Call centers are a perfect tool for the external communication of any company. Today we will see how to improve a call center and how to get the most out of customer service.
Efficiency and call centers
What does it mean for a call center to be efficient? What does it mean to “improve” a call center? Well, efficiency can be measured in a company as the relationship between the means needed to accomplish a task and the results we obtain from it. Therefore, any task that achieves the desired objective, using the least amount of resources possible, is efficient. Among these means, it is understood that they can be material resources, the company’s staff, time, money…
The task of call centers is to provide services and products to customers, always achieving maximum satisfaction from them. There are three areas that must work in the best possible way for a call center to be effective. Let’s see which areas help to improve a call center.
How to improve a call center
Performance of call center agents
To improve your agents‘ performance, you must first be clear about what needs to be improved. The first step is therefore quite simple: you have to evaluate your agents and analyse how they perform on calls with customers.
For example, understand what type of enquiry is most often made by customers: perhaps there is a product that stands out from the rest and that customers buy more often. Or many customers frequently call to enquire about a specific type of service you offer. The better you understand your customers, the better you can train your agents to serve them in the best possible way. To know everything about the calls your company receives and makes, call centers have a functionality that is perfect: supervision. One person is designated as supervisor, and this person will be in charge of controlling all the information and interactions of the call center agents. This implies that there must be a good relationship between the supervisor and the agents. And there must be continuous communication between the supervisor and the agents, but also between all the agents. Which brings us to the second aspect.
Internal communication directly affects external communication
Yes, and negative internal communication will negatively affect external communication. How? Very easily; if agents are not fully communicated with each other, they will not be able to communicate properly with their clients. At least, not in the long term. Let’s look at an example. A client calls the company for the first time, and is attended to by agent X ; he is delighted with the service, but must call again the following week to end the whole process. The following week is impossible to contact Agent X, so Agent Y takes care of the same customer. And since it is not the same agent who attended him previously and there has been no communication between the two agents, Agent Y cannot help as effectively as Agent X, who already knows the case and the client. Therefore the client is not satisfied and decides that the company does not convince him. We have lost a client.
Now, how different would the same story have been with a simple prior communication between the agents, right? Agent Y would be able to serve the client without problems, and the fact that the two agents work so efficiently will leave a good feeling in the client. Trust.
CRM integrations
But of course, in some companies there are too many agents to be able to tell everything about their customers to others. That’s why one way to improve the performance of call centers is with CRM integrations (such as Zoho, Zendesk, Freshdesk…), which allow internal and external communication to be improved. Internal communication is under control with the virtual PBX, which connects agents through an internal messaging chat, calls and internal videoconferences. And the CRM integrations take care of bringing together the best of internal and external communication: it is an integration that allows your agents to manage customer information. Thanks to this cloud-based database, agents will be able to access all customer information and any interactions they have previously had with other agents. They increase productivity and help you manage business opportunities.
As you can see, the call center features make it very easy for you. Even so, the most important thing is to train the agents correctly and to be always progressing and improving. This is how the efficiency of the agents’ performance is achieved.
Improving the technological area
As in the previous point, in order to improve the technological aspect, the work carried out must be continuously evaluated to be able to apply improvements in the processes or systems we use.
Many systems or applications have basic features, but you can adapt and customise them as your work progresses. Especially the tools that work with WebRTC. A clear example is the one we have just seen; the call center can be more efficient thanks to the CRM integrations it is compatible with.
For example, customer service can be improved by adopting voice recognition technologies. This is a sector that is growing at a dizzying rate and is increasingly integrated with communication tools for greater productivity (like ASR, or voice biometrics).
Another example is the integration of artificial intelligence for online customer service, such as chatbots or virtual assistants, which can resolve simple queries.
How to improve a call center from work development?
As in the previous points, we begin with an evaluation of the tasks that each agent is in charge of, analysing the nature of these tasks and how they are carried out, what aspects need to be improved, etc. And, after finding these weaknesses, train the agents to improve in a realistic and organised way. If an element fails, we must find the solution.
At the same time, we must find what motivates the agent and also translates into efficiency. For example, give the agents more autonomy and responsibility. This means efficiency, especially in the long term, as they will not only expand their activities, but will also be able to learn continuously as they carry out more activities, thanks to the continuous monitoring of their tasks. They have more freedom when working, although there is still control.
Efforts should also be made to improve the agent’s relationship with the client. We are no longer talking about just assisting the client correctly, but about informing him/her about the company, speaking and answering questions patiently, and treating him/her cordially and empathetically. The client should feel that he is talking to a real person who is there to help him in any way he can, not just a simple interlocutor who has to take the call and wants to finish it as soon as he can.
If you were also wondering how to improve a call center, we hope you already have it clear. Remember that it is very important to know what you have in your company and what you need to improve, and that thanks to WebRTC’s call centers, you can improve and adapt your call center to what you need quickly and easily.
