Category: Customer Experience

What’s motivating your contact center? Perhaps you have an established set of goals and objectives for your call center operations — but when was the last time you updated them? If it’s profits alone that guide you in setting your goals and objectives, you have some work to do! You could conduct some competitor research to get some ideas, but before you do, it’s helpful to identify your call center type.
Are you inbound or outbound? Sales or service?

An inbound service contact center has agents answering inbound customer service calls. Appropriate goals might be to improve the customer experience by aiming for faster response time or improved cSat scores.
An outbound sales center makes proactive, outbound sales calls. This type of contact center might seek to increase agent retention, productivity, and sales.

We’ll cover some essential goals that can help you pinpoint — and achieve — these and other strategic objectives. Here are a few to get your organizational juices flowing.
#1 Goals for Contact Center as a Whole
These overarching goals should take center stage in your call center operations strategy, regardless of the type of contact center your manage:
Meeting and Exceeding SLAs: Every contact center has service-level agreements (SLAs) with targets they must meet. The consequences of faltering include negative word of mouth and poor customer experience — who wants that? A call center SLA is your promise to your customer. Maybe it’s answering 90% of calls within a minute, or resolving 70% of complaints in the first call. Meeting SLAs are standard goals for every center’s operations.
Improve First-Call Resolution Rates:  Measuring FCR is one of the most common ways to assess call center effectiveness. By contrast, that means that having too many follow-up calls is linked with customer dissatisfaction. Whatever your contact center type, you should always strive to improve first-call resolution rates.
Lower Abandonment Rate: This KPI speaks to an essential part of customer service — immediacy. About 82% of customers see immediate support as key to a satisfactory marketing or sales inquiry, and that number jumps even higher for customer service calls (90%). If you don’t meet this need? Customers will hang up, increasing your call abandonment rates. Every call center should aim to lower this damaging KPI, though the odd abandoned call will always happen.
#2 Goals to Increase Sales
Sounds simple enough, right? Your sales call center aims to increase sales every week, month, or year of your call center operations. But how do you do it, and which KPIs speak to this objective? Let’s start with KPIs:
Customer retention: Did you know it’s 5-25 times more expensive to find new customers than to retain existing ones? Customer retention indicates how likely a customer is to continue purchasing your products. Considering the shocking difference in the cost of nurturing existing customers versus acquiring new ones, this KPI is crucial for a sales-centric call center.
Net promoter score (NPS): Marketing is expensive. Every brand needs it, but call centers with impeccable net promoter scores offer free marketing. Imagine products and customer experiences so satisfying that customers refer you to their friends! This is an increasingly important KPI for sales call centers, as word-of-mouth saves on costs and assists with customer acquisition.
cSat score: This KPI essentially measures how many customers are satisfied with your products. While every sales center will aim for 100%, 75% is considered to be acceptable. If you want benchmarks, the American Customer Satisfaction Index is a fantastic place to start. The happier your customers are, the more likely they’ll buy again.
#3 Motivated Agents Help Increase Sales

DID YOU KNOW?
Gamification is linked to a 10% increase in customer satisfaction.

KPIs aren’t the only way to increase sales in your call center operations. You also need to motivate your call center agents to perform their best. How do you do that? Here are three solid methods:
1. Gamify the Goals: Zippie reports that gamification of goals generates a 10% increase in customer satisfaction. Why? Call center agents have monotonous jobs, so it’s easy for productivity to lag. But a little competition, or gamification, offers that little push needed to inject some enthusiasm into customer interactions — enough for them to keep coming back! But winning for the sake of winning isn’t enough. You need incentives, too.
2. Offer Incentives: A big part of gamification is the feeling of being rewarded for meeting goals. If agents meet their goals without tangible rewards? The whole thing starts to feel futile. Offer your agents incentives to maintain sales and performance. Of course, raises and promotions are top-tier incentives. But suppose you don’t have the budget. In that case, you might consider:

