In today’s bustling world of commerce where startups and E-commerce markets are at their peak, customers no longer want to feel just as numerous as many.
Customers want every action to be built and targeted specifically for them. From multinational companies to small businesses everyone wants to keep their customers happy In an era where everything is controlled by customers’ behavior. The role of call centers has become more challenging. As customers experience directly influences the bottom line revenue of your business. A positive customer experience will,
- Improve cross-selling and upselling
- Improve businesses retention rate
- Improve customer satisfaction
Now it’s time for businesses to scale up their customer service process and implement the strategies below to improve customer experience. it’s critical to improve customer service as now customer support is not only limited to improving sales but also helps to increase the company’s brand value and increase customer loyalty.
Tips to improve customer experience
Here we have listed down various strategies to improve customer satisfaction.
Prioritise Personalization in each call.
One of the foremost factors that every call center should consider is to Prioritise Personalization in each call.
Having personalized conversations makes the customer journey smooth and helps in driving a positive vibe toward the brand. This emotional involvement helps in increasing customer engagement which eventually increases trust among the customers.
Around 59% of customers agrees hat personalization improves their purchase behavior and nearly 78% of customers say that they will engage with offers only if they are personalized with their previous engagement.
Yes, Personalization makes the customer feel that they are listened to and respected.
To deliver personalized service call center agents should,
- Greet customers by their name
- Look into the purchase history of customers to provide them with recommendations.
- Look at their demographic location
- Look at their geographical location
- Showcase them with positive language.
- Be patient and polite while interacting with customers.
- Going the extra mile and wishing customers their special occasions like birthdays or anniversaries etc
- Providing them with special offers, and discounts
Thereby making an extra effort, can effectively Personalize your conversation with customers and can help your business to stand out in the market.
Know your customer
The best way to improve customer experience and customer satisfaction is to know your customers. You can get various demographic information about the customers from the company’s data.
Call center agents should move one step ahead and start creating the persona of each customer to know them better,
- Their age and location
- Social relationship ( married or unmarried or do they have kids )
- If the married spouse’s information, their kid’s information
- Their likes and desires
- Their experience with the company
- Customers struggle or have pain points while availing of business products or services.
This way some market research helps in bridging the gap between business and customer.
Go omnichannel
In today’s time, customers want the business to be available on each channel, and today’s customers seek convenience. They want to contact businesses through their preferred engagement channel.
Therefore in today’s era, it is necessary to have an omnichannel or multichannel approach to satisfy a different set of customers.
An omnichannel strategy makes it easy for your customer to reach your contact center through any platform or channel be it through phone calls or social media or web or email etc. Did you know that the customer retention rate of brands with an omnichannel strategy is 89% as compared to 33% of brands with a weak omnichannel strategy.
Customer Retention rate ( Source – Digizuite )
This omnichannel solution not only reduces customer’s efforts but also integrates your all communication channel into a single platform forming a cohesive communication strategy.
Always ask for feedback
One of the winning factors in improving customer experience is asking for their feedback. When you ask customers about their feedback, their likes and dislikes about the brands this shows them that they are cared for and valued. Around 77% of customers believe that the company is more favorable if they ask the customer for feedback
Also, this feedback helps in identifying the loophole in the current support process this will help you to improve and take a proactive approach to improve your customer’s experience.
Utilise modern technology
In today’s digital world, call centers must use automated tools to provide flexible service to clients.
Using automated tools provides fast resolution to clients. This type of stress-free experience of customers improves customer satisfaction.
The call center can use various automated tasks like,
- Automated emails and smoothly
- Automated phone systems
- Live chats, and chatbots
These modern technologies like live chats and chatbots can be time-consuming and hard on the budget if maintained by your in-house team. To take some weight off your shoulders and not burn a hole in your wallet is it always advisable to outsource to live chat support companies.
However, it is still necessary to have a proper balance between human customer service and technology.
Listen to your customer
One of the simplest but million-dollar pieces of advice to boost your customer experience is to listen to your customers attentively. This is one of the basic habits that is always neglected by the customer support team.
One of the habits call center agents should adopt is to proactively listen to the customer. yes, call center agents should take time to listen to customer queries and understand their needs and challenges.
Active listening will not only help call center agents deliver the best solution to customers but will also save your time and effort. This way attentive listening will help in boosting your customer experience.
Provide proper training to your agents.
Each and every customer service representative should be given quality training right from onboarding to ongoing training programs. All the trading programs should be in line considering the trending tools and technology.
Various aspects where training can be provided are,
- Knowledge about products or services
- Polishing their communication skills
- Making agents understand core companies’ values
- Training on various software, tools, and technology used by the company, etc.
Consistent training of your agent will help in improving customer experience as people say your team is the most valuable asset when it comes to increasing your business productivity. As Better the agent the best will be the experience for the customer.
