Latest Contact Center Best Practices

An astounding 82% of today’s consumers say speed of service is the number one factor to a great customer experience. And as businesses increasingly seek ways to improve their customer service, many have turned to virtualization and self-service. Airlines use self check-in, restaurants allow customers to make their own reservations, and grocery stores have self check-out lines—the list goes on.  In the case of contact centers specifically, 62% of best-in-class companies use interactive voice response platforms in some capacity to facilitate the delivery of fast but relevant customer service.

Many company executives realize the importance of customer service to their organization. It’s no longer seen as just an outlet for customer complaints but instead a department to help ensure customer loyalty. As its core function, customer service is expected to effectively handle basic customer transactions.

Think back to a bad customer service experience. What do you wish the rep had done better? How about the best experience you had? If you’re like most people, you expect customer service to be able to quickly and proactively help answer questions and resolve issues. After all, isn’t that why they are there?

Technology has come a long way to enhance sales and marketing initiatives. From marketing automation tools, to customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, to predictive dialing solutions – the list goes on. And the results speak for themselves when you consider some agents have seen a 400% improvement in productivity and overall efficiency.

But what do those on the receiving end think of these enhanced outreach efforts?

As a CRM and Marketing Automation expert, the advice we give out most at UpCurve Cloud is that your CRM should be the anchor that ties together all the departments throughout your business. Whether we’re talking about software for marketing, accounting, or support, we believe it’s important to integrate all your systems. Here are some benefits to integrating your CRM to other departmental softwares, with added focus on Call Center platforms.

When a customer ends a call before it is answered by a live agent, the call is considered to be “abandoned”. Typically the result of long hold times, call abandonment can be a serious problem within contact centers, as it is often correlated with low CSAT scores, decreased revenue, and lost business. Consider this- more than sixty percent of consumers will hang up if their call is not answered in under five minutes, and more than eighty percent if their call is now answered in under ten. And while every industry and business is different, abandonment rates above 5% are considered to be problematic. How can contact centers decrease their call abandon rate?