4 Call Center Mistakes Your Business Can’t Afford to Make

Many companies have difficulty creating a cohesive customer service strategy. They often overlook the importance of using traditional customer support technology like call centers. Although digital communications and social media customer service approaches are becoming more important, they are not replacing the need for call centers.

Unfortunately, as a growing number of companies struggle to keep up with the latest customer service technology, they risk alienating customers using traditional communication mediums. Organizations that don’t correctly implement their call center strategy can risk losing many customers.

You might be tempted to think that your company is doing a good job handling phone calls for customer support. Unfortunately, statistically, there is a good chance that you are dropping the ball. Here are some things that you need to be aware of:

• 52% of customers said that a good customer service experience is significant to them
• 47% of customers have switched brands after a bad customer service experience
• 62% of customers have said that they discontinued a discussion with a company after a bad customer service experience
• 75% of customers have said they had to wait too long to get assistance

The statistics show that many companies do poorly handling customer service inquiries. Other polls have shown that companies are doing even worse by withholding customer service over the phone instead of social media or online support.

Your company should be aware of these risks. You will likely have satisfied customers if you don’t make the mistakes below.

Be careful about relying too heavily on outsourcing

Many companies are massive in outsourcing their call centre services. The problem is that outsourcing often saves them money at the expense of their brand reputation and customer satisfaction.

You need to remember that you will generally get what you pay for. Companies that provide the cheapest call centre support services are not typically known for doing the best job. They often hire poorly trained employees willing to take any position they can get, so you won’t get exceptional service 90% of the time.

 Don’t use outdated technology.

There are a lot of call centre support applications on the market. Some of these tools are highly outdated. You need to be careful about relying on them.

Keep in mind that customers are going to always compare you against your competitors. If your competitors invest in higher-quality call centre support technology, they will likely deliver a better customer experience. You are risking losing customers to them if you use older applications. It is better to use state-of-the-art tools such as cloud-based phone systems such as Ooma for more efficient and better service.

Don’t wait months to review call centre support logs for quality control.

QA is among the most important elements of any successful customer support strategy. This is true for both companies relying on call centres and online support. You need to review customer service conversations regularly. You may find that you need to provide more training to specific customer service professionals to ensure customers get the support they need.

Don’t overlook the benefits of automated support.

Over time, you are going to discover that customers have a lot of routine inquiries. Some of these inquiries will be more complex, so there is no way to handle them without assigning them to a human operator.

However, many of them can be handled through an automated support system. You must maintain an inventory of common issues and see which ones can be handled through the automated support system.