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, such as call centers. Although digital communications and social media customer service approaches are becoming more important, they are not replacing the need call centers.

Unfortunately, as a growing number of companies struggle to keep up with the latest customer service technology, they are risking alienating customers that use traditional communication mediums. Organizations that don’t implement their call center strategy properly can risk losing a lot of 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 very important 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 a large number of companies are doing a poor job handling customer service inquiries. Other polls have shown that companies are doing even worse with handling customer service over the phone instead of social media or online support.

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

Be careful about relying too heavily on outsourcing

Many companies are very big on outsourcing their call center services. The problem is that outsourcing often saves them money at the expense of their brand reputation and customer satisfaction.

You need to keep in mind that you will generally get what you pay for. Companies that provide the cheapest call center support services are not typically known for doing the best job. They often hire poorly trained employees that are willing to take any job 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 Don’t use outdated technology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 center 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 Some of these tools are highly outdated.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 are investing in higher quality call center support technology, then 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 center support logs for quality control

QA is one of the most important elements of any successful customer support strategy. This is true for both companies relying on call center and online support. You need to review customer service conversations regularly. You may find that you need to provide more training to certain customer service professionals to make sure customers are getting 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 are going to 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 will need to maintain an inventory of common issues and see which ones can be handled through the automated support system.