Call Center Best Practices You Can Apply To Your Small Business

A call center is crucial to the success of any business. Your call center’s performance can make or break your relationship with customers. In turn, it also dramatically affects the profitability of your business. So, whether you take calls in-house or outsource a call center service provider, you must know how to do it best. 

The business process outsourcing (BPO) industry is vast and still growing. As such, there are plenty of call center practices out there. Some companies may even have unique patterns. While they may yield profit for your business, some call center techniques and methods are more effective. To guarantee your success, here are some rules you should follow.

Best practices for hiring

Delivering excellent call center services starts with having a great staff. You should pay close attention to your call center hiring practices. When recruiting your agents, here are some points to keep in mind:

1. Provide transparency regarding the duties and responsibilities of the position.
2. Manage the candidate’s expectations by telling them the pros and cons of the job.
3. The employment contract should be worded with well-documented terms and conditions.
4. Give your candidates a proper onboarding orientation and call center training.
5. Partner the candidates with mentors to ensure that each candidate assimilates to the organization rapidly.
6. Be honest in giving your feedback on a candidate’s application.

These are some of the most effective practices for hiring call center agents. However, there are also harmful (but standard) practices that you need to avoid. Here are some examples of bad practices that you should NOT do:

1. Treating candidates only as a means to an end.
2. Giving the candidates false hopes by exaggerating and embellishing the true scope of the position.
3. The employment contract is poorly and vaguely worded. The benefits are also verbally committed but were not included in the contract.
4. The candidates were plugged into their tasks without proper orientation and mentoring.
5. Candidates were not informed of the actual status of their application (e.g., the recruiter tells the candidate that they are still “under consideration,” but, in reality, the position is already closed).

This may not be a concern if you are outsourcing your call center agents. However, ensuring that even your call center service provider adheres to these practices is still best.

Best practices for customer service

Every customer interaction is crucial in ensuring customer satisfaction. When answering phone calls or even talking to customers on social media, your agents should be able to represent the brand positively. Therefore, you should empower agents with the proper techniques to be a thriving call center.

• Make a positive first impression: first impressions matter, even in customer service. When customers call, they should feel they can reach a live agent. Practice active listening and patience. As much as your agent can, you should ensure that call resolution happens on the first call.

• Nurture healthy habits among your staff: your agents need specific soft and hard skills to be successful customer care representatives, such as documentation techniques, product/brand knowledge, call center escalation, and active listening. You must also keep these skills sharp through regular training and assessment.

• Manage your knowledge base wisely: curate all your call center data and resources in one place. Keep it organized, updated, and accurate. This way, your staff can easily access customer data and personalize their caller’s experience.

• Automate call center processes: automating your workflow helps optimize your internal efficiency and improve customer service. Plenty of call center software in the market can help you with different tasks, from customer relations management to communication platforms.

• Classify your customers: classifying them based on loyalty and profitability is an excellent strategy. It would help you learn the value of satisfied customers and the cost of unhappy ones. This way, you can choose which areas in your business need the most investment.

• Track essential metrics closely: effective monitoring is crucial in optimizing the performance of a call center. While there may be a lot of metrics and KPIs to track, you need to focus on the ones that matter. Live broadcasting your company metrics and KPIs can also motivate employees.

Call center metrics to focus on

There are plenty of call center metrics and KPIs. While all of them are important, some metrics are posted over others. Focusing on the right metrics is crucial to the success of your call center. Below are some call center metrics that you need to focus on:

• Service level: the percentage of calls answered within a specific period.

• Issue types: the tally of the kinds of issues that your call center has to resolve.

• Response time: the average call center time to answer an inbound call.

• Abandoned calls: the number of calls left before an agent can answer.

• Average handle time: the average time agents spend on a cal, including the other tasks necessary to resolve a call.

• Average wait time: the average time that a caller spends waiting to connect to an agent.

• Resolution rate: the percentage of calls resolved by the call center. Here, you can highlight the percentage of calls resolved in the first call.

• Quality assurance or monitoring scores: the scores evaluators give to live monitoring or recordings of your agents’ interactions with customers.

• Customer satisfaction rating: your customers’ score on how your agents handled their calls.

Outsourcing a call center service provider

Your in-house call center has its perks, but outsourcing call center services to a third-party organization may be more beneficial. It is a cost-effective strategy for businesses of all sizes and industries. Given the specialty of your service provider, you will also be able to avoid any costly call center mishaps that can happen in-house.

Despite the benefits of call center outsourcing, it has its drawbacks. Most of these stem from choosing the wrong service provider. When it comes to selecting your outsourcing partner, practice the following:

1. Establish the kind of call center and services that your business needs. For example, consider whether you need an outbound or inbound call center or answering assistance. You also need to specify your preferences for the service.
2. Research potential service providers, their practices, and reviews from previous clients.
3. Choose a call center outsourcing company in the industry for a long time. This denotes profound experience in handling customers.
4. Learn how your service provider hires and trains its staff. Ensure they follow the best practices in call center hiring and train their agents regularly.
5. To ensure your information is safe with your outsourced call center, check if they adhere to industry standards, such as ISO and HIPAA.
6. Aside from being well within your budget, your service provider should guarantee high-quality services. Hire a call center company that offers flexible rates without compromising the quality of their service.

Magellan Solutions strives to provide high-quality services at any price point. Our company maintains ISO and HIPAA certifications to guarantee safe, secure, and reliable services. Contact us today, and learn how we can help your business.