When running a contact centre, the success of your business depends on what customers think of your services.
If people are happy with the level of service you provide, they are likely to become loyal customers. However, if they are unhappy or annoyed with your service they are more likely to go somewhere else or switch to your competitors.
So how can your contact centre satisfy more customers and avoid losing them?
4 features to ensure you avoid annoying your customers:
Omnichannel functionality
Contacting businesses can be a painful process when the options are limited to rigid communication options
Many of us hate the idea of waiting on the phone for help, when we would rather send a quick email request or speak directly to a helpful agent through live chat.
To be a truly effective contact centre, you need to meet your customers where they are.
By adopting an omnichannel system for your contact centre, your team can communicate with customers through phone, email, SMS, live chat, WhatsApp or social media.
This provides customers with a higher level of choice when contacting your business, removing one of the more common frustrations associated with contacting a business.
With more communication options available for your customer, contacting your business will be a much smoother process for them. This is likely to create more positive interactions with your customers, increase overall satisfaction rates and boost customer retention levels.
Availability 24/7
When establishing a relationship with customers, convenience is the key to success.
Customers come from a wide variety of backgrounds, with vastly different lives, personal needs and daily routines. All of which your contact centre should be able to meet.
To put it simply, if your business cannot be contacted when the customer has time, your customer will find a business that is available at that time.
Of course this presents a problem for many contact centres, as not every team can afford to have agents in the office or available online outside of traditional working hours. However, a live agent is not the only way to engage with your customers.
By switching to a communication system with virtual agents or intelligent web forms options, your business can create automated dialogue scripts to engage with customers.
These features can collect relevant data from customers queries and then quickly link them to the relevant solution or resources for their query.
With functions like these in place, your business can communicate with more customers, provide them with solutions around the clock and extend availability beyond office hours.
CRM integration
From a customer perspective, your contact centre agents are not only employees of your business, they are your business, and are the face and voice of your brand.
This presents your business and contact centre agents with the responsibility of providing customers with any information they request (e.g. account info, past transactions or communication history), whenever they choose to ask for it.
However, this can be difficult for businesses that store different types of information across different CRM systems and databases. With customer data spread across different departments or teams (e.g. finance or deliveries) it is important that agents can quickly access and provide this information upon request. So how do we bring this data from different CRM systems and databases together?
A contact centre system with full CRM integrations can securely link with multiple CRM databases, consolidating all key information including; purchase history / contract details, prefered means of contact as well as previous interaction history.
A platform with these features can cut down call times by allowing your agents to access information quickly and respond to customer queries about their data.
Safe and convenient payment options
If you’re a business that takes payments from customers, it’s within your best interest to make this process as simple as possible for both your agents and customers.
Whether you’re handling transactions online or over the phone, your customers will expect that their payment details and financial data is being processed correctly and securely.
However, with such transactions the risk of your customer’s personal information being leaked, stolen or hacked is a very real possibility. Which is why all payment options for your contact centre should be Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant.
By utilising a system that is PCI DSS compliant, your contact centre can take payments over the internet or phone, safe in the knowledge that customer’s information is encrypted (meaning it can not be hacked or stolen) and that all transactions are protected.
Without PCI DSS integration, your contact centre agents will not be able to take payments without sending customers to a different department or payment method.
This type of process is an outdated concept and creates more work for your customer, wasting more of their time and increasing the likelihood of them becoming annoyed with your business.
Satisfy more customers and increase output
To expand your contact centre features and reduce the likelihood of annoying your customers, simply book a free demo of Connex One customer engagement system or claim your free trial today.
