Rapid growth of E-commerce websites, social media, changing technology scenarios, has catapulted online customer service expectations to a higher level. It has also made it challenging for contact centers to provide efficient customer service. With many communication channels, customers expect the same level of customer service to be provided across all platforms. As a result, contact centers have to escalate their efforts and processes to provide better customer service and an enhanced customer experience.
According to the Avaya Consumer Preference Report, only 26% of consumers responded positively when asked if they believe customer service centers provide great support. This shows a gap and room for improvement to provide better customer service by contact centers.
Figure source: Avaya Consumer Preference Report 2011
Importance of customer service
Providing quality customer service is essential for any enterprise. The one thing that distinguishes the call center and creates strong customer loyalty towards businesses is quality customer service. Enterprises put in an immense amount of time, money, and resources to provide quality customer service to customers. They are all looking for quality customer service that will create a positive customer experience and enhanced customer satisfaction. Call centers must ensure their agents are aware of the importance of excellent customer service. Call Centers can do this through various training sessions and programs. The training should include but not be limited to: principals of customer service, customer preferences on products or services, customer emotions associated with products, and how to exceed customer expectations.
Best Practices for improving customer service
Call centers can utilize the latest technologies and software to improve customer service. The latest speech analytics softwares now enable call centers to capture, analyze, and perform actions on crucial data captured from customer interactions. In turn, call centers are able to obtain valuable insights into customer behavior patterns and make decisions based on how to improve the customer service experience.
Call recording and monitoring help to enhance agent performance which then improves the overall quality of customer service. Errors and defects in the agent performance and call center procedures can be identified and removed as a way to improve customer service. As a result of locating errors and defects, call centers can provide additional training to agents as another effective way to improve customer service.
