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 Expectations

 

The company expectations are the priorities that you define for your customer service reps. These are the goals they are encouraged to meet, the processes they are meant to prioritize and the ways they are trained to deal with customer problems and inquiries. Defining company expectations will help unify your team and create a consistent experience for the customer, as well as give your agents direction that will make their jobs easier. When everyone has the same goals to work towards, everyone works more efficiently and diligently.

Some examples of possible company expectations include:

  • Achieving first call resolution as often as possible
  • Keeping customer wait times under a certain length of time
  • Minimizing lag time and/or transfers during calls

Customer Expectations

 

These expectations are the standards the customer has in their mind when it comes to reaching out to a company for customer service. They may not be specific to your company or your product; they are the more general expectations for what a customer expects to happen when they connect with a company. Even though they are not as specific as brand expectations, it is worth knowing what your customers’ expectations are going to be when it comes to what they consider quality customer service. If you aren’t meeting these minimum expectations, your agents will need to do a lot of heavy lifting during calls to make up for it.

Some examples of possible customer expectations include:

  • A very easy path to reaching a live person on the phone
  • Reaching a person who is capable of solving their problem right away
  • A speedy solution, no matter the issue

Brand Expectations

 

Brand expectations exist at the intersection of company expectations and customer expectations. These are the specific things that your customers expect from your brand in particular—and they are the things that will be most disappointing and most likely to hurt your chances of creating repeat customers if they are not met. To determine your brand expectations, you must consider the image, promise and mission of your company and the standards those things will inspire in customers. When it comes to business, and especially companies that sell products and services, the inner workings of your business must match the exterior image you present. If they don’t, you will not be meeting brand expectations and you will lose customers.

Some examples of possible brand expectations, depending on the type of company, include:

  • An easy-to-navigate, well-designed website
  • Multiple methods through which customers can contact customer service
  • Some sort of satisfaction guarantee for new customers

These are a lot of expectations to be resting on the shoulders of your customer service agents. One thing that should not be weighing them down is a clunky and hard-to-use call center platform. CallShaper is the opposite—to learn more about how it can support your agents, request a demo today.