Memorable experiences are what drives customer loyalty—not only can they make a business, but they can also break it. And with demands for consumer service rising, even a single misstep can be as catastrophic for a contact center as failing to maintain TCPA compliance. Callers today have unreasonably high expectations and are more than happy to go elsewhere if they cannot get what they want.
In fact, most callers say that they would immediately opt for the competition because of poor service. To ensure that your customer remains satisfied with your service, you must keep errors at a minimum. This post will cover some of the most common mistakes you should avoid in running a successful contact center business.
Long holding times
There aren’t many things worse for callers than staying on the line listening to on-hold messages and music for extended periods. Patience isn’t a virtue that any consumer should experience from a contact center. After all, they’re taking away precious time from their work, family, and other things to get the support they need. And long holding times will jeopardize satisfaction levels, leading to poor results.
If your agents keep consumers on hold for more than a few minutes, you need to find ways to lower it. For example, enhancing training or some troubleshooting can help reduce inefficiencies. You might also have to start streamlining your existing operations to keep agents from wasting their time searching for the desired information. In this case, organized knowledge base systems can go a long way to improve the quality of service.
Lengthy queues
If there’s one thing worse than being on hold, it’s waiting in a queue. Don’t make the same mistake many others have of taking lengthy queues for granted. This is an easy way to frustrate and lose customers when you get down to it. Whether you recruit additional agents, shuffle your workforce around, or hire on-call employees to work remotely whenever there’s a high volume of calls, keeping queues at a minimum can make a difference in helping you deliver excellent customer service.
Asking redundant information
While annoying, many contact centers still have a habit of requesting redundant information. Beyond showing the inefficiencies of the operation to customers, it also forces calls to take much longer than it needs to. Fortunately, managing call queues are relatively easy to do. You can simply implement a system where agents can collect all necessary information to address consumer concerns at the beginning of the call. This way, mistakes can be avoided, response time increases, and the process becomes much smoother.
Unclear goals and metrics
Management must be aware of what the key performance indicators (or KPIs) and goals are and share them with the workforce. If not, your metrics won’t mean anything. Moreover, the agents will fail to meet them and fulfill client and consumer expectations. For this reason, you need to make sure that all objectives are clear to everyone. Keep them visible to your entire team to ensure that everyone is aware of what they’re striving towards and form strategies that will help them meet their goals much quicker and more effectively than they would have had without.
Failing to recognize your agents
There’s no denying that quality leadership will always be at the core of any successful business. However, without agents, no call center can achieve success, and one mistake many companies make is failing to recognize their employees’ dedication and hard work. If your workforce doesn’t feel appreciated and empowered, they are less likely to perform well and may even result in higher turnovers for your contact center. Fortunately, this is an easy trap to avoid.
For starters, create a review system that assesses agent performance and uses it to ensure that they remain accountable and help you reward your best performers. Also, always make it a point to avoid speaking in anger when an employee makes a mistake. Instead, try to wait until these strong feelings pass.
Only then should you let yourself handle any potentially stressful situations. Finally, don’t be afraid to motivate agents by letting them know what they do well, no matter how small or insignificant they might appear to be. It may not sound like a big deal. However, you’ll be surprised at how much of a difference it can make in boosting morale and enabling them to perform at their best consistently and most productive.
Conclusion
Contrary to what some might think, mistakes don’t just happen out of nowhere; more often than not, they’re caused. Even minor errors can impact a business and create potentially irrecoverable setbacks. The mistakes listed above may be obvious and easy to steer clear of. Still, it can significantly impact a call center’s ability to achieve the desired outcome.
