While call center management is a mammoth task, following the latest and most innovative trends can help a call center keep delivering quality customer service to its customers. And while trends come and go with each passing year, only the most effective ones can help a call center improve.
As 2019 is approaching, one must look into the call center trends that will have a big impact on call centers the coming year.
Trend 1: Customer Experience is of Prime Importance
By now every call center should be aware of the power of a positive customer experience.
From the biggest corporations to the smallest businesses today know that a poor customer experience is all it takes to lose a customer forever while consistent bad service can ruin any business for good, especially with so many competitors around.
On the other hand, customers today are willing to pay more for better service. According to one survey 86% of buyers would part with 25% extra cash if another company treated them better.
For this reason, customer experience has become an important aspect that call centers can no longer ignore. On the contrary, they are placing more and more emphasis on treating each caller to the highest standard of service to ensure repeat business.
Trend 2: The Importance of First Call Resolution
First call resolution is great for both the call center and the customers alike.
For this, agents should be encouraged to get the first call right. While there will be calls that are more difficult to resolve than others, it’s important to provide customers with the very best quality of care possible every single time.
Monitoring call center agents’ interactions with customers will help a business identify mistakes that leaves the caller unsatisfied and/or frustrated. With proper identification and training such problems can be avoided in future.
Trend 3: Social Network is an Important Customer Service Channel
Social networks like Facebook and Twitter continue to become a key channel in customer service.
As an alternative to calling or emailing, prospective and existing buyers can contact a business’s support team through their social accounts. Call centers should be incorporating this aspect of the customer experience into their operations to make sure that the consumers can reach them on as many channels as possible.
Handling queries through various social media channels can actually be the fastest method. However, as the conversation takes place in a public forum, one must bear the best practices in mind. On social media quick and efficient responses are the key. Ignoring this channel, on the other hand, can ruin a company’s brand reputation.
Trend 4: Every Channel Matters
Customers today expect companies to respond through the same channel they use to interact with the company. So, if they interact with a call center via phone or chat, they would not appreciate the company replying through email.
Therefore, call centers should be ready to incorporate that aspect of customer experience into their operation and give equal importance to all customer interaction channels. Only then they will be able to provide the customers with the multi-channel customer service that modern customers deserve.
Trend 5: Employee Management
Most of the time call centers fail to meet customer’s needs due to disengaged agents who lack power and freedom to improvise or take a decision. Therefore, empowering the agents with knowledge, giving them some decision making freedom and engaging them through a reward-based culture is very important. A company can also arrange for interim training wherever needed to train their agents better.
These are some of the most important call center trends that will help a call center to become successful in 2019 and beyond.
