The success of any business goes hand in hand with the level of customer satisfaction. That’s why, more and more companies are leaning towards a customer-centered approach in their business communication. Thanks to a comprehensive range of call center tools, this transition is made easy.
Whether you are just building up your communication strategy, or looking for ways to revamp your call center, this post will introduce the 5 must-haves to add to your contact center arsenal.
How Can Tools Help Your Call Center?
Disclaimer: the call center tools do not substitute the importance of a knowledgeable, empathetic agent, at least for now. Instead, they help automate parts of the call center and work two-fold:
- Firstly, they help address customer issues instantaneously and increase the number of channels that companies can sustain for their clients to reach out on.
- Secondly, they also minimize the time spent on administrative tasks that don’t head-on address or resolve issues or requests. These include tedious jobs such as reporting, call handling amongst many others.
5 Must-Have Tools for Call Center
To reap the maximum benefits of the improved customer service, here is a list of 5 game-changing instruments that are readily available to call centers of any size today.
1. Live Chat
Live chat provides a powerful tool for your customers to reach you directly from the website. A pop-up window is usually displayed in the corner of the screen with a short message along the lines of ‘How can we help you?’. All that the client needs to do is click on the button, provide necessary information such as their name and email, and start chatting with the agent right away.
This substantially lowers the traditionally high barrier for customers to reach out to businesses. Clients no longer need to search for contact details of the right person or department before getting in touch. The agent is just one click away. This is not only a great way to generate new leads, but it also helps boost overa engagement.
More advanced tools can also have additional functionalities. For instance, 3CX Live Chat even allows you to convert the chat into a call for better assistance. When the issue gets too complicated to handle over messages, you can extend your assistance without having to redirect the customer to another agent or making them wait in a call queue. In case the issue requires some additional expertise, you can also assign chats to specific agents or groups of agents who can provide better assistance.
2. Social Media Integrations
Social media has forever changed the business communication space. Just like live chat, social media’s growing popularity can be attributed to a lower barrier in comparison to the traditional emails and calls. That’s why, more and more unified solutions provide relevant integrations to ensure effective omnichannel experience. This includes business SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and others.
Without correct integrations, it can become difficult, if not impossible to manage the channels efficiently. When agents have to switch between different apps to answer chats and calls, it’s highly likely that some clients will remain unattended. Plus, it also severely caps your ability to centralize records of previous interactions and customer data. Why take the risk?
3. IVR
Interactive Voice Response, or IVR in short, is a phone system technology that generates an automated welcome message for all incoming callers. A pre-set menu is played out by the computer as soon as the caller comes through. It includes options such as “Please press ‘*’ for English” or “Please press 2 to reach the Finance department”. As soon as the caller dials the chosen option, the computer follows instructions assigned to that number or key.
With IVR, it is easy to bring forward more advanced call management, while the customers enjoy instant assistance and don’t need to repeat themselves trying to reach the correct person. Plus, businesses can use this tool to instantly collect information about the caller before even having the agent answer the call.
4. CRM
One of the most essential tools for a smooth call center operation is incorporation of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. As the name suggests, it is primarily aimed at improving the rapport and boosting customer experience ratings. CRM functions as an all-in-one customer database that enables the agents to personalize their communication and better assist clients.
It also helps boost the overall contact center efficiency. The available data can help:
- Identify repeated complaints
- Create strategy to retain clients
- Evaluate employees
5. Call Recording and Reporting
Finally, you should never underestimate the importance of call center tools such as call recording and analytics. Even though simple on the surface, these are instrumental to having a closer look at the way that the improvements can be made, both, within and for the team.
Call recording for instance is an invaluable tool when it comes down to monitoring calls for training and evaluation purposes. The real life conversation is always more informative rather than a role-play scenario, and it helps better prepare agents for the issues they would be dealing with, as well as provide them with options for conflict resolution, sales tactics, etc.
Call reporting on the other hand, gives a more quantitative deep dive into the agent’s performance. In many cases it helps evaluate the employee better, even though some qualitative data should be used to gain perspective too. The typical reports today include:
- User activity
- Ring group activity
- Call distribution
- Average queue waiting time
- Call cost
- Queue answered/ unanswered calls
- Others
To Wrap Up
The tools discussed are fantastic for bringing forward a more efficient and effective call center experience for both the customer and the agent. Even though they can be adopted individually, it is best to incorporate them in an all-in-one UC software to avoid additional time and effort required for individual management.
It is also worth noting, the instruments presented here can only amplify your communication system, but all processes need to run smoothly to ensure that your clients get an outstanding service. For instance, if a live chat window is available, but the agent isn’t – it is highly unlikely that the tool will manage to boost your customer satisfaction rating. Similarly, even if the automated IVR response helps direct the caller faster, if at the end the waiting time is above the average you’ve entirely lost the advantage.
Didn’t find the right tool for your business? For more information and advice, please visit VoIP-Info.org.
April 7, 2023
Phone System 