Your call center is the epicenter of customer contact. While your social pages are becoming integral for customer service, consumers still want to speak with someone over the phone. Thus, ensuring that your efforts are at their max is important in being successful. So, is it time for you to upgrade?
If you’re unsure, take it from CustomerServiceManager.com: “By improving their customer service call centers using these guidelines, one of our clients, Golden Rule Insurance, improved their sales conversions by 88%.” There are three important options to consider when it comes time to take it to the next level.
Improve Your Management
Whether your call center is overseas or across the country, it’s important that you are closely managing them from afar. However, if you’re simply a point of contact, as opposed to managing it yourself, it’s likely that some ideas or changes are overlooked or not successfully put into place. To improve your overall management, consider two main options:
- Visit more often: You can’t know how your call center is operating if you aren’t there. While you don’t need to be present every day, or even every week, be sure to check in once a month to ensure things are moving along as they should be.
- Process coaching: Prepare coaching sessions for the once a month visit – or do so via webinar. This is a great way to stay involved, while improving the quality of your call center.
Refer To Your Customers
Your call center is all about helping customers; answering their questions and giving them what they want. So, who better to refer to when trying to improve your efforts? There are a number of ways you can reach out to customers; however you don’t want your needs to become an annoyance. Consider the newest mobile marketing trend for obtaining feedback.
- Mobile follow-up: Instead of sending out a spammy email that will go directly to the trash, ask 3 basic questions via text; only sending the next questions if the first is answered; so on and so forth. Take this opportunity to remind them of the great customer service they received, and how you can improve in the future.
Consider Your Other Options
Your current call center operations will eventually be out of contract – and when that happens, it’s time to assess areas for improvement and how you can get there. Whether you’re interested in moving your work elsewhere, or getting more from the same company, be sure to consider your two improvement options.
- More for your money: Which company can offer you more work for the same amount? Be sure that your current provider isn’t taking without giving to their full capacity.
- What do you need more of: So, your current operations are working well, but what can you add to make it better? New opportunities may have risen through the contract period, or perhaps you discovered a better way to serve your customers.
Your call center is the most important part of customer service – it’s the main point of contact between you and the people who write your paycheck. Thus, ensuring that it is competitive will be critical. Consider your upgrade options if you feel operations are beginning to slack.
About the Author
Jessica Sanders is an avid small business writer touching on topics that range from social media to call center software and collections. She is a professional blogger and web content writer for ResourceNation.com.