Improving upon Contact Centre Productivity - By: robertDeans

Few people visualize call centres in a positive light. If you asked most people what they thought of call centres, they'd mention prolonged hold times, substandard customer care, inexperienced, under compensated employees, or difficult conversations with foreign workers who hardly grasp a word of English.

This reputation is ill warranted. While badly run call centres certainly exist, few are able to keep clients for that long a time. Providing contact centre services is a troublesome venture - you will need more than merely a team of people and some telephones for them to answer. Here are a handful of things to consider to improve the performance of your call centre.

Training

It is common for firms that offer contact centre services to employ staff members based on their capacity to deal well with people. The reason being that it is assumed you can teach people about systems and products, but you can't teach communication skills.

This theory stands up pretty well for small contact centre services, but for bigger companies where people may be required to answer calls for a number of different issues, the quantity of training required becomes far greater. Frequent refresher courses are also a prerequisite if staff are to remain at their best.

Technology

If you are providing contact centre services for more than one client, you may end up in a surrounding that is a technical nightmare. Not only do you have to worry about your own pc system and unified communications services, you also need to worry about integrating those systems with the customer control systems employed by your clients. This is usually a huge headache for your IT guys, and also uncomfortable for staff members who need to know how to use an array of devices.

In addition to a reliable IT network, your unified communication system has to be first class - unless of course, you would like your employees to keep saying "please bear with me, the system has failed."

Test Your IVR

One of the greatest blights stated by customers when using call centres relates to Interactive Voice Response Systems. If your IVR doesn't comprehend specific accents, or offers a maze of choices that only a person with training can find their way around, then you might be losing customers.

It must be faster for a caller to ask their question than it would take to get through an IVR. Remember these are contact centre services you're delivering - the key word being 'contact'. Your customers desire to speak to a well-mannered, informed person. They do not care how sophisticated your PBX is, or how impressive your unified communications tools are.

They do not care whether the person they're speaking with is in a call centre, or at home using a VoIP application - they just wish to get their response from an employee that is well-mannered, professional and efficient.

About the Author

This post was written by R. Deans on behalf of Maintel, experts in unified communications and contact centre services. For more information on unified communications and contact centre services please visit maintel.co.uk.

Article Directory Source: http://www.articlerich.com/profile/robertDeans/149437

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