Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Build a Bridge to Customers with Better Call Center Scheduling
In an era in which a great experience is increasingly the only differentiator between providers for most products and services, companies are rushing to improve their customer experience. They’re doing it by ensuring that they offer the communications channels customers want – not only telephone, but text, chat, email, and social media – and by personalizing the customer experience.
“Companies are expected to know a customer’s individual needs and preferences,” wrote Meg Cabrera in a recent article for Search Engine Journal. “Anticipating and proactively addressing a customer’s immediate and future needs should be the staple for any company, and providing personalized experience will be the trend.”
Customers are generally more informed today when they begin shopping. Spending too much time “selling” your product and service is likely a waste of time. What you need to be selling is a personalized service and an assurance to the customer that each interaction will be handled quickly, efficiently and with minimal effort. Cabrera noted that any customer who goes through the purchase cycle has a perceived notion and a standard level of service they expect to be met to be satisfied.
“That is a crucial touch point,” she wrote. “If the customer is satisfied with how their inquiry is handled, there will be a high chance of buying. But if the initial touch point turns out to be a disappointment, they will never buy. Perhaps more importantly, they will tell their friends about their experience.”
Perhaps you have the infrastructure in place for a great customer experience. Your systems are integrated, your knowledge bases are easily searchable and your channels are aligned in a way that allows the customer to move between them. Is that it? You’re done, right? Not if customers are having to wait too long to reach agents. This is where call center scheduling becomes the most critical aspect of the customer experience…no matter how great your agents, your processes and your systems, they are useless if customers can’t get to them easily, or have to wait for them.
With a good call center scheduling solution, managers can make sure that when a customer reaches out, an agent is waiting to handle that contact. But it’s about more than being there when the customer reaches out; a great scheduling solution can also set aside time for agents to be proactive rather than reactive. This helps take the pressure off inbound agents in predictable cases such as a product recall or warrantee expiration.
“If a client is satisfied with how their inquiry is handled from the start, you can avoid problems such as irate customers waiting on hold, or product-related problems such as defects, which ultimately resulting to refund or product replacement,” wrote Cabrera.
Build your contact center to be omnichannel, proactive and customer friendly. But also ensure you’re using a scheduling solution that helps ensure you’re there for customers precisely when they need you.
Edited by Alicia Young