Customers are the most important members of a business, whether it is small or large. They are sources of revenue and keeping them happy is the most crucial aspect for the business managers. The companies now rely on the capable services of the call center outsourcing vendor to provide the services they require. This creates a lot of expectations and pressures on the agents in those customer contact centers to perform. Secret code to meeting and even surpassing the expectations of the clients or your immediate managers is to be more customers centric.
Creating a customer centric atmosphere within the contact center is the responsibility of the managers. So, the first step would be to make sure that agents are listening to the customer issues carefully. They should listen to everything that the customer has to say before voicing their opinion. Stopping the customer mid-way through his call and answering questions will not please the customers. If the agent is still not too sure about the real cause of customers’ discontent then a couple of questions could lead the agent to root cause of the problem. When a problem is solved from its root cause, the customer is bound to be happy. This will also reduce the need of repeat calls and thus help the call center offer better support to its callers. Thus it is essential that agents should be trained to think in this manner. The customer centric approach will help the teams and departments to better serve the customer and bring a more dynamic approach to problem solving. If the agents are willing to listen, the customer feedback would be very responsive and help improve various internal areas, processes or tasks. Below are some tips that will help organizations implement customer centric approach within the organization.
- Deciding the Customer Journey: To create the right customer approach you have to keep the agents informed. You have to first of all decide the customer journey. What do you want the customers to get and feel? Once these objectives have been decided the processes and strategies can be implemented with ease. The managers can talk about customer centricity all day long, but at the end of the day it is the agents who communicate with the customers and thus are the face of the company to the customers. So, the agents need to be trained based on the objectives that you have already decided. The agents should be first to understand your customer approach and what you are looking to attain with that.
- Wait with Patience: Customer centric approach and its results cannot be seen overnight. Initially you may feel the policies are pointless but if you wait with patience you can reap the advantages. Keep the agents involved in your planning otherwise the plans will not have any realistic impact.
- Aligning the Policies with Customer Expectation: It is important to understand what the customer is expecting from your customer service. There are many brands who assume wrongly about the customer expectation. If there is a gap in the understanding then the entire approach fails. So, it is important to get the agents and senior managers involved in the planning. The agents face the customers’ everyday and they are the best people to understand the customers’ expectation.
- Improving Customer Engagement and Retention: If you want to improve relations with the customers then the only way is to listen to them carefully. If you really listen to the customers and then offer them viable solutions it will not only keep them happy but open up gates for cross selling too.
- Keeping the Approach Same Across Channels: Technology has made the contact centers offer solutions across a range of channels. Voice calls are just one of the many contact channels that the call center agents have to manage. The agents have to provide chat, email and social media support as well. So, it is important that the customer centric approach is followed uniformly across all these channels. Each and every channel is important as far as modern customer service is concerned. When you are looking to win the favor of customers, there should be a concerted approach to it.
Keeping the customers happy and up to date is a way ahead for brands. There is no point in being hasty when dealing with the customers. Let them speak and speak only after they are done. It will help gain insights into the customer’s mind. So, improve the services of your contact center with a thoroughly customer centric approach.