More vacation time
Half-days or late starts
Choice schedules
Learning opportunities
Free lunch

3. Provide Proper Tools and Software: Tech investment is vital for almost every aspect of your call center operations. With the right tech, your agents will feel supported, and sales will continue to flow. For example, Fonolo’s Voice Call-Backs are proven to:

Increase ROI
Enhance customer experience
Improve cSat scores and NPS
Reduce telephony costs

But our call-backs are just one part of the equation. For example, offering  Web Call-Backs is also a great way to streamline call center operations and improve your customer experience.
Fonolo’s Voice Call-Backs help call centers achieve objectives like improved ROI, increased CSat and happier employees! #AgentEngagement #CallCenterSales #CallCenterTechClick To Tweet
#4 Customer Service Goals
Let’s say your call center gets inbound calls from existing customers — you help them with product inquiries and issues. You might even get the odd inquiry from a prospective new client about your latest offerings and special deals. Increasing sales would be great, but your call center has a heavy focus on customer service. Here are some objectives that can help improve customer service and customer experience.
Average Speed to Answer (ASA): If an existing customer has an issue with your product, the last thing they want is to wait even longer to resolve that issue. ASA is the average amount of time it takes to answer a customer call. Remember, today’s customer demands immediate support, especially for customer service inquiries.
CSAT Scores: We already discussed the importance of customer satisfaction for sales call centers, but it’s just as important a KPI for service centers as well. The sad part is that customers won’t always brag about impeccable service — but they ARE  likely to complain about bad service. This means that poor cSat scores increase the chances of negative word-of-mouth about your brand.
Abandonment Rate: This one ties into ASA. How? Well, an improved ASA reduces the chance of call abandonment. If customers keep abandoning phone calls, your credibility as a service center goes downhill fast.
So, how do you improve all the above KPIs and solidify a positive customer service experience? One way is through self-service options. Maybe your Monday afternoons are slammed as call volume increases. You can’t do anything about it other than tweak your schedules and ensure enough staffing. Regardless, you’ll upset a few waiting customers. But if you offer an effective self-service menu through Web Call-Backs, customers will feel satisfied with solving the issues themselves.
#5 How to Increase Customer Retention
Service contact centers can benefit from improved customer retention in a few ways:
Improved CLTV: Customer retention has a direct link to CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value), which is the amount of revenue a customer could bring over time. The longer the customer stays, the more revenue they’ll bring! The value of a longtime customer is not just about sales, though.
More Data: The longer a customer stays with you, the more you can learn about them. Every customer experience strategy starts with understanding your customers and their needs. So, retaining customers brings you more data at different stages of their buying journeys.
Reduced customer churn: This one’s a no-brainer — customers who stay won’t leave. The exact cost of customer churn depends on your customer’s individual value and rate of churn.
#6 Remember: Agent Engagement Trumps All
Bell Livingstone once said, “I looked outside to see what I could make the world give me, instead of looking inside to see what was there.” In the context of a contact center, he’s talking about the heart of your operations: your call center agents. Investing in agent satisfaction has a trickledown effect on the rest of your business objectives. The story goes: happy employees = happy customers.
Today’s call center is chock-full of high attrition rates — this means lower profits, efficiency, and inferior customer experience. That’s why engaging agents is so important. Their success in your organization is linked to your customer’s positive experience and, thus, your sales.
You might consider engaging your agents through:

Reasonable raises and bonuses
Career advancement
Job shadowing and learning opportunities
Gamification
Recognition

And if you’re still unconvinced, let’s talk numbers. The ROI of an engaged agent is:

20% sales increase
21% profits increase
24-50% less turnover
10% customer satisfaction improvement
17% uptick in productivity

Don’t get us wrong — all those KPIs we mentioned, along with average handling time (AHT), are vital to your call center operations. But if we could leave you with the most important metric to lead with? Agent happiness.  And to do that, agents need to feel supported by the right call center tech. The post What are the Objectives of Call Center Operations? first appeared on Fonolo.

