Call centers have suffered from bad press for several years, because you only ever hear about poor experiences. In practice, many call centers operate extremely efficiently and customers are pleased to make a call where they know they are to receive expert help. The next stage is to improve the efficiency of call centers with the introduction of speech self-service where the caller talks to a computer and is put through to the correct individual without the need to negotiate long telephone answering menus.
For all customers, they must believe that they are receiving a personalized service from the company they have called.
Improving the Experience for The Customer
Customers use a variety of methods to contact organizations. They may use your website and click through a contact form from their tablet computer or cell phone or they may send a message via their favorite social media app. Because these alternatives are not interactive with a company, in human terms, they will use the telephone when they wish to complete a conversation when that is an easier way to ask questions and receive the answers they require.
Where the organization uses a standard automated phone system, callers may not receive the human contact that they require as they negotiate the menu system. Should the automation be replaced by a speech self-service process, they will almost certainly be pleased to be able to say exactly what they want and be put through to the correct department where they can be helped immediately.
It is essential that companies and organizations make it easy for customers to contact their business from a variety of optional sources, and where a speech self-service procedure is in place, the customer can interact easily; which is impossible with a menu based system.
Organizing Your Call Center Efficiently
Having negotiated your automated speech self-service operation, the caller will be very disappointed if they are redirected to a telephone answering system or put into a queue waiting for the call to be answered.
Organizations must learn from experience and ensure that their call centers have sufficient employees to be able to answer telephone calls, giving customers the opportunity to call outside of office hours and at weekends. Those same organizations must establish a telephone system so that when the individual that the customer requires is not available, they are redirected to a human being that can answer the telephone and is fully trained to be able to deal with the call.
The key element is to make it easy for the customers and make them feel wanted.
