Call Center Management Featured Article
Call Center Management - Are Your Agents Trained to Say the Wrong Things?
Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions can go a long way toward improving sales processes and communications within your environment, as long as your CRM initiatives are structured to meet your customer expectations. This should be a dedicated focus within call center management, yet many still fall short.
According to this Forbes report, there are certain assumptions that exist within the call center environment that can lead to failure. For instance, have you ever heard – or encouraged an agent to say – “Hold on, please, I have to finish this call script.” What is more important to call center management – finishing the script or satisfying the customer?
When calling into the customer service center, customers have a purpose and they want that purpose completed in as little time as possible. If they are met with an inflexible agent, they may not be able to accomplish their goal, and get frustrated in the process. If the purpose of the script is to turn the caller into a buyer, taking them to frustration first is not the way to go.
Instead, call center management should be focused on training agents to handle the call according to the needs of the customer. Call scripts do serve a purpose, sure, but that purpose should never be to alienate the customer. Give your agents the power to jump right to the customer concern. Once he or she is satisfied with the interaction, that is your opportunity to move to a sales suggestion and not before.
An agent may also try to turn poor performance into great performance through exclamatory statements. This is just silly. Customers are not stupid, they often know the business better than the agent and often expect results in minutes, not days or weeks. Don’t try to mask the situation when performance falls short. Be honest with the customer and encourage your agents to do their best to rectify the situation.
Has an agent within your environment ever said to a customer, “But ma’am, this time I am fully empowered to resolve your problem.”? This indicates to the customer that you do not equip your agents with the necessary authority or tools to really address customer concerns and call center management is simply wasting their time. Avoid this type of communication at all cost – the result will be a lost customer.
Finally, the worst thing to say to a customer is that the technology involved makes it difficult to solve the problem 100 percent of the time. Wow – do agents or technicians actually say that to customers? If your technology is too complicated for your employees, something is terribly wrong with your hiring practices.
As someone in call center management, keep your focus solely on the primary task at hand – empowering your agents to deliver excellence customer service. When you make this a priority, the rest of your job is much easier.
Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli