As the world continues to progress into the data-driven age, customers are increasingly time poor and as such, they relentlessly pursue tools that provide instant answers with the fastest response times.

In retail, the speed and effectiveness of how an issue or question is addressed shapes the consumer’s overall perception. When calls or questions are handled in an appropriate and timely fashion, customer retention is significantly boosted. Customers use a variety of channels to communicate their complaints or queries and they expect the same level of customer care across all channels. As a result, customer call centres are required to provide the omni-channel approach to meet the high level of service that customers have come to expect.

OMNI CHANNEL APPROACH

Tagged as the most pivotal business tool for contact centers in 2017, the omni-channel approach includes, amongst others, emails, phonecalls, texts, chatbots and customer forums. This approach enables customers to engage with brands across multiple channels and the challenge for brands is to ensure that this is a seamless experience for the customer. Delivering this approach through a customer call center has many benefits, but primarily it enables brands to ensure that the quality and consistency of service across all channels is achieved and maintained.

SELF SERVICE TECH

One of the biggest impacts on call centers has been the growth of self-service technology. As mentioned, consumers have a variety of resources available to assist them, including mobile apps, chatbots, social media, and more.

The automation of some of the more frequently asked questions can be planned and implemented saving a considerable amount of time for both the customers and the call centres. While self-service technology can be a great resource for many basic customer questions, it means that the calls that do come through to the call centers are often queries that a customer has not been able to find the answer to on their own. As a result call center agents are expected to answer more difficult questions than they have before.

SOCIAL MEDIA

In recent years social media has become the platform of choice to ask questions and voice customer complaints. There are countless examples of companies that have failed to handle customer complaints on social media effectively and have unfortunately witnessed the exquisitely quick backlash that only online can deliver. In an effort to advance customer relations over social media in 2017, companies should focus on ways to personalize their messages while still maintaining a quick response time.

Despite the increase in technology the rise of the informed customer service professional is more important than ever. Customers calling in are often frustrated because their previous attempts to find answers have been unsuccessful.

Call center agents still hold the cards for determining the success of the call center. The value of having an informed agent cannot be understated. Agents are having to deal with increasingly difficult situations and informed agents are able to more effectively nurture irate customers, and this ultimately drives service-based revenue

By embracing and integrating technology with traditional call centre activity, and by up-skilling call centre agents, call centres can improve all aspects of the customer experience. The face of customer service and shopping is definitely changing and as technology continues to grow, companies will be forced to innovate with new ideas to provide a better customer experience.

At FMI we have a state of the art customer call centre so get in touch today and see how we can help your customers experience a premium level of customer satisfaction. Contact Melody Chinamasa on 01 496 3399.