It’s easy for contact center teams to become so busy with pressing tasks and concerns that little time or attention is left for small changes that can dramatically improve contact center performance. However if contact centers implement the following eight changes, they will make a big impact on center productivity and customer satisfaction.
1. Occupy idle time. A minute of down time here or there may not seem like much, but those minutes can add up to hours, days and weeks of wasted time. To avoid wasting time, contact center management should train employees on what to do when not interacting with a customer. Team members might review training materials, catch up on data entry, or review performance with a manager.
2. Integrate software. When agents have to switch between applications to find caller history, report a problem, and resolve issues, their productivity slows and customer frustration increases. Implementing software that integrates applications allows agents to work from one platform and more effectively serve customers.
3. Make sure agents have access to all necessary information. As soon as a customer calls, emails, texts, or chats with a contact center, the assigned agent should be able to view all pertinent information about that customer and their call history. If a customer must be transferred to another agent, the next agent should be able to access all information from the previous agent. Contact center software provides call history with every caller, making access to customer information as simple as looking at a screen.
4. Offer multiple channels of communication. Every customer has a preference for how they would like to contact a company. Implementing all possible channels of communication ensures that customers can reach a contact center on their terms, whether it’s through a phone call, email, text message, or live chat. Omni-channel contact centers also allow agents to handle more than one enquiry at a time, increasing agent productivity and overall conversions.
5. Make sure all channels are operating as effectively as possible. If one channel of communication goes down, the other channels become overloaded, making agents overwhelmed and making customers frustrated. Contact center management should ensure that all channels of communication are operating with the latest technology in order to prevent crashes.
6. Engage employees. One of the best ways to improve contact center performance is to allow team members to feel involved and appreciated. Employees who feel respected are more likely to commit to their job and perform better than those employees that do not feel respected. To engage employees, contact center management should ask employees for feedback, reward employees for performing well, and set up friendly competitions between teams.
6. Engage customers. Like employees, customers appreciate having a say in the way a contact center does business. Contact center teams should ask customers for their feedback after interactions. Any gathered feedback should be shared with the entire staff, and any suggested changes should be implemented where appropriate. Agents should thank customers for their feedback, inform them of what they plan to do to implement any suggested changes, and thank the customers for their business,
7. Train creatively. Management and staff alike can easily grow tired of the same training format. To effectively train employees, management should approach training with new ideas. Management might assign an employee to train other employees, or train through games to more effectively engage employees.
Taking the time to implement these eight small changes can help a contact center run more efficiently, help customers feel please with their interactions, and help employees recognize the importance of their role in the overall success of the business.
Check out BroadSoft’s contact center performance solutions.
