Call Center Workforce Optimization is a strategy that streamlines call center platforms and technologies to augment employee engagement and provide customer satisfaction through the use of digital channels.
Purpose of Call Center Optimization
The motive of Call center workforce optimization is to assimilate call center technologies, systems and digital channels such as mobile, web and social media into a single point of management in order make customer interactions, employee performance and business processes more transparent and visible. By analyzing all customer interactions, business enterprises can get better insights which further helps them coach their employees and update workflows to improve the overall quality of customer service.
The workforce quality and the ability to empower call center agents is directly proportional to customer experience. Nearly all prominent companies have successfully improved their customer service strategy by modernizing their call center workforce management.
Most contact centers are balancing the two in such a way that they are able to do good in both customer service as well as sales-related goals. In order to ensure this, a multifaceted yet seamless approach that marries the two different paths. As a professional business practice, all contact center management and staff should be well acquainted with the ways to enhance sales through the call center.
Ways to Improve Call Center Optimization
1. Ensuring Accurate Customer Service Data Analysis and Availability:
It is essential to collect and carefully analyze the customer service data for evaluating contact center performance and making the necessary changes in them. This data will help the contact centers in formulating strategies that can assist them in attaining their desired customer service and sales goals. By compiling data from the different departments, better business strategies can be formed
When a contact center is doing the work of generating sales, it is indispensable to ensure cohesiveness and consistency of data shared between contact center sales agents and sales and marketing agent. This can be done by data integration in different databases using different systems and formats.
This can be managed by regular updating of customer data and analysis results This will ensure better decision-making and targeting goals that takes into account both sales and service aspects and is centered around providing good quality customer experience.
2. Improving the Call Experience for Customers:
In order to ensure that the leads, result in sales, it is very important to maintain a good customer experience. If the very quality of call is bad, chances are the customer would never turn up again. The employees must understand that the customers have other engagements as well. If the client gets frustrated, it will certainly lead to ineffective sales, no matter the investment in the pay per call strategy. Various strategies that can assist are:
Respecting customers’ time and ensuring that they do not wait beyond an acceptable time limit
Focus on calls that deserve your attention. Interacting with “timewasters” leads to wastage of valuable time. Therefore, the agent must carefully scrutinize the callers so that genuine customers get the best experience.
Ensure that the call route for each customer is kept as short as possible. Detours and delays are directly proportional to increase customer frustration. Chances of your agent following up that sales leading to successful closing will reduce drastically.
3. Agent Optimization:
The most prominent factor behind successful sales centers and their ability to generate revenue is agent optimization. The agents must be put through carefully planned tests to ensure that they match the expected quality that is required to bring in the desired sales. Investing time and money in agent optimization is important to bring about that desired conversion of leads to sales by increasing cross-selling and up-selling.
4. Improved Agent Productivity:
Reduction in excessive agent idle time and agent turnover can help a contact center achieve that nice blend between sales and customer service. Accurate forecasting of the demand for the employees is crucial for call center success. While understaffing would lead to excess work pressure on employees, over-staffing would increase costs. By accurate predicting with regard to the number of agents required at any point of time, call centers can optimize workforce and cost.
5. Training:
According to the “Emerging Workforce Study”, 41% of employees plan to leave organizations with a “poor” training score as opposed to just 12% for those organizations with a rating of “good”. The management must focus on providing effective training sessions through e-learning, virtual assistance, and scripting tools in order to establish company goals and expectations and equip the agents with the confidence to tackle any initiative. The top-performing agents must be brought to training.
They should be encouraged to give practical tips on how to be a top performer. This will set the bar high for new hires and give them a better insight into how to effectively execute their job. The agents must be regularly updated with new methods and process trainings. According to The Global Call Center Report, experienced call center agents receive an average of six training days per year. It has to be ensured that the agents keep their performance high by continually providing refresher courses, training on new products or software and training to improve professional development.
6. Updated Technology Solutions:
Customer service departments are capable of generating better revenues when they are equipped with the right technology. For instance, it is essential to have a CRM system in place that captures relevant information across all communication channels. In order to ensure that leads generated are by a real-time referral strategy, there has to be an integration between the contact center system and the sales management system.
The system needs to be well equipped with the required technology and tools. A customer support system should be intuitive and accurate. According to Gartner “Contact center infrastructure and CRM functionalities are increasingly integrating, and sometimes competing, to deliver customer engagement capabilities.”
It is known for a fact that almost 95% of the customers use more than one channel to communicate with companies. Presently, clients can communicate using multiple methods such as web, mail, chat, phone, e-mail, text, etc. Companies must offer multiple channels for clients to communicate and make customer interaction more convenient for them. Web chat and social media customer service interactions have proven to procure better results with email volumes still predicted to grow although at a lesser rate.
Leveraging AI for Better ROI
Artificial Intelligence algorithms are challenging human intelligence. With their inherent pattern recognition, self-learning and cognitive capabilities, AI powered algorithms are better at performing complex jobs with amazing speed and accuracy. Businesses are getting better day by day with the help of predictive analytics, using artificial intelligence (AI) applications to help streamline call center experiences for customers and agents.
The following emerging technology areas are likely to become more significant in coming times:
- Behavioral routing software that is known for matching call-center agents with customers with the help of personality and behavioral characteristics
- Artificial-intelligence agents, that are powered by advanced machine-learning methods. They can attend to the queries of customers without any human intervention.
- Various Visualization technologies that allow enhanced interaction between live agents and customers
With better technology, call centers can increase efficiency, engage and empower employees, and deliver best customer experiences. By making use of the opportunities to increase efficiencies, customer experiences, and strategic insights, contact center leaders can move beyond cost center perceptions and towards profits.
It actually costs six or seven times more, on average, to gain a new customer than to retain the one that already exists. In ecommerce, for example, while new customers spend an average of just under $35, returning customers average closer to $55. In order to keep customers coming back for more, one has to provide helpful sales support and a troubleshooting team that is capable of efficiently solving any issue at hand.
One of the best ways to guarantee a steady flow of returning customers is to ensure that you have a solid, reliable and helpful customer support team, system and tools in place. In other words, the better your customer support, the more revenue you’ll drive.
Outsource Call Center Services to ExpertCallers
Expertcallers is tremendously experienced in providing high quality inbound and outbound call center services to various business verticals around the world. If you are an up and coming business who cannot afford a dedicated customer service center, talk to us to explore outsourcing options.
