Deep Analysis Of Contact Center’s Customer Experience

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According to the HBR – 80 companies think they’re delivering a positive customer experience, but only 8% of customers agree with that statement. Why is that? Because the vast majority of the contact center’s owners presumably think: an exceptional customer experience in the contact center industry deliberately depends on the customer service agent and their communication skills, honesty, and professionalism. Yet customers want a sophisticated approach to their needs. Do you want to know the details? Read on.

“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.”

- Peter Drucker, Claremont school of management, California

Source: The HBR Research

Call customers when they stand with open wallets

In every call center’s activity, whether you initiate a telemarketing campaign or robocalls, you need to comply with the regulatory agency's demands. 

And there is no single small window for avoiding compliance for each contact center agent unless you apply a high risk for hefty fines, reputation loss, and time waste. That’s why always comply with regulations, time-zone, and Do Not Call (DNC) lists. 

Where to find these DNC numbers:

The US and UK publish their lists on their official resources as well as any developed country in the world. 

Moreover, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) guards laws that regulate selling features or features options. For example, in the US, the proportion is one lawyer for every 220 adults. Thus the advice for saving your wallet working in the US: read everything you can find from FTC and CFTC.

Especially, read carefully your niche markets, such as FDA for health supplements, CFTC for selling futures and options, Securities & Exchange Commission, and National Association of Securities Dealers for selling mutual funds and investments (Bitcoin, stocks or bonds, etc). 

And of course, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to make sure all calls are secured.

Knowing these facts listed is a matter of survival and not about successful operation on the US market. 

The example of the fine for breaking the FTC regulations

The example of the fine for breaking regulations in the UK

 

How to become the 8% of companies that satisfy 80% of customers?

As we mentioned above and Harvard Business Review stated, only a small percentage of businesses are capable of delivering a 5-star customer experience to customers. 

It’s because customers continually want more from businesses. Yet we know exactly what they want. Here’re a few valuable tips your company needs to apply to break through the clutter of competitors:

Superconsumers and heavy users 

Superconsumers and heavy users are 20% of consumers that make 80% of the revenue to your company. Frankly, this situation occurs in every market and niche. Another 80% of consumers are irregular and fly-by-night businesses. So what do you need to do exactly? 

First things first, study your super consumers and heavy users. Then, separate them from prospects and irregular buyers. Then, you need to focus your customer experience on this 20% of consumers. Based on the study, you must know how to satisfy them and their day-by-day needs. 

When you have everything set for these heavy users, you may wish to expand your market on the prospects and irregular buyers. Yet the ROI and outcomes for customer interactions might be unpredictable until you answer these questions:

  1. Can you satisfy this 80% without losing too much money? Plus, is there a risk of losing money?;

  2. Are you have enough resources and agents to satisfy them?;

  3. Calculations of your efforts, technologies implementations, and time-wasting pay off or not?

Measure customer-oriented KPI metrics first

After you deal with the satisfaction of your primary audience, it’s time to measure the satisfaction metrics.

Customer lifetime value and customer retention 

It’s easy and much less costly to keep the customer than acquire a new one. Customers have strong relationships until you constantly deliver the value. And the lavish value and rewards come when companies pay attention to existing customers as well as new ones. 

Because existing customers already proved their accountability while it’s different from all others. So always keep an eye on your existing customers, make everything it takes to retain them, and you will profit astronomically. 

Superconsumers contacts with the company

This metric shows how many super consumers and heavy users contact your company. The higher rate of customer inquiries to purchase from you means goodwill. However, frequent contacts could be triggered by unresolved issues, so in this case, it brings a negative impact. 

Track and solve most cases of repeated calls and contacts on the same issue.

Moreover, always expand the opportunities, which means you need to try to follow up with your existing customers at each touchpoint to achieve more profit. Hint: Many companies don’t do that way and lose a tremendous amount of additional income. Yet only happy customers are likely to make an upsell in your company.

Customer satisfaction rate (CSAT) and customer satisfaction score (CSS)

Customer satisfaction rate works both in B2C and B2B environments. In B2C, goods or services generally improve the lives of customers. And if super consumers achieve what they want, it indicates their satisfaction rates. 

You want to keep customers happy for lasting satisfaction rates.

