Biggest Challenges for Call Center Managers
The efficiency and efficacy of a customer call center can make or break any company. In order to deliver a first-rate customer service experience, call center managers must navigate a constantly changing industry where technology and procedures are rapidly evolving.
Here’s a look at how that technology can help you overcome some of your biggest call center challenges.
Workload
If your business is doing something right, there will always be more customers than customer service representatives. And the way your company manages its workload will have a major impact on customer satisfaction, retention, and repeat business.
Call activity may fluctuate at various times of the day, various days of the week, or during a marketing or sales promotion. Search for these patterns buried within your recent call center metrics so that you can schedule your staff proactively.
Temporary increases in call volume can be easily handled by outsourcing if your space or budget for new hires is limited. A cloud based call center can seamlessly integrate the customer service experience, managing the front-end interaction in ways that free up your staff to deliver the kind of specialized service your customers expect.
Comprehensive, proactive communication between your department and the sales and marketing team can help you stay ahead of the curve during sales and promotions.
Productivity
The flip side of ensuring your workload is well-managed is determining how productive your process enables your employees to be.
Are you using a software system that brings omnichannel and company information to your support team’s fingertips and allows them to quickly capture critical details from the customer interaction? Have you unleashed the power of artificial intelligence to improve the customer experience? Does your process utilize the fewest number of steps possible for your staff to get the job done?
Where are the pain points in your internal process, according to your customer service team? Employees have a responsibility to deliver their best every day, yet a process bogged down in bureaucracy and busywork is a motivation killer. Call center software is just one of many cloud-based solutions that can be implemented in your department to enable employees to work as quickly and efficiently as possible.
If your team utilizes a help desk ticket system, review and demo new offerings on the market to make sure yours remains the most functional and cost effective. Project management software can also be a useful tool in bringing multiple teams or team members, giving your long-term goals structure and transparency.
Product or process knowledge
One major customer complaint is dealing with representatives who have incomplete knowledge of your company’s products or procedures. It’s not enough to send weekly memos and expect an overworked team to read and retain the information.
Your team should be meeting at least weekly, even if only for ten minutes; creating this designated time for group feedback and group learning can help your organization identify and resolve issues.
This is also the perfect place for knowledge gaps to be uncovered and addressed. Group learning has repeatedly been shown to be more effective because it fosters discussion, including questions and answers that may not occur one-on-one.
This also gives your training sessions consistency when all team members are present and receiving the exact same information. You can use simple tools like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey to periodically quiz and reward your staff for retaining important information.
Your attention to these details shows your team that you care about giving them the tools they need to succeed. Today’s software offerings and cloud-based services can help you and your call center operate at peak efficiency. When the best technology is coupled with a corporate culture of continuous improvement, you can watch your call center metrics start to soar.
