Various call centers have recognized the need to improve their customer service performance to increase customer satisfaction. In line with this, necessary steps would have to be made to provide high quality services to clients.
Call centers are created to provide marketing and product support to certain products and services. These centers are used by major businesses like utility companies, mail order catalogue firms and banks as a means of directly interacting with their customers. Since they are primarily created to benefit the customers, customer service performance is considered an important indicator of call center efficiency.
A call center is classified based on the kind of calls that its agents make. Outbound call centers are those whose agents place calls to potential customers of a certain product or service. Inbound call centers, on the other hand, receive calls from customers. These people call to ask questions about a product or service, report a malfunction, or ask for assistance on how to use a product or avail of a service. In line with the efficient handling of calls, call center agents are usually organized into a multi-tier support system.
In this operation model, the first tier is generally composed of agents who direct calls to the appropriate department and who provides general directory information. Calls are forwarded to second-tier agents if the customers insist on more assistance. Usually, it is at this stage that most calls are resolved. If a customer issue is still not resolved at this stage, calls are then forwarded to the third-tier which are primarily comprised of product engineers and highly skilled technical support staff.
Call center managers are faced with the challenge of balancing requirements of cost effectiveness and the provision of quality services to customers. Managements of call centers need to hire sufficient staff to answer the inbound calls from customers. They also need to ensure that with the number of agents that they have, they would be able to provide quality services to their clients. Managers often use demand estimation and telecommunication forecasting techniques to determine the level of staff that is required at a certain time. Salaries of agents make up the bulk of call center expenses which is why managers should see to it that agents are effectively utilized.
To achieve this, performance management systems are set up in call centers to measure how agents perform. Different technologies are also employed to effectively manage the large volume of calls that call centers usually manage. These technologies allow calls to be queued and processed so that agents are kept as productive throughout their shift. Some of these technologies include predictive dialing, automatic call distribution (ACD), computer telephony integration (CTI), and customer interaction management (CIM) solutions.
While call centers pay attention to agent statistics such as average talk time, average handling time and service levels, call center management now gives weight on customer satisfaction. For instance, metrics such as First Call Resolution (FCR) rates is now among the most used as statistics show that FCR is directly related to customer satisfaction. In fact, the most effective way of improving the customer service performance of a call center is by increasing its FCR rates. To improve FCR, agent training, agent incentives and investments in skills improvement should be made.
Tags: customer service, performance