3 Keys to a Successful Remote Working Environment
By now, three years after the start of the pandemic that forced everyone to work from home, there are two things that are clear about remote work. One is that it is here to stay, at least in some capacity. And two is that there are ways to establish a remote working environment that encourage productivity, accountability, and employee satisfaction and other ways that lead to disappointing outcomes and unmet goals. Here, we’re discussing three of the clear keys to a successful remote working environment for call center agents. Clear and Effective Communication Communication is so critical in every [...]
How Call-Backs Can Increase Customer Satisfaction
Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how many steps we take to smooth out the process, from when a customer calls our call center to when they get on with an agent. It doesn’t matter that the IVR is easy to navigate and gets them on track to speak to the exact right person who can help with their problem. It doesn’t matter that we provide updates on wait time or the customer’s place in line, or that we have them enter basic information ahead of time so that they don’t have to go over it once they are speaking with [...]
4 Reasons to Keep Your Call Center In-House
4 Reasons to Keep Your Call Center In-House You’ve likely seen many lists out there going into all the benefits of outsourcing your call center and the reasons you might want to do so. And while many of these reasons, including cost saving, personnel flexibility, and easier-to-access 24/7 support, make sense for a lot of companies that consider a call center an integral part of their business, there are also a number of reasons you may want to keep your call center in-house. Here, we’re diving into the biggest ones. Total Control When you outsource your call center, you’re [...]
CallShaper Is Here to Help
At CallShaper, we pride ourselves on being available for our clients and making our software as easy to use as possible. A lot of that comes from the design of the platform itself, including the easy-to-edit scripts that can be adjusted in real time, the QA mechanisms that are constantly collecting data and analyzing it, and the multiple ways that agents and supervisors can interact and communicate with one another through the platform. But the other part of it is making ourselves available to clients who need more personalized or hands-on help with the software. After all, we’re doing everything [...]
Asking These Questions Will Help You Solve Customer Problems Faster
We’ve talked extensively about the importance of active listening on this blog. When customer service agents receive calls from customers, especially disgruntled or frustrated ones, listening closely to their complaints and their description of the situation is critical to building trust and rapport between the agent and the customer as well as reaching a resolution faster. But listening and empathizing can only take an agent so far. At some point in the call, the agent needs to take the ball and begin collecting more information and troubleshooting the customer’s problem. When this time comes, there are certain types of [...]
States Are Passing Laws Against Robocalls—And It’s a Good Thing
We’re only a little over halfway through 2023, but it has already been a big year for new legislation protecting consumers from robocalls. In the last few months, Washington, New Jersey, Maryland, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and others have taken legal action to quell unwanted spam and telemarketing calls and texts in their states. Considering the fact that unwanted calls are still the top consumer complaint to the Federal Communications Commission, these steps are much needed. And while they are primarily being taken to protect consumers, they are also a good thing for businesses operating call centers. Here’s why. In [...]
4 Ways to Take Advantage of the Slow Season
Just as most businesses that operate call centers experience seasonal spikes and busy seasons, almost all will experience slow seasons as well. However, the slow season is not always a bad thing. While it’s true that there may be a dip in sales or revenue during this period, the slow season can actually be an incredible opportunity for you to strengthen the performance of your call center and increase profitability in the long term. Here are four ways to take full advantage of the slow season. Schedule Trainings Taking the time to provide comprehensive training to new hires is [...]
Meet Our Partners! Part 2
At CallShaper, our goal is to give our customers the best possible experience with our call center platform. Whether they are agents, supervisors, or managers, we want everyone to have access to the tools they need to do their jobs efficiently and successfully. That’s why we’ve partnered with some businesses who help us do exactly that. Here, a brief introduction to a few of those awesome partners. The Blacklist Alliance The Blacklist Alliance protects every single one of our customers from scammers, predators and even federal and state regulators looking for ways to bring litigation against your call center. [...]
This is The Best Way to Handle Customer Complaints
Regardless of the industry you work in, the business you run, or the types of inquiries your call center typically handles, you are going to get complaints. It’s impossible to please every single customer 100% of the time. In fact, receiving customer complaints can actually be a good thing, as they alert you to issues that your customers are unhappy with and that you may have the power to improve or change. Since receiving customer complaints is inevitable, it’s critical that the agents in your call center know how to handle them in a way that will leave the customer [...]
How to Build a Customer Journey Map—And Why You Should
Here at CallShaper, we’ll never stop stressing the importance of collecting data on your customers and their interactions with your call center. Data is the key to determining what’s working and what’s not, why some customers remain with your brand for long periods of time and why others leave after short ones. Data is the key to making meaningful changes and to foreseeing possible problems before they arise. There are different ways that you can compile, aggregate, and represent data depending on how you intend to use it. You can also use the data you collect to create other valuable [...]
4 Businesses That Use Answering Services
Answering services, sometimes called virtual receptionists, are crucial to many businesses. They handle a much narrower scope of tasks than other types of call centers, but they also sometimes have a closer relationship with the business itself than an outsourced call center might. At its core, an answering service exists to be a presence for customers when the business itself is unavailable. Here are four businesses that use telephone answering services the most and the tasks they most commonly handle. Healthcare If you’ve only ever interacted with an answering service once, chances are it was the answering service [...]
3 Tips for Lowering Your Abandonment Rate
If you run an inbound call center, you are going to have abandoned calls. No matter how professional and skilled your agents are or how intuitive and easy-to-navigate your IVR is, you can never account for everything a caller is experiencing that may lead them to hang up before they connect with an agent. What you can do, however, is take steps on the call center end to reduce the percentage of customers who abandon their calls. Here are three such ways to lower your abandonment rate. Hire More Agents If it is feasible financially, sometimes the easiest way [...]
Creating Your Best Call Center Scorecard
Quality control in your call center is absolutely critical to maintaining customer satisfaction. Surveys have shown that huge numbers of customers will stop doing business with a company if they receive poor customer service over the phone. But the bigger your call center gets, the more difficult it is to keep tabs on all your agents and their performance. The easiest way to maintain a high level of customer service in your call center is to develop a call center scorecard that is used on a regular basis to evaluate agent performance. That said, almost as important as using a [...]
Meet Our Partners! Part 1
At CallShaper, we are proud to partner with some incredible businesses that have revolutionized the call center industry. The businesses we work with all have the same goal: to help call centers work more efficiently and with the peace of mind that they are doing what is best for their customers. Here, we’re highlighting a few of our partners and what they do to help strengthen your call center. ActiveProspect ActiveProspect is an SaaS platform designed around using consent-based marketing for customer acquisition. They offer products that help their customers take action on their leads, collect data, and save [...]
How to Implement Effective Call Center Quality Control Processes
To ensure that your call center is functioning optimally and efficiently, as a manager you need to be constantly engaged with what your agents are doing. If you wait for biannual or annual performance reviews to evaluate your agents’ performance and offer advice on how they can improve, you’ve let way too much time pass during which you could have been improving your customers’ experience. But if you have effective quality control processes in place, maintaining the quality of interactions between agents and customers will be effortless. Here’s how to get these processes set up and how to maintain [...]