Even if your product or service is great, customers remember their interaction with your company the most. For this reason, a good customer service team and fast responses improve the image of your company and your customer service department.
If your customers experience long hold times, they will hang up. Every lost call is a potential customer lost. However, there are ways to improve the efficiency of your customer service department. Also, you can ensure that your customers have a good experience with your company.
Service Level and Occupancy Rate
There are two important measurements used in call centers to determine their efficiency: Service Level and Occupancy Rate.
There are two different parameters of measurement to determine what the “Service Level” is:
- Whether the agents at the call center are able to answer the calls
- The quickness of the agent’s ability is to help customers and resolve queries or concerns
Occupancy Rate refers to the total call handling time and total after call work time and subtracts agents’ idle time. High occupancy rates indicate low agent availability and long hold times, which can lead to call drops and low service levels.
If your call volume exceeds the number of customer service agents you have, you are going to have a high occupancy rate. This is very stressful for customer service agents, because they are over-worked. This causes them to be stressed out and can lead to high turnover rates. You may have customer service agents who are well-trained and possess all of the skills and qualities needed to provide good customer service, but if they are over-worked and feeling stressed, they will not be able to empathize as efficiently with customers in order to provide good customer service.
One of the best solutions to this problem is to outsource your customer service calls to a call center. This eases the workload of your employees, so their jobs are easier.
Contrary to popular belief, it does not take jobs away from your employees. Rather, their jobs are easier and they are happier. There are also many other benefits to outsourcing, as well.
Benefits Of Outsourcing Your Customer Service Department
Answer more calls
During peak call times, it is difficult for a handful of in-house employees to answer all of the calls. They may not have the experience needed to get through the calls quickly enough and then answer the next call before the customer hangs up. Also, whenever your office closes, there is no one there to answer calls after-hours.
A call center solves all of these problems. Their customer service agents are trained to handle calls quickly and efficiently. Less calls get dropped due to long hold times because all of the hired agents are very well-trained. Some call centers, like KPI Connect, even offer after-hours operations, answering calls after you have gone home.
Customer Satisfaction
It does not matter why your customers call, they expect someone to answer when they call. If their calls are not answered, or if the hold times are too long, it leads to a very unhappy customer base. However, with outsourcing, none of these problems are present. Not only are the agents trained to portray your company’s image and make your customers happy, they are trained to do it quickly, as well.
Increased Sales and Profits
You might be thinking that outsourcing is going to cost more money than it is worth. However, it can actually increase your profits. Simply by answering all of the calls, your profits will grow. Happy customers are likely to buy more, meaning there is potential for even more growth.
Outsourcing is not a decision you should make without some consideration. Lots of people have reservations about it but, consider the amount of benefits that outweigh the drawbacks and the potential to make your employees and customers happier. It is a great idea to at least consider outsourcing your customer service calls. It would most likely increase the efficiency of your customer service department and increase your profits, which is a good enough perk that most businesses would not pass up on.