Gratitude might be the way forward.

So much of what ails us gets a bit better when we say ‘thank you.’

Even when it’s hard.

Especially then.

Hello! I have been in a CX lead position and moved into it from a design/coding role and I’m having problems grasping the concept. I get the basics, but would love to learn more about creating personas, storytelling, and journeys. Also, I just found out about the ccxp and wondering if that’s well recognized in the industry. submitted by /u/ro2dee2 [link] [comments]

It changes. It changes as we age, and it changes depending on the situation.

A second-grader might think that a boring class is never going to end.

A bad cold might feel endless, unless we have the perspective of someone who has experienced a chronic problem.

Some things actually deserve “never.” But most of what we’re worried about probably would be better categorized as “eventually.”

I received a gift on 10/22. I immediately called Amazon customer service asking if I could return the gift, without the sender knowing and receive a credit for the amount spent. I was assured that could be down. Back went the package. Two weeks later, still no refund. I called and was told that a new policy was in effect…refunds over 300.00 would take 30 days. It was confirmed that the item I returned had been received. Today, 11/21, still no credit. Person I spoke to said I could not receive a refund without going through the sender and getting their permission. I asked to speak to a supervisor. 90 minutes later, the supervisor informs me that a special request has to be made for the credit. She issues the request and gives me a ticket number. Credit will be in my account in 24-48 hours. Received an email 4 minutes later stating that my request for a credit had been denied because it takes up to 2 weeks for items to be received and refunds to be processed. They received the item 3weeks sh…does anyone at Amazon know what is really going on? I have written corridor each phone call I made! So frustrating. submitted by /u/Icy-Flight-7560 [link] [comments]

Hi there! This is an article who uses WhatsApp for business and want to use shopping features. While some features like payments are available only for certain countries, most of them are accessible for any business via the WhatsApp Business App. In short, with shopping on WhatsApp, online stores can build an independent selling and promotion point in addition to a contact channel. Some online shops even manage to build end-to-end shopping experiences. For example, Jio Mart implemented an end-to-end shopping experience using WhatsApp shopping features. Users can browse products, add items to their cart, and make payments – all of that is available inside the app. This way, the business keeps conversations with customers both personal and effective on the scale. Read more on how to set WhatsApp for selling & shopping submitted by /u/Avandegraund [link] [comments]

