Most customers leave customer service calls frustrated and wanting to throw things. Contacting a customer service call center is high on the list of things most people want to avoid at all costs.
Here are the five ways you can avoid disappointing your customers when they call for help.
Problems Routing Calls
Customers are often already upset by the time they contact customer service. If their call gets transferred to the wrong person or they are shunted from one person to another without getting the answers they seek, their frustration level shoots up immediately. Ensure your customer call center has a clear protocol for where and how calls are transferred so that customers don’t get needlessly shuffled from one person to another—training your staff correctly to know exactly who handles what issues will help.
Robots Instead of People
Technology is beautiful until you can’t find a human on the other end of the line. Talking to an automated robot instead of an actual person makes customers feel unappreciated and leads to immense frustration when the automated response system doesn’t understand them, doesn’t offer appropriate solutions, and wastes their time before sending them to an actual person. This leads to the subsequent complaint – repetition.
Repetition
Customers are sure to see red when they are asked more than once to explain their problem. Claims of having to “start from the beginning” and tell the story of their issue as often as four or five times aren’t unusual. Using a call center system that allows for detailed, easy-to-access customer notes and information can minimize the need for repetition and shorten the time spent on the phone, making everyone happier.
Scripted Responses
Unprepared, poorly trained call center teams are inefficient, unhelpful, and can be annoying for customers. While scripted responses can be helpful in situations where the solutions to common problems can be easily explained, too much reliance on a script can lead to so-called solutions that don’t help at all. Make sure your employees know when going off-script is appropriate and how to handle these situations. Also, train employees to use their scripts only as a guideline. Reading the same answer over and over leads to sounding dismissive and robotic.
Long Hold Times
Customers often report being on hold so long they walked away from your phone and returned to it later to discover they were still listening to elevator music. No one should ever have to wait for long periods. Put enough trained staff in place to ensure prompt responses and add more people during peak times (such as the holidays) if needed. Some customers become frustrated and hang up, never to use your product or service again, after they hang on the line too long. Implement hosted call center solutions, like the ones offered by Votacall, to provide timely service with an easy-to-use interface that minimizes transfers and hold times.
Customer dissatisfaction is minimized when call centers focus on proper training and using the latest technology to increase efficiency and make customer information accessible across all platforms.