A brand can make it or break it based on the kind of customer support experience that they provide to their customers. If you are prompt, empathetic, and make the customer’s lives easier rather than increasing obstacles, they would love your brand and stay loyal (obviously there are other contributing factors too). One of the best ways to do that is by setting up a call center that handles both the inbound and outbound call operations.
Call Center for Customer Support
Call center agents being the first line of contact for the customers play a vital role in the customer support process. Thus, it becomes important to provide them with the best tools and technology to handle customer queries. And that’s where a call center software comes into the picture.
Now, it’s important to understand that an effective call center software solution will be the one that not only allows the agents to manage inbound calls but also improve their sales conversions for outbound calls. So, the bottom line is to choose a contact center software that improves your overall call center operations.
Call Center Software Features to Improve Customer Support
Let us have a look at how exactly can a call center software help businesses improve their customer support.
Route Calls to Qualified Agents
I am sure you are no stranger to being bounced around from one agent to another while seeking answers to your questions. And I am sure it must not have been a pleasant experience. This can easily be solved using an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system combined with an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD). Now, when a customer calls you, they will be directed to the most suitable department or agent based on their DTMF input. Doing so significantly reduces the average time to handle a call and improves first call resolution.
CTI Integration for Caller Details
What if I tell you, you can further enable your agents to have qualified conversations and support your customers better? You can achieve that using CTI and CRM integration. So, when the agent receives or even dials an outbound call, she/he will see a popup with all the relevant customer information. For eg., in the case of a bank call center, the agent can view the customer’s portfolio, any active loan or if they have a credit card or insurance, etc. Having this information allows the agents to modify their sales pitch and increase their chances of converting the prospect.
Interact with Customers on their Favorite Channel
Call centers have traditionally been seen as only using voice or email to communicate with the customers and prospects. Not anymore. Now, customers expect to engage with the company on various channels. Whether they tweet, write a Facebook post, call, or drop a WhatsApp message, they want their query to be resolved quickly and effectively. An omnichannel call center software not only allows you to serve your customers on their preferred channel, but also delivers a seamless experience across all of them.
Let the Agents have a Unified View of Customer
Offering customer service on multiple channels is not enough unless you can efficiently stitch the customer journey to ensure that their issues are resolved to their satisfaction. A unified agent desktop provides the call center agents with a single, 360-degree view of the customer. They can see the touchpoints, interaction history, and open/pending complaints, etc. The best part is that they do not have to switch between multiple windows or toggle between various tabs to access this information – all of it is available on a single screen which is integrated with existing CRM or other third-party systems to easily push and pull data.
Monitor to Identify Gaps & Improve
We talked about agents and also the customers. However, an important piece of the call center puzzle is the supervisor or the manager. A call center can truly be successful when they are performing well on their metrics and its the job of the call center supervisor to ensure that. A good call center software provides live dashboards to track agent performance, call volume, average hold time, queue data, etc in real-time. Additionally, having comprehensive reports further provides the supervisors with valuable information about the gaps in operations or help in identifying which all agents need more training for improvement.
Closing Thoughts
Even with so much advancement in call center technology such as the emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the truth is that when distressed customers still seek human interaction. Chatbots and voice bots can work as support systems in lessening the agent’s burden by handling mundane queries, but they cannot completely replace the humans. So, apart from the above-mentioned features, it is imperative to look for a call center software that allows your business to grow and offers a robust and secure technology to do so.