Key Ways To Improve Customer Satisfaction In A Call Center

A call center manages customer interaction over the phone, email, or chat support. It consists of customer service representatives, quality control supervisors, and team managers, along with information technology (IT) staff. Contact centers belong to an interconnected network, operating onshore (same country) or offshore (abroad), with the primary purpose of elevating customer experience or customer satisfaction. 

This goal can be attained by answering their questions, addressing their concerns, and resolving complaints promptly and effectively. That is why contact center solutions have been established in the first place. 

In this article, you’ll learn the key ways to help improve customer satisfaction in a call center.

Invest in Customer Journey Analytics 

Analytics is an indispensable tool for call centers, using advanced reporting software-driven by automation and adopt artificial intelligence accessible in a computer dashboard. It is one of the highly recommended contact center solutions because it provides accurate, real-time reporting to help improve customer experience. 

Here are the good reasons why you should consider embracing customer journey analytics:

• Uncover gaps and weaknesses in the customer journey
• Assess contextual data from customer interactions to connect with your customers using the right channels
• Unite scattered data in multiple channels to avoid detached customer experiences, making all data accessible in just one platform
• Analyze contextual data to determine your customers’ next actionable steps  
• Avoid unfavorable customer interactions, and locate customers at the right time during the buying cycle
• Get a deeper understanding of how customers connect with your brand through a customer journey dashboard and determine how needs change across various communication channels

Advanced Communication Training 

Knowing how to value the precious time of your customers will considerably affect your improvement efforts. It would mean addressing every query or concern promptly and correctly. Along with data analytics, it is also important to train call center employees to help them develop effective communication skills, how to pick up verbal cues to grasp customers’ emotions, thoughts, and expected results quickly, and reduce handling times. 

Advanced communications training may involve consulting communication experts, sales and marketing specialists, and mental health professionals. In this way, your customer service representatives and sales agents over the phone or online will learn how to approach customers holistically. 

By knowing what customers really mean, handling time is greatly reduced. It will also simplify communication and ensure prompt resolution, hence, improving customer satisfaction.

Customer Journey Mapping 

Now more than ever, businesses are all about customers and how they can feel valued. Customers must be nurtured from the very first interaction. Through big data solutions, businesses can analyze the behavior of customers and understand their needs. With customer journey mapping, you can significantly improve customer experience.

A customer journey map refers to a visual representation of customer experience in different stages of the sales funnel. Customer journey mapping lets you see how customers interact with your brand. It is the story of the experience of a customer, identifying both the strong points and opportunities to improve the experience so you can establish a long-term relationship. 

Check out the steps to carry out customer journey mapping which you can adopt in your call center:

• Hold Discovery Meeting: In a discovery meeting, your front liners can get an overview, discuss and agree upon a set of objectives, set a timeline, and better determine how to meet customer needs. It is the best time to review goals, assess existing personas and segmentations, and learn what customers are seeking when interacting with your call center employees. 

• Employee Workshop: Stakeholders are gathered for one or two days to identify the things customers may encounter in a brand experience. These involve the ways in which customers interact with a brand, including printed materials, social media pages, websites, and call centers to give you an idea of how a customer’s journey feels and looks like.

• Qualitative Validation: This involves in-person focus groups and online bulletin boards to help organizations move past geographic boundaries. It also includes qualitative validation collecting feedback from customers while they’re going through the actual journey and deep dives or in-depth interviews with customers over the phone.

• Quantitative Validation: It involves validating the feedback from customer research and employee workshop, putting them into a survey to gather insights to help improve customer satisfaction. 

• Final Reporting and Mapping: It includes a detailed report of all exercises, meetings, and research work, helping illustrate where the front liners and stakeholders fall into the customer journey.

Conclusion 

Call centers can improve customer satisfaction by investing in customer journey analytics or advanced contact center solutions. This allows the business to collect customer data in a single dashboard for better communication and resolution planning. Customer journey mapping training and workshops are also important to prepare and educate front liners on how to better interact with customers and recognizing their concerns at a deeper level.