Seven signs of a leading customer service centre

Despite the prevalence in analysis and monitoring technology, there are still huge variables when it comes to levels of customer service quality, regardless of geography or sector.

For example, a customer can call their bank one day and experience a seamless service transaction, while a subsequent call to a utilities provider can have them tearing their hair out with frustration. So what separates the wheat from the chaff, and how can businesses tell if they have an industry leading customer service centre? Here are seven signs to look out for:

Hit staff in the guts

Not literally of course. But this is about making an impression on the customer service centre staff and using verbatim customer feedback to create a self-correcting organisation. It helps provide a clear understanding of what is making customers happy and others furious, whether it’s due to the advisor, branch or website. It will not only reduce avoidable conflicts further down the line but also uncover any negative feedback beyond the control of the customer service team that needs addressing.

Only take the right type of calls

Utilisation remains something most contact centres struggle with. Many work with several systems increasing their after call work time, while others have processes that slow things down resulting in problems with engagement. The trick is to ensure that time is being spent handling calls that need to be handled by people. Let simple queries be handled by IVR and web solutions, so that feedback incidents and problems can be directed to the relevant department, which frees up time to handle incidents and problems in a more thorough way.

Best advice for customer service: 90 seconds max

Everybody is busy and nobody likes to be kept waiting, so contact centre teams should be tasked with answering customer calls within 90 seconds. Of course, this is easier said than done and there will always be times when call volume is higher than anticipated. But, by filtering only the queries that require a human response, call volume can be reduced, meaning connect time can be much lower. In some instances, there are target waiting times of as low as 20 seconds but, while ambitious, only serves to skew the internal measurements of how calls are handled.

Continue to find out how to retain staff in a stressful working environment.

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