8 Ideas to Improve Call Center Performance (And Keep Customers Happy)

Call centre performance is all about efficiency. How long are customers placed on hold? How fast do issues get resolved? How many sales is your team closing? These are among the many questions you should answer to gauge efficiency. It is quite natural for efficiency levels to drop as companies grow. The constant assessment helps determine why levels have dropped, and how to get back on track.

Make performance reviews a habit and gather customer feedback where possible. Through information gathered you get to tailor-make solutions. Find out how you can improve performance through the tips shared below.

1. Set Operating Standards

Synergy is at the very core of success in any organization. Thus, your call centre team needs to be in sync. Have clearly set goals and operational procedures. While varying situations require different responses, leave nothing in grey. Have employees understand what to do and when.

If you have ways in place to measure performance, have your employees understand them. Where absent, you can involve the team in creating some. That way, they will have the desired standards at heart. Think as your customers would so as to come up with suitable techniques.

2. Do Call Quality Monitoring

In order to run a call centre efficiently, you need to use various technologies. Make sure you understand how the technologies put in place work. For example, you now have the possibility to choose cloud phone systems instead of traditional ones.  This tool allows you to store and analyse data for quality assurance purposes, you’re basically automating all the data collection and sorting.

Your next step is to set up a call quality monitoring process taking into consideration the following tips:

• Gain an understanding of what makes great customer experience, and choose a system that symbolizes your findings.
• Understand every detail of the system you put in place
• Tweak your system as you go, depending on your customers’ changing needs

3. Review Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Key performance indicators help in determining whether your system works as desired. If you do not have some in place, research and come up with useful ones. If there are already some KPIs in place, you need to make reviews once in a while. Such reviews help you understand whether the metrics you are measuring are of use. Some may have ceased to provide value.

Some metrics could also contradict or limit the meaningfulness of others. For instance, focusing too much on average handling time. This could eat into the importance of customer satisfaction. You need to balance out the KPIs in place and scrape those that give skewed data.

4. Involve Other Departments

When customers call, they have a wide range of questions. Thus, this makes it necessary to have your call centre employees in sync with other departments. Have some team building events to facilitate bonding. You can also have the team leaders meet up to evaluate areas of cooperation.

Ask yourself how call centres can be of benefit. For example, feedback gathered through calls could help improve departmental processes. Where information needs dispersing, the call centres can prove helpful. It is a matter of creating meaningful relationships for overall growth.

5. Keep Your Employees Motivated

Highly motivated employees stick to the cause and will most likely lead to success. Yet, it can be challenging to use incentives. This is because the nature of this work is hard to evaluate on a monthly basis. One way to go about it would be through instant rewards when you encounter one doing something great.

Other ways to keep employees motivated would be through team building events. It gives them a well-deserved break, which is good for their mental health. If you have an in-house gym, that’s a good thing. Where none is available, consider having subscriptions. Exercise helps keep your team in optimum physical and mental shape.

6. Create Personalized Experiences

Customers increasingly crave for personalized experiences. Any call centre needs to learn how to improve contact experience. Create customer personas based on their decision paths during the buying process. Information collected during previous interactions also provides useful insight.

Setting up your teams plays a major role in personalized experiences. Have various employees deal with specific issues. Then, direct customers as per their needs to the relevant group. This reduces time spent in resolving issues and guarantees the best expertise in handling the issue at hand.

7. Invest In Knowledge

Call centers fail at times due to misinformation. One major cause being poorly trained hires. It is your responsibility to make sure that your employees get proper training. Even before you think of best practices, make sure they understand what your business entails. They should expound on your core business with ease.

Once that is done, bring onboard experts to train on best call center practices. Have such workshops often, with a customized onboarding process for new hires. You can even offer incentives for employees that do their best to gain additional relevant skills and knowledge.

8. Friendly IVR Setup

Interactive Voice Response (IVR), when done properly, could save both parties lots of time. Your employees will not have to answer all calls. Meanwhile, your customers get an opportunity to have their issues solved faster. 

Invest in good programming and arrange your choices in a user-friendly manner. Make sure that the details provided in the options deal with issues conclusively. Consider setting up a callback option too. In the long run, this will save on operational costs while reducing wait times.

Conclusion

Things change quite fast in this digital world. You need to stay alert so as not miss critical changes. Keep a constant eye on new technologies and learn how they can increase call centre efficiency. Try out as many options as you can and take notes. Note and keep what works as you omit what is not in your favour.

While doing so, take care of your team. You can have the best of technologies in place but without a good team you will not achieve much. Right from the hiring process, through training, you need to know how to manage your call center effectively.