Call center solutions: the 10 questions to ask yourself to increase productivity and improve customer experience – Part II

In a previous article, we presented you with Part I on what to look for when acquiring a new call center solution in order to increase productivity and improve customer experience. In part II, we conclude with the remainder of the 10 questions you should ask yourself to make an enlightened choice. In this article, we tackle various subjects in the form of questions and answers about your current call center operations and the one you are looking into.

When we speak of a “call center”, we are not talking about these office floors where hundreds of agents are stuffed into small cubicles answering calls as if it were a factory. Actually, totally the opposite! A modern call center is composed of a small agile group of team members tasked with delivering a precise value-added role for the small or midsize company that they work for.

By modern call center think customer service department, technical support, sales desk, dispatching or invoicing. These are the modern call centers.

In general, call center solutions contribute to increasing productivity, reducing operational costs, improving customer experience and mitigating employee turnover. To address these objectives let us answer the remainder of the 10 questions.

How do you process calls that are on hold for very long periods?

Customers on hold for 10 minutes may appear to them as if waiting for hours! How does your organization handle such call treatment? With call center solutions, it is possible to pay particular attention to such calls that have been on hold beyond a set threshold and process them with extra care.

Do you keep a call type log in your call center?

Does your organization keep a log of the types of calls it receives? For example, do you count the number of sales, technical or invoicing requests? Do you further split these into finer categories like sales of product A or B and support for C or D? First-class organizations use these statistics to get a pulse of their operations in order to identify important business trends.

How do you handle VIP customers?

You are well aware that VIP customers may only represent 20% of your customer base although they may account for 80% of your revenues. How are you offering them a customer experience that matches their expectations? With call center solutions, it is possible to route calls based on dialed or dialing number and other complex business-driven rules.

How do you train recruits?

In today’s world where skilled labor is even harder to find, recruits require more training than ever before. What tools are you using to ease this task? How are you ensuring that new team members rapidly gain the required level of comfort? Call monitoring and call whispering are two powerful call center functions that contribute to achieving this goal faster.

How are you customizing call treatment based on the dialed number?

Imagine that your organization uses different 1-800 numbers for your current province, for the rest of Canada and for the United States. Are you using different toll-free numbers for various marketing campaigns? How is your organization allowing team members to vary the calling script accordingly? Call center solutions can help agents do so!

How does your organization assign calls based on your team members’ seniority?

As with most organizations, senior team members are paid appropriately. As an organization, what strategies did you implement to reduce operational costs? For example, are you routing the most complex calls to those agents while allowing junior team members to answer more routine ones? Such complex routing rules are possible with call center solutions thus helping your organization reduce costs.

Conclusion

In this two-part series, we presented you with 10 questions (actually 11 if you counted right!) to ask your organization before selecting your next modern call center solution.

In the previous article, we discussed such notions as abandoned call rate, average handling time, call routing strategies, spending time searching for customer files and handling peak traffic hours. We concluded this week with topics such as processing on-hold calls, keeping a call log, handling VIP customers, training recruits, customizing call treatment by dialed number and how to handle calls based on agent seniority.

In these questions, we discussed topics that may impact operations of your existing or future call center from how to increase productivity, reduce operational costs, improve customer experience and retain valuable team members.

Would you like to learn more? Do you want to see a live call-center solution demo? Please contact one of our business solutions senior consultant to assist you and guide you.