Dick Bourke of Scorebuddy shares a seven-step process for how the contact centre can improve customer journeys.
There’s a reason why a Walker study predicts that by 2020, customer experience is expected to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
So it should be no surprise that companies have come around to realising that CX is an important criterion for success. The problem is understanding exactly what needs to happen to improve CX in call centres.
With Gartner predicting that by 2019 more than 50% of organisations will redirect their investments toward customer experience innovations, how do you ensure you direct your investments correctly?
Here are seven steps you need to take if you want to improve the customer experience in your call centre.
How to Improve the Customer Experience in Call Centres
There is always room for the improvement of CX in call centres with a myriad of touchpoints where a customer connects with your brand. At each point, there’s something you can do to enhance your call centre customer experience. The key is taking it a step at a time.
Step 1: Get to Know Your Customer
Your sales team probably already knows a lot about your customers, including their demographics and expectations. But to take it a step further, your call centre customer service team needs to know your clients personally.
Put a face on your customer by creating a persona that allows your call centre team to envision exactly who they are communicating with, day in and day out. The more detailed, the better!
For example, if your primary customer is male aged between 18 and 30 and living in the city, you might create a persona like this:
- Jeremy Knowles, 25
- Single, living in a three-bedroom apartment with four roommates
- Loves to go out on the weekends and after work, usually to bars and clubs
- Works long hours and is passionate about his job
Suddenly, your customer is a real person. CX in call centres improves the quality of information you know about your customer.
Step 2: Pay Attention to the Customer Journey
At different stages in the sales cycle a customer will interact with your customer service team in different ways. If you want to know how to improve the customer experience in your call centre, then you need to interact with your clients in a way that is based upon where they are in their journey.
For example, a new customer who’s just been introduced to your brand should receive a more generic and generally welcoming greeting compared with someone who has already purchased from you. Their interaction should be much more personalised and specific to their needs.
With the help of your customer relationship management system, your team should be able to pinpoint a customer’s journey and respond appropriately. The idea is to help your team quickly and easily recognise how to approach every client.
Step 3: Develop Emotional Connections
The importance of emotive CX cannot be overstated. Customers want to interact with and purchase from brands that share their values, care about what they want, and understand who they are. This requires your call centre team to develop emotional intelligence for connection with callers.
Agents need to move away from classic and robotic customer service and instead implement more emotionally intelligent tactics to improve CX in call centres. For example, your team could implement:
- Storytelling, which helps the customer relate better to the agent and brand
- Personalisation in the form of a handwritten note
- Surprise, such as a free upgrade or product
- Loyalty rewards for returning customers
You want to create emotional connections that make the CX in your call centre as positive as possible.
Step 4: Decrease Customer Effort
Simplicity is best. Clients want one-click checkouts, instant communication, next-day shipping, fast service, and they expect the same simplicity from their CX in call centres.
If you want to know how to improve customer experience in a call centre, as well as the call centre QA, consider:
- Asking for the customer’s phone number and offering call-back in case of disconnection
- Enhancing an agent’s understanding of customer questions to decrease the need for the client to repeat themselves
- Providing FAQs and knowledge base articles for self-service and additional information
- Providing extra materials after a call to supplement the service
- Making every effort to solve the problem during the first call
Step 5: Ask for Feedback
Customers want to know that you’re listening to their wants and needs. The best way to do this is to ask for their feedback and to open up a dialogue about what they like and don’t like about your brand, call centre and customer service representatives.
Think about asking your customers to fill out a short survey after every interaction or end every call with a question about how you did and what they would improve for next time. The more you know about the current CX in your call centres, the better.
Step 6: Train Your Team for CX in Your Call Centre
Your team is your most valuable asset when it comes to the call centre customer experience. How your team is trained to handle clients will determine how they respond to your brand.
Make sure you have proper onboarding set up as well as ongoing training for your customer service team. And don’t be afraid to think outside the box. You can deliver training online using multimedia material, through quizzes, and through personal one-on-one attention.
Step 7: Engage Where and How Customers Want
To improve CX in call centres you may need to change where and when you interact with your customers. A phone call might not be the best channel for every client. Instead, consider engaging with your customers on their channels of choice – whether that’s through email, social media, or blog comments – and be sure to follow the rules of the platform to use the right voice and tone.
Dick Bourke
If you want to know how to improve the customer experience in a call centre, you need to pay close attention to your customer and how and where they interact your brand. It’s the intersection of both that makes the biggest difference.
Instead of leaving CX in call centres to chance, take active measures to improve and give your company the best opportunity for success.
Author: Guest Author
Published On: 14th Feb 2019 - Last modified: 21st Jan 2020
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