According to Forrester Consulting (“America Consumer Preference Report”), as many as 81% of call center and contact center customers prefer telephone contact as a support channel, and only 33% choose e-mail. The popularity of the phone is astonishing when compared to research showing that the tool remains the most frustrating tool available in customer opinion. Why?
Complaints About Call Center
The most annoying for these 81% is the requirement to repeat information to consultants many times, waiting in suspension for a response, switching or checking some information by an agent, and complicated navigation through the telephone menu to go to the next step or obtain other information. So why does the phone still remain the most popular channel?
The customer of the future is a customer whom we will help to save money and time. Time shared among tons of social channels, spending lots of contact with other users. However – as the customers themselves say – it is still the telephone that saves valuable time, because it is the only tool that guarantees a quick service by a consultant, immediate solution to the problem and provides the opportunity to talk to a real person, not a machine or computer.
By Taking Care of Your Interlocutor, You Take Care of Your Image
So – while new communication channels are still developing – we still need to pay a lot of attention to telephone contacts. For this reason, it is worth analyzing the most important objections against call centers and improving the quality of this service, thus increasing the attractiveness of this still the most popular communication tool and customer satisfaction.
By improving and eliminating the elements most often complained about by customers, we will also take care of our image and make the opinion of our call center better. How? As we probably know very well, we like to tell others about our bad emotions and experiences, so there is always a risk that others will find out about someone mistreated by an agent. According to The ClickFox Customer Interaction Survey, 52% of respondents will pass such bad news to friends, family, friends, 35% will stop using the services of the company for which the agent who mistreated him worked, 16% will comment on this fact in social media. The latter method is becoming more and more popular – there is even a special Twitter account in the US.
What Customers Don’t Like?
Nobody likes to be “attacked” by an offer that is presented too often or completely unsuited to interests, age, social or financial status. The way to properly dose and adjust this type of information to customers is to put a lot of effort into selecting the databases, checking them regularly, updating them, and – what is very important – eliminating the repetition of records, i.e. performing database duplication. If there is a situation where the client does not want to talk and the reason is too high frequency of phone calls from agents, the best solution is to postpone the call to another date.
Callers often complain about the mechanics and artificiality of agents and the lack of precision in the information provided about a given product or service.
We must remember that a telemarketing campaign is a process. Important and very delicate, and most importantly not one-sided! The consultant establishes contact, talks about the product, answers questions, and guides you through the formalities. All this can never obscure the fact that on the other side there is a client – a man who has his own needs and expectations.
This man’s comfort is also influenced by his belief that what he tells the agent is important and remembered. People do not like to repeat themselves, so they will appreciate the fact that the information they have provided will be saved and that they will not have to explain the same again during the next contact, because the agent will use the data contained in the system.
In order for the person answering the call from the consultant to be satisfied, it is necessary to constantly improve the quality of calls and eliminate possible errors of agents. It is worth creating and using a quality control system that involves listening to and assessing a specific number of calls. Parameters such as professionalism, sales quality, substantive knowledge and compliance with procedures are checked. Interviews should also be heard by supervisors, in order to multiply the control, and by the consultants themselves, and the result of the control must be the referral of the agent to training appropriate for him.
A telemarketing campaign is a complicated process that must be controlled from A to Z. Its success can be ensured by the appropriate selection of consultants, training, continuous monitoring and responding to the needs of interlocutors. Thanks to this approach, this process will be successful, and our clients and recipients of our messages will be satisfied.