We’re living in the age of outsourcing where any sized business, big or small, can get setup and start outsourcing to a call center in a manner of minutes. What separates smart outsourcing from outsourcing that’s destined to fail is taking the time to create a great customer experience. Customers want more, and they expect that when they contact your business, you’ll know them and know exactly what they want to get out of the call. But, making sure you’re developing your call center experience so it’s focused on the needs of the customer can be complicated.

The news isn’t all bad, though. In this post, we’ll share a few tips on how to deliver a customer focused call center experience. Regardless of your businesses size, we’ll guide you on how to build the best call center interaction for your customers.

Design The Best Call Center Script

Putting the time and effort into designing the best call center script to achieve your goals is essential. Before you get started on setting up your account, you’ll want to sit down and map out your ideas and goals, as well as the most common types of calls and questions your in-house staff handle most frequently. While many people who are new to outsourcing may want to arm their call center with every possible scenario, doing that is a recipe for disaster.

Setting up  your call center to use the same protocols in situations your business handles most often will be the best way to ensure outsourcing success, as well as making sure your customers are receiving the greatest service possible. For less frequent requests, we recommend having the call center agents take a simple message or transferring that call to a member on your team.

It can be tempting to build out a call center flow that includes every possible scenario under the sun. After all, if your goal is to create the best possible customer experience, your first thought is to make sure that every customer who calls has their needs met 100% of the time. However, by stuffing your call script with every possible option, you’re increasing the odds that your operators will get confused and wind up giving out the wrong information, gathering the wrong data, or just plain not know what to do. Complicated scripts lead to lengthy calls, frustrated customers, and a potential loss of business.

Let Customers Know Live Help Is Available Through All of Your Touchpoints

As technology continues to evolve and social channels are becoming increasingly popular, your customers will have different needs and will want to be able to reach out to your business in a way that is most comfortable for them. If your support staff is only available via phone during business hours, you may be deterring some customers from reaching out simply because they don’t want to make the phone call.

When your customers know that there are multiple ways to reach out and receive live help, they are more willing to utilize various channels and ask for assistance when needed. Some ways you can inform customers of your accessibility include:

• Update your email signatures to include your Twitter or Instagram handle or where they can find you on Facebook.
• Include a link in your emails and your social pages where customers can easily access your live chat.
• Include your call center forwarding number that customers can dial directly in case your business lines are down, tied up, or you’ve closed for the day.
• Post your support phone number and email on every page of your website, in your email signature, and on all of your social channels.
• If you offer a knowledgebase that customers can access to try and help themselves, include an article that lists all of the ways customers can contact your business, and when (if you’re not available 24/7).

Give Agents Access to Bring Up Customer Transaction History

The foundation of a customer focused call center experience is knowledge about the customer. When customers reach out to your business with issues, they expect you to know everything about them as your customer. They expect you to know when the last time they contacted you was, what their issue was the last time they called, details about their account, etc. While this is pretty easy to do in house when all of your employees are using your CRM, it’s a bit more difficult to personalize the customer experience when customers interact with your business through your call center.

The best way to empower your call center agents to deliver personal experiences is to give them the ability to access customer data, which would allow them to pull up the transaction history of each customer calling in. Integrating with your CRM or other back end systems is an amazing differentiator in driving the best call center experience. Once you’ve provisioned access, the reps will have some background information on who the customer is, how long they’ve been a customer and if they’ve had any recent issues. When customers don’t have to give the same spiel each time they reach out, they’re less likely to get frustrated with the person handling their case, and more likely to remain loyal to your brand.

Analyze Call Data to Drive Growth and Identify Issues

Using a call center makes it simple to quickly dive into your call data and use that data to create more engaging and personal call center experiences for your customers.  With data, you will be able to determine why customers are reaching out and how often, which may help to illustrate some weaker points within your call handling system. From this data, you have the opportunity to address issues, make adjustments, and continue providing the best service possible to your customers.

We believe that the best call center interactions start with the customer, and that it’s essential for businesses to deliver call center experiences that are centered around the customer.