In the case of B2B, If the company generates more revenue by working with your company, it indicates that your business has a competitive advantage among all others. Always investigate where your business can be more competitive than others and exploit this advantage to the maximum.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) 

To measure customer loyalty, keep an eye on this metric. Interestingly, in a successful customer survey, people were asked to indicate their loyalty to a brand by ranging from -100 to +100. A customer survey always shows your loyal customer and what they want.

Customer effort score (CES)

The simple metric will tell you how much effort customers make in order to achieve the desired result. It ranges from 1 to 5, where 1 – is very easy and 5 is very hard. Your goal is to make this score always 1. The impact will be less time on treating each customer and maximum profit.

First Resolution Rate (FCR)

The natural revenue velocity comes when you handle customer issues at the first touchpoint. The more calls customers have to initiate to solve the same issue, the higher percentage of customer complaints. Moreover, your phone lines are always open and never cluttered. 

Average Handle Time (AHT)

Average time indicates the entire duration of each contact on a certain issue. In case, the average wait time increases for tackling a unique and challenging task, it's the norm. However, when AHT increases for obvious solutions, it frustrates customers. 

Know these main factors that decrease your customer experience

There’re many things that irritate customers and here’re the most frequent and impactful.

Long hold time

The only way heavy users and your main consumers call is to achieve rapid solutions to their needs. The golden standard is 80/20, where 80% of calls or contacts are resolved in 20 seconds. However, surveys indicated that customers are willing to wait for 50 or even 70 seconds for connection with their contact center agent. The frustration comes after 2 minutes of waiting. 

Try to take the phone or connect to the chat no longer than 2 minutes after customers enter into the queue, and your satisfaction rates will be high.

IVR, chatbots, and other automated systems

Technologies are great, yet they must help consumers not to block them. The vast majority of contact centers put consumers on countless IVR menus, chatbots, etc. The solution is to make the reach to agents as easy as possible. It’s better to have no automated techs than block customers from speaking with agents. 

Repeating of the same info to each agent 

Imagine you’re in consumers’ shoes and call a company. You just need to achieve the simple solution, purchase the product, receive the info, etc. And how would you feel in a situation when your call transferred from one agent to another, countless times. 

And you have to tell each agent the purpose of your call… That’s really frustrating and irritates you. Yet the simple routing logic could fix this problem once and for all. Thus each person would reach the relevant agent within one call. 

That’s how successful companies astonish customers with prompt resolution and never transfer their calls unless there’s an uncommon customer’s case.  

The contact center’s systems help you to increase customer experience

The automatic call distribution (ACD) system routes the customer to the relevant or free agent within the shortest period. This system drastically decreases the on-hold time by giving you an engagement with customers, even when all agents are busy. 

This kind of software provides a rapid pick-up of a phone and smart call routing to prevent it. Use advanced technologies and software in order to complete your business goals.

Interactive voice response (IVR) system provides agentless services on the obvious needs. Through IVR the customer satisfied obvious needs with the press-key mechanism embedded in the software. Thus no agent is needed.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system contains all the information about customers, activity, purchasing history, and more. Agents are capable of promptly addressing customers' issues, thanks to CRM. Modern CRM is constantly evolving by tailoring customers' actions and giving companies the latest insights. 

These tools address your long waiting times and reduce strain from agents, so they address only the most demanding calls. Remember, IVR must provide unique assistance, not block from connecting with the relevant agent.

Track valuable KPIs to ensure your heavy users' and consumers' satisfaction. By doing so, you’ll achieve a changing view on your customer satisfaction metric and business goals within a given period. Check this guide on how to measure metrics with KPI in your call center.

Now, ideally, customers want to contact you 24 hours a day. And it’s possible to bring to fruition. One or all of these features are 100% in your arsenal today: chatbots, IVR, FAQ, customer databases, order forms, or outsourced contact center. 

What is the genuine desire of customers? And the answer is the blend of professional and human-like treatment. 

Maybe business owners will be surprised yet the true inclination of customers is to never experience the situation: “I gave them my money, now I’m the dead meat for them”. Make them feel like human beings, and you’ll stand out from the crowd.

For instance, the Voiptime Cloud has one of these automated features listed above. And our lines are open from 8 A.M. to 1 P.M. (East Coast Time), from Monday to Friday. And our phone number is: 

1-720-362-5005

Or fill in the quote request below:

Switch to the professional
multichannel contact center solution

If your legacy business phone system doesn’t cut it anymore, replace it with modern contact center technology!

