Striving for Excellence: Three Things You Can Do to Improve the Performance of a Call Center

May 3, 2019

Call centers often get a bad reputation among the public. Many people associate them with stressful experiences and talking to difficult reps.

Part of this is the nature of the work. Call centers often handle customer complaints and get more than their fair share of unhappy and dissatisfied customers. But that doesn’t mean that customer satisfaction isn’t important and happy customers are not within reach. The very best call centers are able to turn dissatisfied customers into satisfied ones through exceptional agent ability and strong leadership.

These are the three things you can do to improve your call center’s performance and ensure each and every call ends in the best possible outcome. For more information on call center performance and a directory of US-based call centers, visit: https://findansweringservice.com/

Develop Clear Processes

Devising clear processes for problems ensures each and every agent has the necessary tools to solve even the most complex issues without putting the customer on hold, transferring their call or causing unnecessary delays.

The best support processes allow the customer’s queries and issues to be dealt with by the agent that answers the phone. This means providing agents with extensive guided processes for a wide variety of problems. In doing so, an agent with minimal technical knowledge can deal with a selection of highly specialized issues quickly and confidently.

Employ Skills-Based Routing

Running a highly-successful call center means maximizing each staff member’s individual skills to improve the call center’s performance. One way of doing this is through skills-based routing.

Skills-based routing ensures phone calls are routed to the agent which is best-suited to handle the customer’s query or complaint. This can be done in two ways. You can implement interactive voice response (IVR) software. This is an automated menu that customers receive when they dial into the center. It might ask them a few questions about their query and get a feel for the nature of the enquiry. Depending on the customer’s answers to a set of questions, the call will be routed to the agent that is best-suited to handle the inquiry.

Alternatively, some call centers route calls based on previous calls made from that phone number. If the phone number is calling for the first time, for example, the call might go through to an agent who excels at onboarding. If it is the second or third time calling, and the other two calls were about checking the status of a loan application, the system would route the call to an agent that handles loan applications.

Ongoing Coaching and Training

Agent coaching and training isn’t something that only happens when agents are hired and onboarded. It should be an ongoing process. Using live call monitoring, a supervisor or manager can listen to agents’ calls and provide useful feedback and coaching to improve performance. Not only does this provide support for inexperienced agents, it also helps veteran agents fine-tune their performance. Ongoing guidance gives the agents the guidance they need to take their skills to the next level and enhance their customer interactions.