
Many inbound call centers handle customer service calls coming from, well, customers. But not every inbound call center is solely outward-facing in this way, nor are the agents in every call center the ones offering solutions. One such example of an inbound call center that would not be considered customer service is one that offers dispatch services. Here, we’re taking a closer look at the types of dispatch services an inbound call center might offer. While the word dispatch has many definitions, for our purposes we are focused on the first one: to send off or away with promptness [...]
This Should Be the Focus of Every Customer Call
When a customer calls into an inbound call center, whether to seek help with a problem, inquire about a sale or promotion, schedule service, or some other reason, the call center agent they reach undoubtedly has a goal for the call in mind before they even answer the phone. The goal might be to resolve the problem and end the call as quickly as possible, or it may be to make a sale or renew a contract at any cost. While these are valuable in the short term, and may very well be what the customer and/or the company are [...]
3 Call Center Staffing Problems and How to Solve Them
Having the right people answering phones in your inbound call center is a crucial element of sustaining a successful business. That said, this is hard to achieve in the first place, let along maintain over the long term. There are countless roadblocks and problems call center staffers run into when trying to build a call center that adequately supports their customers while also supporting the ultimate goal of creating a profitable business. Here, three of the most common problems and advice on how to solve them. Problem: Too much agent turnover. Solution: Adequate training and support. Agent turnover is [...]
Call Center Closeup: Higher Education Call Centers
Institutions of higher education like colleges and universities may not be the first places you think of when it comes to organizations that utilize call centers, but they have to field a huge volume of inquiries from prospective and current students and their families. In fact, many large institutions may need to use an outsourced call center to keep up with demand at certain times of year so that everyone is able to get the information they need. Here, learn about some of the most common tasks that are handled in higher education call centers. Financial Aid Support [...]
3 Questions that Can Transform Your Customer Experience
There are many metrics and statistics you can collect behind the scenes at your inbound call center, metrics like average call wait time, average length of call, and frequency of first call resolution. And while these are helpful and can drive needed adjustments in your processes, they don’t tell you much about the customer’s experience. Indeed, there comes a time when you just have to ask the customer for their thoughts—and one of the easiest ways to do this is via a single question survey that’s administered immediately after the conclusion of their interaction with your brand. Here, three [...]
Why You Should Establish SMART Goals
We’ve discussed many times on this blog why it’s so important to set goals for your inbound call center: without them, agents can feel unmotivated and adrift, making them less focused and less efficient. But perhaps even more important than the act of setting goals is choosing the correct goals to set and one way to ensure you are setting the correct goals is to use the SMART framework. Here, we’re breaking it down. Specific The S in SMART stands for specific, and it’s the first step for a reason. If goals are not specific enough, then they [...]
The Power of Expectations
A lot of the success of your customer service-centric inbound call center has to do with expectations. But not just one person’s expectations: there are three unique sets of expectations that must be met in order for your team to provide a satisfactory and first-rate customer service experience. Those are the company’s expectations of the quality of service provided, the customer’s expectations of the quality and type of customer service provided, and the expectations the customer has of your brand that they expect you to meet. Here, discover why all three are critical to providing exceptional customer service. Company [...]
A New Survey Reveals What People Consider ‘Good Customer Service’
Before setting goals for your inbound call center, it’s important to determine what benchmarks and characteristics are important to you as a company—but you should also consider what characteristics and benchmarks are important to your customers. The best way to find out what these are? Ask them! Customer support company Intercom did just that in a recent survey, polling over 1,000 U.S. customers in a variety of age groups to determine what is most important to them when it comes to good customer service. Here are some of the biggest takeaways. Feeling Valued is Most Important In the survey, [...]
Balancing a Human Approach with an Automated One
Businesses are nothing without their customers. And as much as you would love the opportunity to connect individually with each and every one of them, unfortunately that isn’t possible (especially if you’re successful and growing). For this reason, it’s important to create a balanced approach to client communication that delineates between situations in which a human touch is needed and those in which automated support will do. Establishing this line and sticking to it will prevent your agents from becoming overloaded and your customers from becoming frustrated with long wait times and inefficient processes. Here, learn when an automated approach [...]