Want to astonish your 20% of consumers for 80% of the revenue? Here’s the blueprint

Source: Global Contact Center Satisfaction Index, Statista research department 

Try as hard as you can to provide a more personal experience to make customers closer to you. And it’s easy to do. Once you establish business relationships with your customer, send them a “thank you” call or "thank you note". 

Especially if these are highly accountable customers. In this call, tell them you appreciate them ordering a product or service, and customers can rely on you at any time. In order to do it take these steps:

  • Call them once a month for confidence that everything is OK;
  • If you know the date of birth, give them a happy birthday call. 
  • Happy New Year and Merry Christmas. This kind of time is when customers achieve notes about New Year and Christmas. In this call, thank customers for this year with the company, and assure customers you always keep an eye on their needs. 
  • Can’t call or reach the consumer on the phone? Send them an SMS or email!.

That kind of treatment will astonish your customers in a positive way. It delivers excellent customer service, and you can ask customers almost anything you want. And here’s the secret: by establishing relationships in such a way, it's much easier to provide an upsell and exploit the revenue. 

Customers will feel almost guilty if they don’t buy something from you after such an astonishing treatment. 

Feedback on your CX from super consumers

Many agents and managers complain that it's hard to achieve customer feedback about goods or services and that customers are always busy. And guess what, it’s all because they don’t do the steps listed above. And that’s a flaw in their businesses. 

This behavior is crucial for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) which haven’t a reputation like Adidas, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Lacoste, etc. SMBs have to earn respect and trust from the customer first to ask them something later. 

What is the difference in customer experience in large brands such as Coca-cola or McDonald’s and SMBs? 

Hint: It’s not what you think.

First of all, large companies established their brand image decades ago. Coca-cola started in 1886, Mc Donald's in 1955. And since then they've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising. 

In the beginning, they behave as we mentioned above – by treating each customer as human-like as possible, focusing on the memorable experience. 

Yet after the brand explodes astronomically, it's not profitable to do it. Now they've deliberately focused on frictionless experience. 

And SMBs must walk the path to focus on the memorable slash warm experience. 

Following the same strategy as large corporations for SMBs isn’t profitable and causes money and reputation loss. However, once they're big enough to compete with pillars of the industry, they’re free to behave the same way.  

These facts, business owners need to recognize to save their money and build a CX strategy.

Tailoring customer’s behavior will give you a wide array of answers

Tailor customers on their contact with you via phone, chat, email, social media, etc. Look for the customer journey when they’re browsing websites, ordering goods, and leaving feedback. Based on this data build strategy and define what is crucial for them. 

Successful tailoring grants you real-time insight into how you can improve your sales or customer support. Interviewing your customers via phone will give you a rapid and wide range of information about their concerns and true state of mind. Collect this feedback to forecast activity towards a better customer experience. 

Track the customer’s churn. Investigate the most frequent cases customers stop purchasing from you and move to other cases. Know these cases, and enable timely actions to solve them. If you can’t define the cause, interview the customer via the phone on this. Thus tracking each customer journey gives you a lot of ideas on how to catch customers when their wallets are open.

The customer experience pillar is the personal and human-like treatment

Have you wondered why you have unhappy customers, even if you provide a service? Let's find out. Use the second name of a customer in your outcoming and incoming calls.

Outcoming calls that remembered

Instead of saying: "Hello, this is the sales/technical support department of company X", say: "Hello, this is Mrs. Smith? We call you from the sales department from Voiptime Сloud. Do you have one minute to answer our questions?"

Incoming calls with positive emotions for your consumers

Instead of saying: "Technical/sales department, operator X is listening." say: "Good day, Mrs. Smith, this is the technical/sales department, operator Voiptime Сloud is on the phone, how can we help you today?"

There’s almost always you know the second name of the person in your database, you need to establish a mood of excellent service from the beginning. It’s quite impressive to hear a second name in a second or third call, don’t you think? 

See the difference? And guess that this type of treatment positively astonishes your customer, so you’ll always retain this customer as long as you provide decent services and goods. 

Consumers will feel your integrity and passion for their needs and reward your company accordingly. Don’t rely on an average level of customer experience. Instead, deliver the best call center experience possible.

