When a person becomes a CUSTOMER of a certain product/service, he/she expects a gilt-edged customer service i.e. the product or service he/she is using, must be of an A-OK quality. In case, he/she experiences or encounters an issue while consuming the service, the first and foremost thing that the customer does is contact customer care to get his/her issues addressed with instantaneous solutions. Call centers or contact centers are the mediators between the organization and the customers and call centers are the very first line of response to the customers. In case customers have any trouble, he/she searches for the number of customer care, dial it, and express the hindrances he/she is facing and expect to be solved in an immediate manner.
Call centers are considered the problem solvers for customers, but there can't be a denial of the fact that call centers are also one of the toughest places to work in, as the phone calls ring every time, customers express grievances every minute, file complaints every second, utter inferior language whilst angry, and many more. A stressful environment with lots of challenges is fully surrounded by call centers. Call centers have evolved in many ways. From a telephone operation to AI-centered technology, call centers have come a long way. The ultimate goal of call centers is excellent customer experience (CX) with long-term customer satisfaction. The very contact centers that are involved in delivering the best customer service have also lots of challenges to cope with. From high attrition rates to low employee morale, call centers face numerous challenges. Today, we will be discussing some popular challenges that call centers face along with their ultimate solutions. Let's begin.
Call centers act as the bridge or linking metric between the customers and the businesses. Call centers represent the brand of the business. And if customers are not satisfied with the solutions they are offered, they may switch to another service or may not ever use the same service again which may impact the profitability and reputation of the business. Some of the major challenges that call centers face along with their practical solutions are enumerated below:
There's no doubt that call centers are one of the indurate workplaces to work. Calls come every time. Agents have to be prepared fully with all the answers that the customers seek. So being a call center agent may be quite frustrating at all. Call center agents may get heavy targets such as completing the call within this time, convincing the customers to switch to advanced service, etc. The extreme workload with no work flexibility can drain the call center agents with lower expectations towards career growth and productivity. Due to this reason, the vacancies of call center agents may pop up every month at customer care centers.
Solutions:
a) Facilitating remote working and flexible working schedules
b) Attractive pay, benefits, remuneration, and financial incentives
c) Rewards and recognition program for deserving agents
d) Feedback session from agents for advanced collaboration
With the rigidity of flexible working schedules, call center agents may have difficulty in their work-life balances that may not only affect their physical well-being but mental health. Due to this, they may feel stressed and suffer from burnout. Their health state may get jeopardized and the records of sick leave and other absentee records may increase which may ultimately impact upon rendering effective customer service through contact centers. It also negatively strikes the employee’s morale too.
Solutions:
a) Tracking of absentee data, reasons behind their absenteeism to identify and implement absentee policies
b) Organizing mental health and wellness programs timely
c) Identifying patterns and causes of the high leave records for the resolving of agents’ personal or professional issues
When customer care contact centers do not align their information in the central repository system, call center agents will have difficulty in solving the customer's issues on an immediate basis When customers’ data are stored across multiple platforms for example, email, chat, etc, agents will have a great challenge on having access leading to longer customer wait times, low first call resolution rates and many more. If earlier customer interactions are already saved in the central system, customers feel that they are valued, and their time is acknowledged, leading to higher customer experience as call center agents may get easy access to past conversations.
Solutions:
a) Maintaining a unified central repository system constituting the information center through multiple channel communication channels including emails, webchats, phones, and social media containing easy facility of searchability and integration of seamless options like AI and other tools and technology.
b) Strong and robust knowledge base on using the system for easy access to the system.
c) Removing outdated technology that doesn't meet the current business needs
d) Introducing cloud-based contact center, AI-powered analytics, and other automation tools in terms of affordability, reliability, scalability, flexibility, data security, and privacy
FCR is considered one of the important metrics of call center efficiency. If the first calls are responded to meeting customer expectations, customers reach out to the brands and other services offered by the company leading to product promotion. But with the limited knowledge base, multiple information hubs, and burnout employees, the results may not be fascinating. In order to make this metric more advanced, customer care centers should choose a wide array of solutions enumerated below.
Solutions:
a) Common information hub/platform for shared resources with common and frequent queries with access to all the call center agents
b) Omnichannel customer service where past conversations of customers are safe so that agents may have an eagle eye with 360-degree customer expectations with past information to solve customers’ issues without any hassles in quick time
c) Introducing call routing strategy and self-service/personalized options to the customers like FAQs, video chats, AI-centric chatbots, ebooks (with common customer issues and grievances), etc
d) Integration of CRM and multiple automation tools with omnichannel communication platforms for easy, direct, and instant communication with the customers
There is no fixed time for the arousal of technical issues, not only at the call centers but in any workplace. At call centers, when an angry customer calls and the network may run off, making that customer wait may make him/her more angry. There will be more such network issues, bugs, and other technical issues such as data breaches that lead to failure in responding to customer queries on an immediate basis, dropping the calls, and many more. So, in order to avoid such failures, the following solutions are recommended.
Solutions:
a) Investing in robust hardware and software of call centers with regular updates backed up with safety protocols
b) Readily available backup, disaster, and recovery plans for such phases
6. Others
i) With the updating technology and changing protocols for safety practices, call centers must be ready to update with the latest trends and security practices with VPN configuration, multi-factor authentication, strong encryption, and many more.
ii) Due to the monotonous and repetitive nature of work, employees feel burnt out easily with a drop in customer service excellence. So employee engagement programs are highly recommended to boost enhanced collaboration between the agents with teamwork and productivity.
iii) Reliance upon traditional metrics may not always work. Other KPIs and metrics such as Net Promoter Scores, and engagement rates of customers on social media platforms should also be acknowledged.
iv) The expectations of call center agents may be limited due to a flat system of call centers with no growth prospects. This mindset should be changed by defining a career graph for them by providing new training and development opportunities, skill enhancement sessions, initiatives on boosting career growth, and more.
v) With the loud and distracting workstations, agents may not fully concentrate on their calls. Office setup should be modeled in such a way with concentrating space so that call center agents can give their 100 percent effort on 200% better customer experience.
There is no doubt that call centers face too many challenges, but they keep on working for top-notch customer service. With the changing landscape of the customer service industry, challenges also increase but with adapting to the changes, practical solutions are also to be introduced without hampering the targeted goals and objectives of the call centers i.e. better CX (customer experience).