Posted by on September, 13 2019 7:29 pm
The middle of summer can seem slow no matter what industry you’re a part of. After the initial push of the independence Day holiday in the United States, summer slowly smolders for weeks on end until school starts again for children and people begin thinking ahead to the busy days of autumn and winter ahead. But what does that mid-year lull have to do with your work in the customer service industry?
If your facility is like most, your call center strategies may noticeably slow down during this time each year. To prevent the summer slump and refresh your business’s productivity and profitability, consider these approaches to refreshing your call center strategies:
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every customer you served was your company’s ideal consumer? Before you can ever hope to make that dream a reality, you must begin by determining who your ideal customer is. Many companies don’t actually know who their target audience is, which can work against them in a major way when it comes to providing excellent customer service and customer experiences.
Begin by creating an image of who your target customer or demographic is and what your business wants to do to improve their lives. Every company has something that they feel they bring to the tablet for consumers; what is your specialty? Once you know the answer to those two questions, you have the building blocks in place to create a more comprehensive picture of your ideal customer.
This exercise isn’t about dreaming up a customer who loves everything your company does and never complains. Rather, it is about visualizing a consumer who is truly interested and invested in the products or services you are offering. These kinds of visualizations help you to put yourself into the customer’s shoes and see from their perspective so you can serve them better. What are they looking for? What do they need that you can provide? What could your company be doing better or more of that they aren’t currently? These questions will help you continue to refine the picture of your ideal customer - and use it to better servey our real ones.
Some companies even go so far as to ask their staff members to go through the ordering process or to use the products or services they are offering to the public. While this isn’t always possible in the world of customer service, you can have your staff members practice interactions with one another as a way to improve their exchanges with consumers. It’s a strategy that has been in practice since the dawn of the call center and has always yielded positive results. Try the updated version in your facility to see just how your staff members feel about their interactions with one another.
Artificial intelligence is a great way to gain insight on who your customers are, what their needs are, and how you can better serve them. The problem is, most centers that use artificial intelligence are under-utilizing it - and some aren’t using it at all!
To get the most out of your communications with consumers, it pays to have AI on your side. Rather than busting your budget by hiring a massive team of new staff members to handle quality assurance tasks, you can implement these measures using artificial intelligence and save a fortune - as well as valuable time.
Obviously, you shouldn’t replace your live staff members with artificial intelligence programs - especially the ones who are performing well! Rather, you can supplement the already-amazing work being done by your team with the intuitive assistance offered by AI. Manual listening to calls and recordings, analyzation of consumer speech - all of it can be handled by software while your live agents handle more meaningful tasks that keep your business day moving. It’s one of the best call center strategies for growth and improvement, regardless of your facility’s size!
Consumer feedback is one of the most important tools for growth and improvement in contact centers. However, many facilities struggle to collect this feedback - and many customers hesitate to provide it.
One of the biggest reasons for this hesitation is because consumers feel as if the typical request for feedback is insincere. The scripting that many agents are provided with for requesting feedback - and the follow-up that usually includes an expression of gratitude from the agent - is seen as forced by many consumers. This can turn them off from wanting to interact with the agent to the end of providing feedback or staying on the line any longer than they have to.
Your facility doesn’t have to fall victim to this pattern. You can shake up your strategy for acquiring consumer feedback by improving your agent scripting and allowing for more improvisation. Advising agents to be more conversational - without being too informal - can add an air of genuine care to their request for feedback from the customers they serve. This is more likely to inspire your consumers to share their feedback and yield better results for improving future performance.
Of course, none of these strategies will mean much if you don’t have the right technology in place. Your agents need the right tools to create great customer experiences - and part of your baseline strategy should be updating your technology regularly.
When you’re ready to shake up your call center strategies and give your business year a makeover, give the industry experts at ChaseData a call. We have everything you need in terms of tools and technology to create and implement call center strategies that work for your facility. Contact ChaseData today to learn more!