Quick Tips to Improve Inbound Call Center Services

Satisfaction of customers is the basic parameter that determines the success of inbound call center services. However, it must be kept in mind that it is not an easy feat to satisfy a modern-day customer whose demands are evolving. In today’s era, answering to an inbound query is not sufficient to earn an decent customer satisfaction score (CSAT). Call hold time, call routing, time taken to resolve a query are some of the important factors that influence customer satisfaction to a significant extent, as it happens with any real estate call center, for instance. However, to achieve this feat most of the enterprises commit the blunder of putting the onus singly on the calling agents. The result is an overworked team delivering average or below average service. To avoid such a situation, here’s examining some of the quick tips that can help enterprises overhaul their inbound call center services.

Adoption of automation– Intelligent AI and ML algorithms can simplify and automate the addressing of incoming customer queries to a significant extent. While addressing customer queries, AI-enabled chatbots simulate a natural conversation that gives customers a feeling of talking to a human agent. This conversation is further upgraded by implementing point-and-click UI and visual elements. These elements further simplify the automated interaction which can be applied to address a variety of customer queries. The automated capabilities effectively cut short the long waiting time for customers and enable immediate initiation of actions beginning with registering all the customer details. This is an essential step in bringing significant improvement in inbound call center services. For example, the reason many companies around the world prefer call center outsourcing to the Philippines is because they are quick to adapt to technological advancements such as integrating AI to their system to provide prompt response to customers using chatbots, and to help their agents handle many tasks at once. 

Flexible scheduling– A majority of call center agents are burdened with a pressing work schedule. A high call center employee turnover rate further adds to the existing agents’ agony. The ultimate result is exhausted employees delivering low-quality inbound call center services. It is essential for companies to take stock of this situation and allow agents to organize their own work schedule in terms of their preferred shift timings. Agents are observed to exhibit more efficiency during a graveyard shift as opposed to a day shift. Companies must take this into consideration and allocate resources as per their preferred shift timings. This makes it easy to fill out all the operational shifts and save the superiors from micromanaging the agents. More importantly, this enables a better 24/7 inbound call center services. Call center scheduling software would be a beneficial tool.

Adopting a multi-channel approach– Leveraging multiple communication channel for inbound queries is a proven way to improve inbound call center services. These channels range from emails, live chat to web self-service options and pre-recorded IVR messages. This prevents overburdening on a particular agent in one channel who can focus on more critical customer queries that can be resolved with better efficiency and lesser time.

Developing a knowledge base– A properly documented employee training process should be an essential part of the roadmap towards improving inbound call center services. This document can also be used as a knowledge base with ready solutions to all the probable and some unique customer queries. Call center agents can tap into this knowledge base to get ready answers and quickly resolve customer queries. This is critical in driving customer satisfaction as it reduces the waiting time for customers over a call to get their queries resolved.

Conclusion

These are some of the critical but easy steps to determine and iron out issues to improve and streamline inbound call center services. Essentially, a performance-driven work culture, technology adoption, and service alignment with companies’ business goals are keys to ensure success of inbound call center services delivery.