What are the main call centre pain points, and how can they be solved? Every business will experience pain points, and it’s important that these are identified and mitigated so that your organisation can continue to offer an optimal experience for your customers and employees. In this series, we will explore the most common pain points experienced by customers, by contact centre agents, and by businesses as a whole, and consider the best ways to remove these obstacles and enhance your performance.
Pain points that impact customers can be the most problematic for your business. When customers have a negative experience with a company, it can lead to lost sales, loss of reputation and credibility, and loss of customers to competitors. As a result, it is vital that businesses are actively considering their potential pain points and working to address them, so that they can provide the best possible experience for their customers. Here are the top five customer-centred pain points and how to avoid them.
Long Wait Times For Assistance
Modern customers expect to be able to receive assistance quickly and efficiently when they contact an organisation. Long amounts of time spent on hold or waiting for a response to an email or a message can be annoying and lead to customers feeling negative towards the business, which in turns leads to lost revenue, loss of repeat business, and potential reputation damage.
To prevent long waiting times, provide multiple channels for your customers to get in touch. An omni-channel approach allows customers to contact you anywhere, anytime. When customers can get in touch in their preferred way quickly, they feel more positive about the interaction.
Getting Bounced Around Departments Or Cut Off
Getting bounced between departments and put on hold each time – or worse, losing contact altogether – is incredibly frustrating. It is important that your customer service centre is equipped to triage customer requests and send them to the correct department who can assist them immediately.
Implement an AI-powered chat bot to quickly respond and triage customers so they are given the opportunity for self-service. This will free up agents to deal with more complex customer issues. In most cases, customers should be able to be transferred once and have their problem solved.
Contact Services That Don’t Work Or That Aren’t Monitored
If your business offers multiple options for customer service – such as a phone line, email address, video chat and instant messaging – it is important that all of these services work. Bounced emails or voicemail messages saying a number is no longer working cause irritation to customers, who are likely to give up and stop using your business rather than try an alternative method.
Make sure all contact numbers and links are current and up to date, and regularly review your contact options to ensure they are appropriately meeting the needs of your customers.
Lack Of Contact Options
Today’s customer likes to be able to get in touch with a business in a way that suits them. Many people don’t feel like they have time to sit on hold or talk to a live agent and prefer to use self-help options to quickly solve problems.
Offering an omni-channel presence means that customers feel they can contact your company when and how it suits them. Provide many ways to get in touch – including voice, video, chat, text and image based solutions – to create a more positive and personalised experience for your customers.
Inability To Get In Touch At Certain Times
The modern world is 24/7, and it’s likely your business has customers all over the world and in a variety of time zones. A business can no longer only offer customer service during standard business hours.
Using a cloud-based contact centre can allow your business to utilise customer service agents from anywhere, creating a constantly available contact centre to service your customers. Additionally, self help options and chat bots can help to fill the gaps when your live agents are unavailable.