The call center is one of the most important departments in an organization. Call center agents have the most direct contact with your customers, the people who decide whether or not to buy from you and who ultimately determine whether your business soars or sinks. And yet, considering how important the call center is to business success, plenty of mistakes are still being made on a daily basis in call centers of all sizes.
Here’s a list of 5 call center taboos that you should avoid:
Not properly training agents
Whether a call center agent has prior call center experience or they are brand new to the field, they will need to be properly trained before they start interacting with customers. Many call centers fail to adequately train agents because they don’t want to invest the time and money, given the high turnover rate in the industry. However, this is the wrong way to look at it. It’s likely that the poor training results in unsatisfied agents who leave the job. Call center training should be an ongoing process. A one week training session during the first week of employment often isn’t enough to cut it.
Not utilizing modern call center technology
Modern call center technology including speech analytics, call mining, call recording, and real time reporting solutions have revolutionized the call center. Agents and managers now have access to immediate data that can be used to make important business decisions in regards to agent training, marketing, sales, and more.
Not properly analyzing data
Modern call center technology is great, but it’s useless if it’s not being used efficiently. Call centers have greater access to data but what’s just as important is what they are doing with it. Call centers must have a system in place to ensure that data is properly analyzed in order to incorporate insights into new business plans.
Outsourcing to the wrong call center partner
There is nothing wrong with call center outsourcing. In fact, for many companies it is the most cost effective solution. However, it’s necessary to spend adequate time researching options and getting testimonials from potential outsourcing partners. It’s rarely the cheapest or most convenient option that is the best option. In today’s marketplace, many call centers are industry-specific to ensure that agents have specialized knowledge to share with customers in that niche.
Not focusing on the customer
Many call centers have become so obsessed with things like scripting and call resolution time that they forget that the focus should be the customers on the other end of the line. Maybe some customers don’t want to feel rushed during the conversation and maybe others want to have a normal conversation, not feel like they are speaking with a robot. It seems obvious, but the customer should always be made to feel like they are the top priority, and not just a figure on a stat sheet!
