Tips For Reducing Call Center Costs Whilst Improving Customer Service – Nora Mork
Customer service is as vital as it ever been these days if not more, since so much commerce is being done remotely, meaning that the creeping doubts & fears about doing business without any face to face time lingers over all customers. To allay these fears and answer any complaints, queries or, far less commonly, compliments, that customers have, remote customer service is a vital element to the industry.
Call centres (no matter how dated they seem) are vital as a way of allowing customers to communicate without being able to actually be in the room with a rep.
The comparative cost of call centre operations and general customer service is high, and it’s one of the most outright costs you have, since (except in a minority of cases) customer service is a necessary and expensive aspect of a business. That said, it’s vital, so let’s take a look at how to improve your service and save you money.
#1. Invest In Alternative Customer Service
This is an odd point, to begin with, but the best way to save money on customer service call centers is to abandon them to a large degree. There will be, for the foreseeable future, demand for telephone customer service. However, there is still room to steer away and save your money.
“Masses of customer service demands can be handled over textual exchanges. Not so much over email, though that is a slightly inelegant alternative, but through chats. The live nature to it, the immediacy with which customers can get answers and the impact of chatbots are all massive plus points”, advises Alexander Arnold, marketing blogger at Big Assignments and Ox Essays.
Chatbots are set to be the future for customer service centers. They are so much cheaper and easier to run, saving training time and manpower. But they are also more effective, gathering vital data and responding with greater speed and confidence than call centers. They ought to be, at least, investigated by all companies.
#2. Constant Analysis And Revaluation
Hiring customer service agents, training them and then washing your hands off the whole business will never bring you the results that you need. If you’ve ever been on the customer end of customer service calls, you may remember hearing that ‘This call may be recorded for training purposes’.
This is a vital tool for companies with customer service call centers. The calls are recorded so that they can be listened to, analyzed and improved upon in future outings. Doing this will save you time and money in the long run, since better optimized and thought out customer service calls will lead to happier customers whose solutions are arrived upon quicker.
This is a process which demands a consistent review process, set in place with timelines for adjusting scripts and methods according to demands.
#3. Use A Callback Feature
This has been increasingly popular amongst call centers for customer service and allows for a much smoother and convenient experience for both reps and customers. All it takes is a system which allows customers to understand that they are in a line for their call to be received and to opt to be called when there is someone to talk to.
The convenience for the customer is obvious. But there are major benefits for companies too, which primarily not having vast numbers of callers queueing. This cuts down heavily on trunk costs, and can even allow you to have less staff since there’s less pressure to get through callers quickly.
#4. Plug An FAQ System
It seems an obvious point to make, but it’s easy to avoid massive customer service demand that will cost you time and money if the customers answer their questions themselves.
“There has been a really big turn in recent years towards automated customer service. As strange as it seems, automated customer service also includes getting customers to ‘automatically’ answer their own questions, through an exhaustive and easy to access FAQ sector”, advises Mark Langbury, marketer at Australian Reviewer and UK Top Writers.
FAQ is only unappealing to customers because they all believe that their query or demand isn’t likely to be solved by an FAQ. But, if you pour the initial time and effort into setting up an FAQ section with all the conceivable answers to questions, it will actually provide a quicker route for customers, outweighing the downside of it requiring some work on their part. Integrating the system in the call center system will lessen the load.
Conclusion
It’s a vital part of almost all industries and, whilst it is set to change, it’s also set to stay around. Without the proper techniques implemented, you will find your company throwing money, time and manpower at something which doesn’t immediately present the benefits that justify the cost. But, be canny, and you could have a ticket for success.
