Category Archives: Customer Support

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Outsourcing

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Nine Advantages of Call Center Outsourcing

Operating an in-house call center involves significant upfront investment plus relentless ongoing fixed & variable costs.  Internal call center operations also place intense demands on human resources, require complex technology, and can distract from focusing on your core business.  Therefore, an increasing number of companies are realizing that keeping these operations in-house are not always the best decision.   Partnering with a call center agency to handle their customer support, sales or back office operations might be the best option.

Call center agencies provide services to clients around the world in a variety of industries. Some of those outsourcing services include:

Choosing to outsource your call center operations can provide many benefits to your company and customers.  Presently, here are nine advantages of call center outsourcing:

1. Focus on core competencies –

Outsourcing your call center operations will put a difficult & disruptive business function in the capable hands of a professional agency.  Therefore, allowing you to focus on your core business.

2. Provide 24/7/365 customer support –

Providing 24/7 customer support is usually very difficult (and expensive) to manage internally.  However, professional call center agencies typically operate 24/7 already. Therefore, hiring a call center partner will allow you to quickly and easily offer 24/7 coverage and keep your customer happy!

3. Limit Technology Investment –

Why make massive investments in technology to manage your internal call center operation when there are call center agencies that have already made the investment?  Outsourcing is a great way to use technology more efficiently and stay on the cutting edge!

4. Benefit from proven processes –

Professional agencies really are the “Call Center Experts”.   Why reinvent the wheel, when agencies bring proven processes and experienced management to work for you almost instantly.

5. Reduce staffing, operating, and training costs – 

Operating expenses of an internal call center can stack up quickly, but outsourcing that function reduces operating costs by eliminating hard to manage functions.

6. Avoid unnecessary and costly capital expenditures –

The equipment & facilities necessary to run a call center operation can be very expensive. Do you really need to pay for your own operation when you can partner with an established agency that has already invested in the best equipment & technology?

7. Increased Customer Satisfaction –

Internal teams can often take hours or even days to respond to customer inquiries.  Outsourcing to a great call center partner can cut that response time down to a matter of minutes.   Therefore, this creates more happy customers which are the key to increasing revenue…

8. Improve efficiency and productivity –

Your company has some great, highly trained employees.  Hiring an external call center partner can allow your internal team to focus on high value or high impact activity.   Therefore, outsourcing low skill and repetitive tasks can allow you to get maximum value from internal operations and focus on mission-critical operations.

9. Instant access to specialized skills –

Hiring highly skilled employees for your internal operations can be very frustrating and expensive.  However, outsourcing to a domestic or international call center agency will allow you to immediately tap into an impressive talent pool.  Moreover, these specialized skills will become available without any HR Headaches or wage pressures!

Outsourcing is no longer just about cutting costs and saving money.  It is about increasing efficiency of internal employees, getting to the market faster than your competitors, maximizing workforce flexibility, and gaining access to highly qualified employees.

Call Center Outsourcing is becoming one of the most significant business trends of this decade and we can help you ride the wave!  If you are ready to explore the advantages of call center outsourcing, please contact us here or call 719.368.8393.

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Data Cleansing

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Three Tips for Spring Data Cleansing…

The long hard winter is finally over! It’s starting to feel like spring – the sun is shining, the temperatures are warming, and companies everywhere are cleansing their customer data!

While some companies dread the intensive process of ensuring that all information within a database is current and accurate, others view this activity for what it is: proactive behavior that will lead to a more positive customer experience. By removing inconsistencies from database records (as well as clearing inactive users), contact center agents will be much more likely to have the information needed to most completely and efficiently service customers – leading to a happier, more loyal customer base.

Below are three tips to get started on your spring data cleansing.

1. Clear out duplicates

Duplicate records decrease efficiency and increase customer annoyance exponentially. Save your agents time that would be otherwise spent on compiling information between several database records by sorting your records by name and combining any duplicated user information.  You can greatly enhance customer experience and cut costs by preventing customers from having to repeat information each time they interact with customer support.

2. Keep it relevant

Is your database full of extraneous information? Though having enough information is necessary, gathering too much can overload your agents and database – not to mention discourage your customers from filling out forms or contacting your support representatives!

Take a long, hard look at the information you gather about your customers. Is it all necessary? What purpose does each piece of data serve? If you can’t answer these questions, it’s time to eliminate the data.

3. Research, research, research

There’s no way to get around this aspect of data cleansing. Someone (or many someones) must dedicate time to researching each record to ensure accuracy and completion. This can be accomplished through many techniques, including but not limited to:

  • calling customers (by internal staff or outsourced call center)
  • data verification emails
  • verifying information when customers interact with the contact center
  • verification direct mailings
  • hiring an outside company to verify information

Regardless of which single technique or combination that your company will employ, be sure to evaluate the labor spent after each cleansing to ensure that it was the most efficient and effective solution for your company.

From time to time, every company will need to repeating the data cleansing process. However, not all subsequent rounds of cleansing will not be as intensive as the first.   As you repeat the process, you’ll begin to find the most efficient methods for your company.

Worldwide Call Centers can help address your database issues and outsource the data cleansing to top agencies around the world!  If you are ready to explore the power of outsourcing, please contact us or call 719.368.8393.

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Customer Support Metrics

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Top Five Trackable Customer Support Metrics

Satisfied customers are the life blood of every business. They grow your revenues, bring repeat business and spread the good word about your brand. A great customer experience goes a long way in making customers happy. One of the best ways to track the performance of your support team and and provide a great customer experience is to know your “numbers” – like Call Volume, Response Time, Abandon Rates, Call Resolution, & First Contact Resolution. This gives you honest, trackable data and helps provide a clear understanding of the overall satisfaction of your customers. Here are Five Customer Support Metrics you must monitor regularly:

1. Call Volume

It’s important to monitor the daily volume of calls and inquiries into your support team. It helps you find out if there is any rush of support traffic at certain times of the day. This will tell you when you should allocate most employees & resources to customer service. Although your business has working hours, your customers may run on a different schedule. They’ll try to reach you as soon as they face an issue. You can note the most frequently called times and prepare for it, even if they’re outside your business hours.

