How Call Centre Solutions–Inbound, Outbound, and Blended Help–Win the Customer Service/Experience Battleground.
You may feel call centres are relics of the past, given the pace of development we're experiencing. However, the fact is, call centres remain a quintessential part of the current day business environment.
According to this report, 78% of customers expect query resolution by speaking to a contact centre representative. Yes, it is that vital!
Consider a scenario wherein a customer purchases a product online. They will be satisfied with the experience only if the online buying journey proceeds seamlessly. This includes several factors like ease of browsing products and making payments, offers and discounts, and timely delivery of the product.
Even the slightest inconvenience in any of these will result in the customer steering away from your product or brand. So, how they feel about your product depends on much more than just its quality.
However, it's different when a customer contacts your call centre with negative feedback about their experience. They come in direct contact with your support representative. And even if they have a negative perspective about your brand, your representative should be capable enough to satisfy him and change his perception.
However, there are different types of call centres for businesses to choose from. Let us understand them in detail.
a) Inbound Call Centre
This call centre employs representatives to receive incoming calls. The customers contact this type of call centre if they experience any issues or have clarifications about your product and services. Simply put, they reach out to the call centre agents themselves with the help of services like toll free numbers or virtual numbers deployed for customer care.
b) Outbound Call Centre
Such calls are initiated by your call centre representatives to win over new prospects. They may be used for sales, promotions or to survey existing customers-in some cases, even to welcome customers on board.
c) Blended Help
This type of call centre performs the duty of both inbound and outbound call centres. The representatives receive and make calls to customers whenever required.
With this idea, let us now get to know more about how these call centres enable businesses to emerge victorious in the customer service battleground.
1. Build emotional connections with the customer
Most customers these days are millennials. They don't simply look for good products but also for an experience with the brand that is worth sharing with others.
Though call centres will not be able to control factors like pricing, they can still help your customers develop an emotional connection with your brand. This can be done through the following steps.
Your representatives should deploy effective storytelling techniques about your brand and how it adds value to the lives of customers. This will enable clients to relate to the brand.
Reward the customer with a freebie. It can be as simple as a personalised note or a free extension of your product subscription.
Contact centre representatives should try and understand customer needs and cater to the same.
These attempts will align customers with your brand, thereby providing them a compendium of services that offer maximum value for money, a seamless experience, and most of all, a reliable brand to trust.
2. Helps understand customers better
Personal information about the customers can help you serve them better. Call centres are backed by detailed customer information like demographics, expectations from the brand, and details about their customer journey.
When they obtain information about customers' previous history and chat transcripts, they can understand the problem better. Thus, your agents will be able to handle customers effectively.
Furthermore, equipped with this information, representatives can start conversations from where they left off instead of asking for the details of the issue all over again. This not only saves time but also projects your brand as one that prioritises customer concerns.
3. Identifies customers based on their journey
Contact centres enable representatives to identify the stage of the customer's journey and handle them based on the same. For example, all the customers may not be contacting your call centre to buy from you. They may reach your representative for clarifications or simply to gain awareness about the product. In this case, a stereotypical pre-recorded reply may not serve the purpose.
Call centres are equipped with tools like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems that can help you keep track of the various stages of the customer's journey. Your representatives can target the customers in a better way when equipped with such insights.
4. Helps obtain customer feedback
Though there are several ways of obtaining customer feedback, the most spontaneous method is through a voice call. This medium enables your representatives to initiate contextual conversations and interact with the customers.
Call centres don't just facilitate free flow of information but also offer them the opportunity to clarify doubts and gauge what your customers think about your brand. They can ask the right questions and gain feedback about the products and services.
Furthermore, in case the customer is unhappy with your services, your representative gets a chance to change their mind. Customers can be more interactive during a support call and effectively present their feedback. This gives you a chance to improvise on bottlenecks and meet customer needs.
5. Allows for better training and development of the workforce
Call centres come with an in-built capability to track, record, and monitor calls. These calls can be used to review agent performance and identify glitches in the business processes. Call recordings enable you to spot weak areas during customer conversations. This insight can be used to provide adequate training to improve on the same.
Furthermore, recorded calls help in providing a live experience for new recruits. This will enable them to understand the kind of calls they might receive in real-time and can prepare beforehand for the same.
6. Improves customer interactions
A post on a social media platform or a reply to an email may not help you understand the pulse of the target audience. However, a phone call allows you to know the mood of the customer and react based on that.
For example, if a customer contacts a call centre in a frustrated mood, your representative will be able to soothe the customer by offering relevant freebies and discounts. The temperament of the customer can be easily judged while on a phone call.
Timely efforts from your side will help retain the customer and make them feel noticed. Therefore, call centres play an important role in initiating the right type of interactions with the customers.
7. Simplifies customer journey
Contact centres enable your representatives to provide your customers with the information they need in a simplified and quick way. Even the slightest doubt about your products and services may result in an incorrect assumption about your brand.
A contact centre helps eliminate these chances of miscommunication and allows callers to clarify doubts. For example, a contact centre helps enables the following:
Your agents can call the customer and continue the interaction even if line gets disconnected
Enhances clarity while understanding the customer query
Eliminates the chances of redundancy from the customer's end
Offers you training material that can be used even after the call is over
Improves first call resolution
Wrap Up
Undeniably, a call centre enables two-way customer interactions, allows your team members to better understand problems, and presents best-suited solutions effectively. This medium of communication bridges the gap between the customers and your brand.
Hopefully, everything that we have mentioned in this blog will throw light on the importance of call centre solutions to deliver seamless customer services.