Shop Talk

Why Customers Prefer a Live Chat Service

The business world is competitive.  In order to succeed, your business needs to be…..well, the best!   Excellent customer service has been the defining facet in business in increasing customer base and attaining customer retention.While, businesses would spend millions of dollars in a marketing campaign just to launch a product, find a niche in the market and establishing branding of its products, others would sometimes take it for granted.
In the present world of social media marketing, it is not only essential that a business establishment put-up an online shop or a website to increase product awareness rather that just be contented with walk-in customers. Besides, having these social media tools would also increase the business’ market base.
Studies show that among the top parameters for customers to consider a customer service to be excellent are the accuracy of information, quality of interaction and timeliness of the response. The first two can easily be attained for as long as all the needed information of a customer service agent is on hand. However, timeliness of the response is a different story.
While most websites provide telephone numbers to call, live chat customer service can be a more convenient and alternative way that the customers can experience as they need not grab a phone but rather inquire immediately at the point of browsing the website.Customers who browse on the internet would prefer that any query or complaint is addressed upfront.
This is probably not surprising to many of you.  It’s just easier in many ways to just speak to a live person and have that human interaction.  Getting first class service and having your questions answered or issues solved is even better!

www.adeptivsolutions.com
(Source: Glazel Pett Espejon)

Tips to Reduce Wait Time in Your Call Center

In order to compete and grow your business by positive word-of-mouth, customer service is KEY. I recently found this article by Barbara Burke from www.multichannelmerchant.com called “12 Tips to Reduce Customer Hold Times.”
I found these tips applicable and interesting. I’d like to share her tips with you:

Reducing the amount of time your customers stay on hold will not only result in shorter handle times, but will make your customers more satisfied and your agents a lot happier.

Here are 12 tips to reduce the amount of time your customers wait on hold in your contact center:

1. Expand your agents’ authority to make decisions. Customers detest waiting on hold while an agent tracks down a higher authority to make a simple decision.

2. Create a robust on-line knowledge base agents can access quickly and easily. The best way to get the resource used is to involve your agents in the design.

3. Update the information in the knowledge base. Agents won’t use it if they can’t trust the information to be accurate.

4. Include the agent’s efficient use of the on-line knowledge base as a basic requirement of their job.

5. Coach agents on call control techniques to enable them to manage their customer interactions efficiently.

6. Have zero tolerance for agents who put customers on hold so they can chitchat with their neighbors. (It happens!)

7. Avoid relying on new agents to “learn on the job.” It’s not fair to customers to sit on hold while an under-trained newbie turns to a co-worker or supervisor to get the right answer.

8. If your customer satisfaction surveys reveal a trend in complaints about having to hold too long when working with an agent, dig into the root causes.

9. Have a sense of urgency yourself. When you take an escalated call make sure you handle the interaction as quickly as possible.

10. Train your agents to always give the customer the option to hold or to receive a call back. Giving your customers a choice makes them feel more in control.

11. Make sure that the ability to manage hold time during the call is included in agents’ call quality criteria.

12. Get internal departments to be more responsive. Too often when an agent puts a customer on hold so they can ask another department a quick question, no one is available to help.

Do you have any other tips to add? Feel free to comment. www.adeptivsolutions.com

Gauging an Appropriate Response in Your Call Center Customer Service

There’s no argument that there’s always room for improvement in every business. As times change, new practices seem to emerge that are more efficient and work better than the ones in place before them. There are many ways one can improve customer service in your call center.

While many companies look for ways to increase sales, only a few might actually be interested in retaining customers. When it comes to making big time profits, no one can underestimate the importance of recurring customers for more sale volume, as compared to just one sale to a single a customer each time. This loyalty can only be achieved if an excellent, memorable and welcoming customer service, accompanies core service or product. Just a satisfied customer is never as good as a truly delighted customer.

Call center outsourcing services can be improved, monitored and used to your best advantage. Whenever there is a call for example, the customer agents can be asked to have a generalized short discussion to judge the tone of the person because a customer might just be having a bad day and the agent should know a few things before he can start his appropriate response.

Call Center Service representatives should always make a good start; a good first impression at the start of the conversation which is a confident, dependable and affirmative one would make the customers feel that they have arrived right at the hands of a dependable person. It would also be very important to develop practices that encourage customers to call back again.

Rapport in call center service can be developed by catering specifically to the type of person of that person that you hear on the phone. For example if you hear an elderly person with very basic questions, or if you hear young, professional, questioning and a clear minded businessman, you would definitely respond differently in both circumstances.

It is an art in itself to understand how to respond to the versatile nature of the needs and concerns that these people have regarding the same service or product that you offer.

So basically you need to take the lead and learn how to explain the same information in various ways to people and master to improvise on ways to helping out in new occurring situations with the call center service. It would also be very helpful if you can speak very clearly, each phone call is like a separate presentation and agent`s voice tone for each call should be perfect so it provides best standard.

Summary: One of the best ways for an agent to respond in call center customer service is to try finding ways to predict the actual state of mind of the customers before response. Delighting customer service will bring your customers back because they will always remember you.
It will do well for all if each customer is understood and responded to as a separate individual and entity so that they are more inclined towards telling you what they are actually feeling about your service.

www.adeptivsolutions.com

(Source: By Meri Johns)

Is Your Company Trying to Please EVERYone?

I came across an article in Supply Chain Brain discussing a new trend for Logistics companies to be “all things to all people.”  It’s interesting to see that there’s pressure to go down this road.  I welcome any additional thoughts on this topic.

Logistics companies are moving away from strategies based either on customer service or cost leadership and toward mixed strategies that attempt to provide both, says Mary Holcomb, supply chain professor at the University of Tennessee.

This trend began to emerge about three years ago, Holcomb says. “From our 2007 study to our study this year, we have seen this strategy of ‘being all things to all people’ really increase.”

The economy is not the major driver of this trend, she says. “We saw a small uptick in 2008 of companies adopting a cost leadership strategy, which was related to the economy, but in the 2009 study that settled back and it didn’t really change the underlying trend.”

The balance between cost and service is often difficult for firms to find, Holcomb says. “Even with long-time customers, the balance often tilts between the two, which is indicative of a mixed strategy,” she says.

In what ways is your business feeling pulled to do this?  Thoughts?  www.adeptivsolutions.com

The right tools are essential to a great brand experience!

The right tools are essential to a great brand experience!

In a recent discussion on linked in, I asked “how do you train your employees to deliver your brand?” The overwhelming theme was that you need to document what your company’s vision, mission and values are and how do those translate into a customer experience for your brand.

Have you taken the time to document those for your company? If not you need to begin today and get this simple structure in place. It’s important that participation exists from Senior Management as buy in from the top is vital to the long term success. I can stress enough how essential this is to sustainability of the brand and company. Once this is completed, you need to translate that into your service aspiration. This will define the behaviors and actions that are needed to deliver the designed experience with every customer interaction. These will apply to all channels; face to face, phone, e-mail, chat etc.

The last critical piece is monitoring and coaching on a regular basis to ensure that your service aspiration is translating into the right experiences. This needs to be a visible and active process within your organization to ensure its top of mind. This can include remote monitoring, side by side coaching or classroom training based on new ideas or concepts.

These simple yet effective tools are keys to delving your brand in a consistent manner. If you don’t have these in place you will benefit by going through this simple exercise.