A contact centre isn’t just any place for handling customer complaints; it’s an opportunity to demonstrate your company’s human side and build brand loyalty. In this day & age, while digital self-service is of greater importance, there are still industries where a personal touch and empathetic human contact are essential. The key is to use contact centres to increase engagement with the customers and promote trust. Advisors serve as the “face” of the brand, which provides an invaluable method for learning about customers’ needs, thus strengthening relationships and improving retention. Today, in this article, we’ve put together nine fantastic tips for integrating your contact centre with the business better so that it plays a crucial role in promoting customer satisfaction and ensuring loyalty.
Be Strategic
Effectively designed & executed CX with contact centre plans in place are crucial investments that can pay off in terms of customer evaluation. Contact centres are a fundamental part of an overarching CX vision, not just another cost. When implemented well: they can bolster the company’s brand value and enhance customer loyalty through improved satisfaction, advocacy and retention. Top-level management should be actively involved in supporting contact centre objectives. It can be reinforced by following a scorecard tracking system that allows executives to track customers’ interactions with the brand.
Have Smart Goals
The operational performance metrics that evaluate the contact centre efficiency will always be present, but to have a valuable impact on your business, they should go beyond simply measuring the average handle time, cost per contact, after-call work time, etc. Also, consider how many times customers are re-contacting you for a resolution or because of delayed action. If having digital sign-ups are crucial for your business – then ensure they are monitored too. It’s also essential senior leaders have some visibility over these goals and accept responsibility for delivering results; if increasing product cross-selling is your end goal, then a relevant person should have their progress measured in line with this aim. Doing so will strengthen collaboration across departments and ensure the goal is achieved well and on time.
Having the Right People in Place
To create successful customer interactions: it is essential to hire personnel who have an affinity, to engage with customers. The staff must have the skills to listen, inspire desired behaviours and be understanding; at the same time. To put it simply: we look for personnel who enjoy working with people. Additionally, consistency must be maintained across all customer touchpoints for ‘Customer Experience Continuity’ to be achieved. It will prevent any erratic behaviour which could confuse or break the trust of customers.
Right Staff Training
Optimizing the employee experience and combining it with an optimal CX requires a focused effort on human-centred design to furnish and develop your team so that they can offer the best service possible. Advisors encounter difficulty when they cannot answer customers’ queries and need to pass on statements to customers which are hard to say or execute the wishes of the customer. Therefore, having access to training is critical – not just for reinforcing the skills needed for their job but also to ensure they understand what makes your brand special. This way, people working in your contact centre will become true brand ambassadors.
Supply Tools for Engagement
Contact centre advisors must have user-friendly tools that bestow the ability to work more efficiently and rightfully address customers’ requirements. For instance, customer retention contact centres should offer curated deals that can lessen attrition, which should be appropriate for the consumer, monitored for short and long-term efficiency, and ranked according to effectiveness. Scripting and/or guidelines can help the adviser to positively deliver the proposal.
Leverage the Product and Customer Lifecycle
By understanding where the customer is in the product lifecycle, you can provide support which boosts engagement. Ensure customers are comfortable and knowledgeable of your product’s advantages during onboarding. As they progress through their lifecycle, advise them of advantages they haven’t experienced yet or that captivate other users. If they are part of a loyalty program, remind them how to benefit from it.
Integrations to Gain Insights at a Deeper Level
We all agree that customers should not have to explain themselves to multiple reps. Therefore, there needs to be strong integration between the contact centre and digital channels so advisors can gain insight into their journey. To ensure a great CX across all channels, it is important to centralize, connect and align all customer data – no matter how, when or where they choose to get in touch. With this in place, every bit of information and activity related to specific customers will be unified.
Building Customer Loyalty with Insights
Conversational Analytics is an integral part of digital transformation and provides an untapped capability for many organisations to manage and comprehend unstructured data from all customer interactions. AI/ML platforms & tools can be utilized to analyse conversations in contact centres, progressively profile customers, gather targeted information, and capture unexpected feedback. Furthermore, it allows organisations to gain valuable customer insights on products, services, benefits, and experiences.
Resource Allocation
Customers all deserve to be treated with the same care and consideration. Utilizing data can give a more nuanced view of customers’ value and importance, thus allowing for tailored treatments that generate desired behaviours. Contact centres may leverage this by establishing tiers – an escalation centre, contact queues, or even a retention centre – which assign the highest skilled personnel to manage the most important customers. Nevertheless, advisors must have access to data that allows them to identify customer values and appropriate tools to act per those values.
Conclusion
Having additional channels for interaction, encouraging self-service for less complex questions, & using AI and other means to help customers self-serve can still help contact centres reduce costs. When a customer contacts you, a well-handled, empathic advisor can make all the difference between a satisfied customer (even delighted!) & an unhappy customer.