For many businesses and organizations whose success is built on providing responsive customer support and a telephone-based sales strategy, a call centre might be more accurately referred to as a “nerve centre.”
When choosing a technology platform to power your call centre, there are three big picture objectives that should guide your decision:
* Improving the customer experience
* Helping staff meet sales and service objectives
* Creating positive brand relationships
Selecting the right technology platform for your call centre will allow you to deliver on all of these priorities. Here are five features that are strongly recommended for those seeking a robust and powerful call centre solution:
1. Real-time data monitoring capabilities.
Given the essential role your call centre plays, you want to ensure you have the ability to accurately evaluate performance levels on an as-needed basis – versus having to wait days or weeks. Real time monitoring functionality has many advantages:
* The agility to assess resource availability (do you have enough team members to handle current call volumes?)
* The ability to review employee productivity stats daily.
* Immediate access to key performance indicators, such as call wait times, average talk time, number of incoming calls and unanswered calls.
* The ability to set alerts if performance standards are not met.
2. Comprehensive reporting tools.
A good call centre system will be able to consolidate the real-time data you have collected into easy-to-read reports so you can respond in a strategic manner. These tools can help you assess your call centre’s efficiency and performance.
Insights gleaned from data can help you enhance customer service and identify any potential problems before they become chronic concerns. Toshiba’s Taske Contact Call Centre System includes a “Visualizer”, which provides managers with convenient at-a-glance access to key performance data.
3. Performance tools accessible by individual employees.
It is not just managers who will benefit from knowing how the call centre is performing. By choosing a platform that uses desktop tools to make data available to employees in real time, team members can readjust their approach to meet current demands on the call centre.
For example, if your call centre is slammed and wait times are increasing, they can be mindful of keeping calls concise where possible. Having access to one’s own performance data is also is a valuable training tool, as employees can measure their own performance against others.
4. Performance-motivation tools
Knowing how close (or far) you are from meeting objectives goes a long way when motivating staff. The Taske System, for example, has a function called “Display Central.” Messages, alerts and scrolling tickers appear on each team member’s desktop alerting them how close they are to meeting objectives. Indicating when a goal has been attained helps to provide positive reinforcement.
5. A user-friendly platform
The most effective communication tools are those that make your life easy and reduce headaches, rather than cause them. The easier a system is to use, the more you’ll use it.
There are a number of call centre options available. To find the one that meets the needs of your business and its customer base, do your homework. A good communication services provider should be able to offer you a list of options to choose from and can make recommendations based on your needs and opportunities. Today and into the foreseeable future.
