6 Things Your Customers Expect From Your Call Center!
Understanding your customers’ expectations is the first step to providing an amazing customer experience. Call centers need to know why clients are reaching out, what they expect from their interaction and how to meet those needs.
According to a Forrester report, nearly 95% of managers say that providing a good customer experience is a top strategic priority, and 75% plan on using customer experience as a competitive advantage.
Providing a seamless customer experience can be challenging with all the different available channels to interact on. And even be downright confusing as consumers engage differently and for different reasons on each channel!
However, there are definitely some commonalities that call centers can take advantage of when setting the bar to meet their expectations.
Below we’ll discuss the top 6 things your customers expect from your call center.
1. Personal attention
Customers increasingly expect a personalized experience at all times, and although fostering relationships with clients takes more effort, it’s well worth the effort as it can turn customers into loyal advocates of your brand.
To deliver that special touch, your organization needs to understand consumers’ preferences and be able to personalise your interactions with them. This means tracking user history with the brand, knowing your demographics and train agents to analyze results from the collected data in order to deliver a customized service.
Apart from data, a few tools can help your contact center deliver the personal attention your customers expect, including call routing, supervisor queue monitoring, activity sync with customer records, and integration with your customer relationship management (CRM) software.
2. Give more options
According to a Talkdesk survey, results indicate that the phone is still the most used and the preferred method to interact with agents.
However, is it important to also accommodate other channels of communication and give customers options to access customer support on their terms. Clients seek assistance through self-service, voice, digital and social means, and allthewhile, still expect each channel to deliver a personalized experience.
An effective way to see which channels might be right for your target customers is by surveying your customer base. A recent study from Amex shows that channel preference depends on the type of interaction. For general questions and inquiries, online self-service and email are the preferred options. However, as the questions becomes more complex, speaking with a live agent is the dominant channel of choice.
3. Solve their problems
At the root of every customer inquiry is a desire for a quick solution and with each call transfer, customers lose patience.
According to the Talkdesk report, the number one and most important priority for customers are to talk with a skilled agent and to have their problems solved quickly. This information can be helpful when managers want to evaluate their own customer service practices and policy standards and make the necessary changes.
In addition, your customers expect front-line service and sales agents to be knowledgeable and be able to handle anything that comes their way. Therefore, it is crucial to empower and train agents so they have the ability to resolve complex customer issues. It should be a main objective to invest in training to give agents more control and authority.
4. Provide a timely response
No one likes to be kept on hold while listening to elevator music that is regularly interrupted by a ‘your call is important to us’ recording. Customers want to be attended to quickly, and have their issues resolved even quicker!
Making the sure right agent KPIs are in place to optimize agent productivity.
Using workforce management for accurate forecasting and employee scheduling can also work to ensure that there are enough agents in place to attend to customers in a timely manner.
5. Keep in touch
Keeping in touch might not necessarily be expected but is always nice, especially if customers had a good experience with the brand in the past. Keeping in touch can lead to repeat sales and positive word of mouth. Following up can be done via email, social media, text message, WhatsApp, and for a super personal touch, via phone.
Reaching out to customers once you have closed a sale helps your brand stay top of mind so the next time they are ready to make a purchase, they’ll be more likely to remember you.
Sending promotions, VIP events, and brand updates all work together to tease the customer until next time.
6. Listen and ask for feedback
Every time I shop for a product or service, I’m the first to scroll through customer reviews to get a better idea of the quality of the product from first-hand customers. It’s so helpful, I take it as my duty to also leave product reviews to help others make a purchase.
I, like many other customers, enjoy giving feedback and sharing my experience. Take advantage of this by putting in place a feedback mechanism to collect user information for your product or service. Not only does it help other users, but most importantly, it helps you improve so you can better meet the need of your clients and continue to grow your sales.
Customers are become evermore demanding and learning to adapt to their needs will determine the success of your customer service. How has your contact center adapted to the dynamic market? Share your thoughts in the comment box down below!