Whether you’re diving into a new industry or looking to brush up on your skills, training courses can benefit professionals at any stage of their career. This is especially true for contact center and customer service professionals – after all, customer behavior is constantly shifting, and it’s critical for businesses to meet their expectations.
Fortunately, e-learning has made call center management courses more accessible than ever. There’s no excuse for gaps in training or knowledge when all the information you need is just a few clicks away! If you’re unsure where to start searching, we’ve got some great programs for you to explore below.
Contact Center Trends 2023
Who Should Take Call Center Management Courses?
Call center management courses are great for both current and aspiring professionals looking to sharpen their skills in customer support, operational best practices, team leadership, and much more. There’s no right or wrong time to take a training course — in fact, the best contact centers embrace continuous learning to ensure their agents have the skills and knowledge to always support their callers.
Top 7 Call Center Management Courses
1. ICMI Contact Center Management Boot Camp
ICMI is one of the big names in the contact center world, so who better to host a contact center management training course? This is a 2-day virtual bootcamp course led by a live ICMI certified instructor, and covers key management practices for the contact center, important terms and definitions, how to meet service levels consistently, best practices in contact center forecasting, and much more!
More on ICMI’s Contact Center Management Boot Camp →
The Manager’s Guide to Call Center Gamification
2. Benchmark Portal: Contact Center Manager Certification
Benchmark Portal promotes on demand training and self-paced learning for contact center professionals through their online courses! Their Contact Center Manager Certification is one of many courses they offer. In this 3-day virtual classroom course, you’ll learn best practices for managing your contact center team, technology and software, and daily operations.
More on Benchmark Portal’s Contact Center Manager Certification →
3. Udemy: Call/Contact Center Management, The Essential Guide
Udemy is already known as a one-stop shop for lessons on almost anything so it’s no surprise to see them offering courses in call and contact center management. This training covers the basics of everything including channel strategy and execution, scheduling, contact center technology, and of course, best leadership practices. It includes 1.5 hours of on-demand video, assignments and a certificate upon completion. It’s a great starting point for new contact center team leads, supervisors, and managers looking to start their next role on the right foot.
More on Udemy’s Call/Contact Center Management Course →
4. GAQM: Certified Call Centre Manager (CCCM)
If you’re looking for a certification based in the UK, the Global Association for Quality Management (GAQM) has you covered. The Certified Call Centre Manager, or CCCM, leads an e-course that helps current and aspiring leaders set a strong foundation in hiring and training agents, supporting team members in meeting service levels, analyzing trends and reports to improve processes, and more. The e-course duration is an estimated 20-25 hours and concludes with a registered exam.
More on GAQM’s Certified Call Centre Manager E-Course →
How Contact Center Managers Impact Customer Perception
5. Universal Class: Call Center Management Online Class
Universal Class is a platform dedicated to supplying online continuing education courses. Their call center management class focuses on the customer experience and how to build and keep positive customer relationships. This self-paced, online course is a great option for contact center professionals who want to focus on skills and techniques for creating outstanding CX — plus, you’ll receive an official certificate upon completion.
More on Universal Class: Call Center Management Online Class →
6. COPC: Call Center Consulting Training
Call center management training doesn’t need to be done independently. In fact, COPC provides training courses for call center teams looking to boost operational efficiency while improving customer satisfaction. In addition to online learning, they offer in-person and private on-site sessions. COPC’s training is an investment for your department so it might not be the best choice if you’re looking for a one-off course. However, if you need more in-depth training for your whole contact center team, COPC may be worth exploring.
More on COPC: Call Center Consulting Training →
7. The Call Center School: Call Center Supervision Essentials
The Call Center School is a hub of valuable training programs for contact center professionals. Their Call Center Supervision Essentials course focuses on ways call center managers can improve agent engagement through best leadership practices. Using a combination of video, case scenarios, and self-assessments, this is a great introduction for both current and aspiring call center managers.
More on The Call Center School: Call Center Supervision Essentials → The post Top 7 Call Center Management E-Learning Courses first appeared on Fonolo.

Engineering problems are difficult, but they have a right answer.

People problems, by their nature, are on a spectrum, a distribution of possible forward paths. But they’re complicated. A situation might not fit a person, and vice versa. Add a second person and know you have two people, and two people interacting exponentially increase the number of possibilities.

Knowing this takes the pressure off. Because there isn’t a perfect solution to a people problem. Simply an available path forward that helps us get to the next step.

One of the best ways is to use humor via chatbots — this is one of the best digital marketing strategies in recent times. Depending on what the user says, you can create humorous replies and joke around with them. Many huge businesses and consumers are now enjoying a light-hearted approach – it’s a wonderful way to demonstrate to customers that you can take a joke on yourself and that you welcome criticism. Be appropriate – An example of this could be the messaging of Amazon Prime Video. The on-demand streaming service does a positive customer experience right with its Twitter account. Be relatable – Remember: when you are relatable, your audience gets the message right, and hence, they aren’t left scratching their heads to crack the message. Ensure your humor is well-timed and relevant to ongoing trends and events. Because – if your audience consists primarily of millennials or Gen Zers, old-school humor may not necessarily land effectively. submitted by /u/jaffy-jafar [link] [comments]

We know the value of customer feedback. It assists business growth, identifies areas of weaknesses, and what’s working well. And that’s just scratching the surface.  On November 30th 2022 10am GMT, CXM have the honour to host a free online webinar with Reputation once again. It’s time to delve even further into customer feedback. Let’s…
The post Online feedback for your retail CX programme is invaluable appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.