Even the most majestic businesses have humble beginnings. Whether your company started from a garage, a dorm room, or a Starbucks over coffee, one thing the most successful companies have in common is their strategy for growth – they are always focused on the client. And, successful companies are focused on every client, not just the clients who are contacting them with problems.

If you’re a 2 person small business or a 2,000 employee behemoth, your customer is your most important asset. The secret to growing your company is being able to maintain a high customer service level despite how small (or how large) your operation may be. If you do things right, the first customer you acquired could still be using you 10, 20, or even 50 years later! Want to know how businesses do it? It’s easy – call center services.

Call centers help businesses maintain a high level of customer service without the businesses themselves having to hire their own in-house staff for customer service. And, with that power at your disposal, your customer service can be reactive, proactive, and educated. Here’s how call centers can help your customer service success:

1. Inbound customer service without business hours

Most call centers are available and staffed 24 hours a day, which means your customer service doesn’t need to be limited by traditional business hours. Your customers will always have someone to talk to even when your business has closed for the night.

Being available 24/7 means you are catering to every customer type – those that will call during business hours and the ones that will reach out to your business once they’re done with their own. And yes, you’ll even be available for those middle of the night 3 am type emergencies. 24 hour coverage shows you care about every customer.

2. Make your customer service employees more productive

While your call center agents are answering the phones, your in-house staff will have more time to work on more important tasks – making your staff much more productive. Call centers can reduce the burden on your in-house staff by:

• Answering questions on your behalf: Questions like what type of services do you offer, what is your pricing structure, when are you available, etc. are easy questions your call center can answer without having to take a message for a return call.
• Troubleshooting basic issues: When call center agents are given the opportunity to assist with basic troubleshooting requests, customers are able to be helped on the first call.
• Decreasing call backs: Call center agents will help cut down on the amount of calls you and your team will have to return and handle, which means you can really focus on the big stuff.

3. Centralize all of your customer communication

In order to stay organized, businesses need to compartmentalize different tasks and create departments that handle those tasks, like billing, customer service, etc. Where this can be a maze for customers is when each of those departments has independent contact data.

Instead of making your customers memorize a bunch of different numbers, create a single point of contact for your customers no matter the issue. For example, setting up a front end IVR to direct calls based off the caller’s response or input will help centralize all points of contact and streamline calls.

4. Easily sift through call data to find weak spots

Call centers are chock full of reporting data which can be used to your advantage. For example, you can look for trends based on call disposition to see how new processes may be implemented to improve the customer experience. Here is some other important data you should be paying attention to:

• Call Result: This may go by different names depending on your service provider, but the objective is the same; to capture and categorize what customers are calling for. For example, this month, an HVAC company may have had 65% of calls result in a scheduled appointment, 25% result in messages taken, and the last 10% were questions that operators were able to handle via programmed FAQs.  For a business that wants to decrease the amount of messages taken, they need to train operators to handle more tasks. They should look to their current call result stats and decide what needs to be added, like some basic troubleshooting capabilities.
• Call Traffic: Being aware of trends in peak call traffic to your business is a great tool to use to help yourself plan ahead. When you know that your business is receiving the most amount of calls during 10am-2pm Monday through Friday, you can schedule your in-house employees accordingly. That way you’re never over or understaffed at ill-opportune times.
• Call Length: If your call center charges by the minute, you should be able to access information that shows just how long your calls are taking, especially when taking your customers into consideration. While it may be helpful to have your call center agents gather a lot of information, it may be frustrating for your customers if they’re not up to answering a bunch of questions.

5. Periodic outreach to take your clients temperature

If you want customers to stay loyal to your business, you need to reciprocate the loyalty. Whenever you need, call center agents can make outreach calls to your customers to check in to see how things are going. They can gather feedback from customers, engage in customer satisfaction surveys and ultimately keep the line of communication open between your customers and business.

If customers are having issues, have questions the operator’s can’t answer or want to talk to someone about their account, call center agents can transfer the call over to the correct person. This proactive approach to customer service will certainly keep your customers around.

SAS Call Center helps businesses like yours keep customers happy with live customer service. Learn more about our call center services and explore how SAS can help your business.