No matter how smart and self-sufficient the customer or how automated a technology in question may be, an inefficient agent can have a detrimental effect on any business. It is for this reason that empowering call center agents is a necessary step on the road to success.
It doesn’t take much to know that the expectation of the customer is high. According to Forrester Research, 75 percent will change services when online customer service fails, translating to an estimate of, on average, $22 million of increased costs. Much of this is unexplained, as they estimate that only two percent of customers that have negative experiences complain.
To avoid this, there are established practices that can empower the customer service agent, thereby increasing the efficacy of call centers and increasing customer satisfaction.
Smart hiring is at the beginning of this. Call center agents that have industry-specific knowledge and experience automatically have comfort in their setting. This comfort translates to an agent that has a base of knowledge to build on, leaving more room to learn the call center software and other tools that they can use to help the customer. After this, thoroughly training agents will make the use of call center software and solutions second nature, leaving them free to address the concerns of the customer.
Encouraging agent collaboration is another important step, and one that is fully supported by call center software. By training agents to work as a team and learn each other’s strengths, effectively serving the customer becomes that much easier.
At the end of the day, you need to consider if you’re leveraging the most transformative call center solutions on the market – the kind that will provide agents with easy access to customer history, transferring and communicating between each other. Knowing how to do this effectively will instill confidence in both the agent and the customer, leading to swifter and more effective interactions.
To check out more, click here to access Forrester’s whitepaper, “Transform the Contact Center for Customer Service Excellence.”