It’s also necessary to monitor volume of support incidents by various channels such as emails, telephone & social media. Different channels require different types of support staff & resources. Breaking out support incidents by channels helps you identify which channel needs more attention, and adapt quickly.

2. Response Time

Do you like waiting for a response when you are facing an issue? Response Time is the amount of time taken for your business to respond to a customer issue. It is one of the most important metric that affects customer satisfaction. If you keep the customer waiting, you are likely to bring down customer satisfaction considerably. Studies show that 54% of customers feel 3 minutes to be a reasonable response time while waiting for a customer support agent over the phone. Customers also believe that 24 hours is reasonable to get response by email.

You can measure Response Times by various channels to identify which channel needs more attention. Even within a single channel such as email, you can group the number of responses based on the amount of time taken. How many responses were sent within 1 hour, 2-6 hours, 6-12 hours, etc.? This will show you the distribution of your responses over time. You can find out the most frequent support issues which increase response time, and assign more resources to them. You can also monitor first response times for each support agent. This will tell you which agents take time to respond, and could use more training and assistance.

3. Call Resolution Time

Call Resolution Time is the amount of time taken to resolve a customer issue. Average Call Resolution Time shows the overall effectiveness of your customer support. The shorter the resolution time..the better your customer support metrics. Many factors contribute to high resolution time. It can be due to the communication skills or technical expertise of the customer or your support agent. It can also be because the agent doesn’t have access to relevant resources. You can monitor resolution time for each type of customer issue to identify which ones take the longest to be resolved. You can also track it for each support agent. This will help you find out the root cause of delay and solve it immediately.

4. Abandon Rates

Abandon rate is one of the key customer support metrics. This number is the percent of customers who hang up the phone or leave the queue before they reach a customer support agent. Long hold times and a confusing support system are the most common reasons why customers drop off. You can track abandon rates over time to find out which days of the week it increases, or which time of the day you are flooded with support calls. This will help you increase your capacity accordingly. You can also look at the abandon rate at each step of your support such as the initial welcome message, IVR navigation or the automated wait message. Once you know which step has the highest abandon rate, you can identify the source and fix it as soon as possible.

5. First contact resolution

First contact resolution tells you how many issues were resolved during the initial engagement. Greater this number, the better it is. To maximize this metric, you have to find out which issues are escalated beyond the first contact, on which channels and why. So you need to break out this metric by various channels and type of customer issues. It helps you identify the reasons for escalation and resolve them quickly.

Measuring the performance of your customer service enables you to rapidly improve it. It allows you to easily identify the key pain points of your customers, areas which need additional resources and support agents that can benefit from additional training. You can even streamline support by automating frequent responses and creating Knowledge Base or FAQs. This helps you improve your product or service, boost customer experience and grow your business faster.

Worldwide Call Centers can help to address these metrics and outsource your operations to the BEST Agencies around the world! If you are ready to improve your customer support metrics & explore the power of outsourcing, please contact us here or call 719.368.8393.

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Customer Support

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Empowering Your Customer Support Agents

When it comes to customer support, employee empowerment is defined as allowing phone agents to make fast decisions — on the spot — in favor of the customer.

It is critically important for organizations to give customer support agents the power to make decisions without supervisor approval. Business and government agencies will never be leaders in customer support without the adoption of true empowerment strategies.

The good news is that most decisions will cost the company less than $50, which is a pittance when considering the lifetime value of the customer and the goodwill that empowered decisions can cultivate. Unfortunately, even employees of businesses that claim to “support empowerment” often fear making the needed decisions on their own.

Here are three key reasons customer support agents do not take the initiative to solve problems independently:

1. They think they will lose their jobs. Many agents believe that it is less risky to lose a customer than make a decision that appears to be detrimental to the company. After all, they think, “No one ever got fired for enforcing a policy, rule or procedure.”

2. They are afraid they will be penalized and have to pay for a mistake. For example, if they upgrade a person from a room to a suite, they will have to pay the difference.

3. They are afraid of negative feedback. There is often very little upside for an employee who makes empowered decisions. Awards and celebrations are rarely offered to employees simply because they made an independent decision to satisfy a customer. There is, however, downside when an employee is criticized for ignoring policy or subjecting the business to undesired costs.

3 Steps to Success

In order to overcome this culture of fear, businesses need to implement three steps for boosting employee empowerment:

1. Assure every department and manager is on board. They must enforce a culture of empowerment within their teams, and they must stand by support agents when theydo “color outside the lines”. It just takes one piece of negative management feedback for the employee grapevine to get the message that the policy is just lip service or the policy du jour.

2. Empowerment Training. You have to teach them what is it, how to actualize it and how the organization celebrates it.

3. Reinforce and celebrate empowerment. Most empowered decisions have no significant cost. For example, it might include waiving a late fee or bending the rules on a cutoff time. Empowered employees can modify policies and procedures to fit a situation…and keep customers happy.

The irony is that companies spend massive amounts of money on marketing to attractcustomers but skimp when it comes to keeping them. If budget were devoted to customer retention by training employees to make empowered decisions, they would see a far more immediate, measurable return on their investments. By empowering employees, you will have happier customers. You will increase market share. And you will make more money.

If you are ready to enhance your customer support, contact Worldwide Call Centers today at 719.368.8393 to discuss your situation and explore the Contact Center Outsourcing Options available from the US and Canada to Eastern Europe, Asia or Latin America.