How to Get The Most Of Out Your Contact Center

by on 18/08/12 at 10:20 am

The gears that keep any business running are the customers. Satisfied customers can be enormous assets in terms of advertising and promoting a brand when they share their good experiences with others.  The more customer loyalty your business has, the more new customers a business is likely to obtain.  Alternatively, dissatisfied customers can create a horrible snowball effect of negative views which translate to negative press, word of mouth and ultimately loss of revenue.

Avoiding this snowball effect entirely, then, is crucial to maintaining a successful and profitable business. The best way to ensure that your gears stay in great shape to help your business machine remain well-oiled and successful is to have excellent customer service.

Forrester’s Kate Leggett says there are four keys to good customer service: good technology, good customer service processes, a well-managed organization that values its employees, and good data. Many companies have realized the importance of technology today and have already begun to utilize key one. However, many businesses overlook the importance of customer service and the use of data in improving customer contact. The overall goal should always be to create a uniform and well-informed service experience. Customers want personalized service whether it is in person or over the phone. With that said, companies need to change the way they approach and engage their consumers.

One way companies can achieve better customer engagement and increase customer satisfaction is by efficiently managing their contact centers and call center software. Through simple optimization your contact center can produce great rewards for your business. The gains include keeping loyal customers, maintaining a competitive advantage, gaining new customers, attracting and retaining skilled staff and reducing costs due to increased efficiency.

Tips and Insights Into Getting the Most out of Your Contact Center:

  • List Management: Contact centers must be able to reach the right people at the right time. This could mean contact people by phone calls, text messages or even email. Center managers need the appropriate data to figure out the perfect time and method of contact to reach customers.
  • Pacing: The number of calls a contact center makes is extremely important data to maintain. They must be able to contact the right number of people to maintain a profitable level of productivity.
  • Control personnel costs: Utilize resource management by reducing over-staffing, monitoring the actual amount of time agents are speaking with customers to ensure their time it used efficiently and then ensure agents stick to a stick schedule.
  • Maintain active conversations between customers and agents: Make customers aware that the lines of communication are constantly open, but be sure not to overwhelm them with one-sided business communication that can be interpreted as soliciting or harassment.
  • Keep contact statistics: Measuring and tracking productivity as often as you can is the only way to ensure that your business is on a steady work-flow.
  • Invest in quality workforce optimization platforms: Get strategic scheduling, performance management and data to help you improve productivity and reduce costs.
  • Actively Manage and Optimize Productivity
  • Measure and track productivity as often as you can: Ensure that your business is on a steady work-flow. Invest in quality workforce optimization platforms to get strategic scheduling, performance management and data to help you improve productivity and reduce costs.
  • Legal Compliance: Technological advances are presenting new opportunities for contact centers, but existing laws on outbound calling and collections have created ambiguity and potential risk.  Make sure that your company is in compliance with the new laws and regulations.
  • Utilize new methods within your contact center: Social media outlets such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and blogs are new mediums that contact centers are experimenting with. Contact centers have noticed that customers are open to sharing information regarding past experiences on social networking sites and that they are an exciting more personal way of connecting with customers. A key to utilizing social media in a contact center is being able to monitor the communication and responding directly to customer problems in a timely fashion.

Remember: the sole purpose of contact centers is to ultimately provide better service, which will in turn provide your business with a more loyal and hopefully larger following. Take advantage of these tips and insights to ensure your company stays ahead of the curve.

 About The Author: Meredith Kimelblatt is an expert writer who covers topics relating to workforce optimization and call center optimization for Aspect. Minor content updates made by Enterprise Features editors.

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