Hiring customer-centric agents are simple

Hire customer-centric agents to achieve high agent performance, even if this is expensive for you. The trick is that highly paid agents will always generate more money than you spend on their salaries. Build a hiring policy on the principles of high value that top agents deliver and not seek for a bargain. Or at least hire as many competitive or motivated agents as you can.

On the other hand, a satisfied and decently paid agent will likely work in your company. By doing so, you’ll prevent high turnover rates. 

It’s easy to define the entry-level agent’s capacities for your call center team. Just test them first to find out what they can do for your contact center. 

Then load them with work to find their real value for a call center. If they pass the working period, start training sessions for them. And finally, if they are personalities with a high attitude for work and are appropriate for your job, you need to provide an environment for retaining these agents. 

These onboarding agents start to generate more revenue and deliver high-quality agent performance within 3 months.

Turnover of every agent that is onboard with your team for more than 1 month will create a negative ROI for some time. The job that was processed with fired agents needs to delegate to others. 

Or you need to hire a new agent to prevent an understaffed call center. Hiring a new agent, educating and launching work is always a time and money-consuming activity.

Promote and delegate to grow your business

The other reason is that experienced agents will be promoted and become call center leaders. And you’ll delegate them more responsibilities without hiring additional managers. Those agents show an example of how to tackle calls that will create a more proactive experience for all agents in a team.

Even if the salary of a promoted agent is bound to be increased, it doesn’t hurt your company, yet only benefits it. Promoted agents are both profitable and efficient; they’ll drastically increase the ROI of a call center.

One contact center – one direction 

Everything in a call center must work in tune, and employee engagement with executives creates great productivity. 

Make your agents and departments communicate. Eliminate any kind of blocking information delivery between your agents or departments. Ask everyone to report about these cases and that you do not tolerate any kind of hiding the info from each other.

It’s important to address this problem because it occurs from time to time since many people work in one organization. Some of them compete with each other fairly and others don’t. As a CEO you need to address this problem first.

Then, schedule everything, your work shifts, breaks for lunch, meetings, days off, promotions, the delegation of responsibilities, etc. When everything is scheduled it always brings a constant impact on productivity flow. It's workable, even if you have a hybrid or work-from-home model.

Maximum productivity and minimum burning out

In planning activity for a contact center, you need to operate with the idea of the capacities of your team and each agent in particular. Take a close view for underload or overload environments. They're equally harmful to business.

Underloaded staff is likely to have more idle time that they aren’t using profitably. And the overloaded staff make mistakes and quickly burn out due to high calling volume. 

Schedule the tasks for a contact center’s team. Make them feel passionate about implementing these tasks. Even if the scheduling costs you time, you’ll benefit from tracking real results from your call center. 

Set the goals, discuss them with managers and staff, and define the reasonable workload for week, month and year. Arrange a meeting once a week or so to ensure that everyone understands their goals in a contact center.

Consistency in the task management

Each agent has to implement their work deliberately. When everybody is in their places everything works as a good vehicle. Tasks must change if managers decide to change their strategy for telemarketing or inbound campaigns. 

The only requirement for this is that all staff must know about it before changing workflow. 

Backup strategy is your backbone in the jittery times

Your call center can face technical problems from time to time that will disrupt work. And one of the most demanding practices for business continuity is to ensure the reach of customer service goals while fixing your technical problems.

To prevent stops for contact centers, give additional channels of communication that work 24 hours a day, even if the main hardware is disabled. For instance, additional customer service channels such as an external phone number. 

Use a chat, email, social media if you have nothing more. Always have a backup plan both for your equipment, business continuity, and staff. As a result, you will have a plan B and happier customers no matter what.

How can Voiptime Сloud help?

Improve your customer experience with the contact center software. Thus your agents concentrate on the conversation, closing a sale, not on the countless switching between apps. Would you like to try the software and achieve a bundle of money within 48 hours? 

If you want to flourish your customers with cutting-edge experience, click get a quote, our team will contact you and start to increase your ROI within 48 hours.

Switch to the professional
multichannel contact center solution

If your legacy business phone system doesn’t cut it anymore, replace it with modern contact center technology!

Eugene Siuch

Content Manager and Copywriter

Focused on customer service measurement and improvement, SaaS marketing and industry insights, and researching different methods of staff motivation and performance management in the field of customer service providing.

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