Improve first contact resolution
As per the saying First impression is the last impression, it is necessary to deliver the best customer service to clients they approach first time to your company.
Improving first-contact resolution means improving the rate of customers turning up after first contact, improving FCR should be the main goal of every call center. When any customer reaches you for the first time it is necessary to resolve customer issues systematically to gain the trust and confidence of the customer.
Understanding customer culture.
Let’s take an example if it’s Diwali, and you
Are greeting your clients with Diwali wishes.
Isn’t this greeting one way of having a personalized conversation?
Thus knowing customer culture will help you to provide a greater customer experience as your interactions will be more systematic, meaningful, and in synchronization.
This positive conversation will help in achieving customers’ trust and confidence in the brand and product.
Pay attention to the customer’s journey
The next step is to improve customer experience by understanding the customer’s journey. Each customer is at a different stage in the sales cycle but mapping or outlining the customer journey will help to deliver better services to customers.
To outline customer journeys, customer service agents should analyze customer journeys with the help of CRM software. Whether the customer is just beginning their journey with a brand or it is in the middle of the sales funnel or the customer requires post-sale service etc. This way if call center agents pay attention to target the concerned area customers are on we can respond and assist them appropriately.
Speeds up response time
Today’s customers are impatient; they want to get a response within a fraction of a second.
So here the work comes for the call center agent to speed up its response time.
Whether it’s call, message, or Email clients want to attend as quickly. Even if it’s just a confirmation that you have received their mail or message. Around 90% of customers want an immediate response in less than 10 minutes.
Call centers should adopt various proactive steps to ensure that 24/7 customer support is provided and quality is also maintained with speed like installing KPIs ( key performance indicators) to improve agents’ performance to achieve their goals. This way you can strike a balance between speed and a fantastic customer experience that will make your customer smile.
Implement the right attitude.
When speaking to customers agents must keep the attitude positive and friendly and the tone should be light and calm, you should train your agents to be warm, polite, and personable on call even if customers are not friendly or not in good mood agents have to keep their head cool and speak to clients with courtesy.
Multi-language support
When having conversations in their native language, customers feel connected to the brand, and call center agents should be trained well to support customers in their local language as this is one of the most effective ways to show empathy towards customers and increase engagement.
Around 74% of consumers are likely to repeat purchases if customer support is offered in their native language. Not only does multi-language support make communication smooth, but businesses get access to a wider market and also help in increasing customers’ trust.
Have a simple support service.
Make customer support service smooth and easy, the more efforts customers put into getting connected to the customer support team more they will get frustrated. Customers want a simple one-click checkout and instant communication with the support team.
This way the first thing a call center should analyze is the customer efforts across all the channels and try to make it easier and more convenient. Thus implementing this solution is a key step toward improving customer experience.
Provide customers with various self-service options
Fortunately, the development of AI, it has made it possible for call centers to provide self-service options to customers because today’s customers prefer to help themselves. Nearly 70% of customers take the help of self-service options to resolve their issues.
Self-service options are becoming a trend these days hence it is necessary to check on your self-service options like chatbots and IVR ( instant response system) are up to the mark to provide seamless experiences to clients.
Build a centralized knowledge base.
Call centers must have an efficient knowledge base system that can help your agents to have all the information about the customers, company, product, and service readily available. Nearly 88% of companies use it to enhance customer understanding
This can also include customer data, call scripts, and FAQ documents. This promotes consistency and flexibility among the agents and this can help your team to provide high-quality service to customers with all details at their fingertips they will sound more confident, self-assured, and trustworthy.
Publish helpful FAQs and tutorials
Maximum-time customer queries are repetitive for this type of question call center should prepare high-quality FAQs and tutorials that cover basic, repetitive questions and also step-by-step guidance on how to resolve problems.
This is also one type of self-service option that not only helps customers but also saves time for agents also.
Simple language
While speaking with customers agents have to make sure to use simple language and avoid using jargon or technical words which can make them more frustrated.
The customer support team should make the customer understand simply and easily as they are talking with a 5 years old. Clear communication will not only smoothen conversation but will also make customers less irritated and angry.
Study complaints
As bill gates say,
” your most unhappy customer is your greatest source of learning”
Yes, each and every complaint or feedback is an opportunity to turn them into loyal customers and eventually improve customer experience. Complaints help in finding out loopholes in customer service and help you to implement new ideas and strategies to improve customer satisfaction.
A customer feedback loop (source – Convas )
A golden piece of advice
By taking the above strategies you can revamp your customer support strategy to the next level
And increase your customers’ experience.
But one piece of advice is if you want to avail full benefits of these above strategies then you have to find the right call centre service which uses the above strategies to improve customer satisfaction.
Thus outsourcing your call center service to a reliable agency like AM2PM will be the best decision as they will help to delight your customers and will improve retention rate and sales.
