Achieving great customer satisfaction is a difficult task. Plain and simple. Each customer has a different issue and requires various approaches to give a satisfactory resolution. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the industry is expected to experience a 4% decline in total employment over the next decade.(Software)Â
Being a customer service representative can be challenging. As a business owner, your part is to provide good facilities for the customer service team to get the best customer satisfaction.
One of those good facilities is the work-from-home option. Forbes did an article related to the impact of remote work and claimed that one in four Americans prefers to work from home in 2021 and the trend is going up.
Companies are taking measures to adapt to this new workflow. One such measure is the call center software. Thanks to cloud-based call center software, you can work remotely without the need to visit the physical site.
But how exactly does the call center software support clustered and remote teams?
Or what are all the issues faced by virtual customer service agents (CSA)?
Difficulties in Virtual Environment
One of the major challenges in virtual ecosystems is providing training to customer service representatives. People all around the world work in customer service in different time zones. Lack of proper training and the inability to provide necessary support can lead to communication gaps. This results in poor customer satisfaction and resolution.
Additionally, working remotely can have a negative impact on team morale. Collaboration is one of the most crucial factors and helps to bring morale to the team and even ideas for complicated scenarios. By working remotely, you can face difficulties in building a good collaborative team.
So, can the call center software solve different problems faced in the virtual environment?
Certainly. Call center software has a range of features that help to overcome difficulties faced while working remotely.
Let’s take a look at a few examples of how call center software can support the remote teams
Benefits of Call Center Software to Remote Teams
First and foremost, call center software is cloud-based software. What I mean is, cloud software eliminates the need for infrastructure, allowing your team to work remotely from anywhere in the world if they have access to the Internet.
The state-of-the-art features are one of the notable benefits of call center software. Features like smart call routing, which directs calls to the appropriate customer service agent and ensures quick and efficient responses, significantly contribute to customer satisfaction.
Some of the core features of call center software are omnichannel (multiple-mode of communication) support, customized IVR (Interactive Voice Response), call recording, and even analytics.
With omnichannel and customized IVR, you can automate simple and repetitive tasks reducing the manual labor for the CSA. This allows them to focus on the customer issue and resolve it promptly. In particular, IVR (Interactive Voice Response) can help reduce labor costs by managing call volume for customer service agents.
With analytics, you can get the data for each CSA’s performance and identify areas that need improvement.
Collaboration is one of the most crucial success factors. Most call center software operates on a cloud-based framework, allowing your team to collaborate, share knowledge, and solve complex issues.
Cloud-based software stores data in the cloud and with the help of the access restrictions, you can share the data which helps your agents to stay organized and efficient.
Additionally, you can easily initiate video conversations with customer service agents to have quick team chats. This surely brings up the team morale, and motivation of the CSA and checks up on their mental health.
Training the new hires can be easily carried out with the call center software. As said, the software has a dedicated database, where the team leader stores the training material and even company policies for the new hire.
Having extensive and detailed training material with troubleshooting methods for common scenarios gives confidence to the new hire about the job and eventually gets better customer satisfaction. Also, they can access the documentation anytime they want. That is very helpful to solve the unique issue of the customer.
Types of Tools Need to Support the Remote Team
Video conferencing tools are a must for any remote regardless of customer service or not. Having a team meet with an idea of overall improvement and that too remotely where your CSA can attend from anywhere is a requirement. Bouncing ideas and transferring knowledge and a way to store all the important information can definitely help to achieve the business goals at a faster pace.
Productivity trackers and QA assurance are essential for improving the overall performance of customer service agents. Monitoring the KPI during remote work can be tricky. However, with call center software, you can track various performance metrics and identify opportunities for enhancing the team’s overall productivity. Closely monitoring and giving proper feedback and training when necessary is the route for customer success and CSA’s self-improvement.
When deciding to incorporate call center software into your business, choose software that aligns with your specific business requirements. Check the scalability and flexibility of the software and determine whether the software can handle high loads during the fluctuation period.
Additionally, ensure that the software can be easily mastered by customer service agents within a short period. This can help to improve the customer experience and bring results at a faster pace.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How are the calls distributed to the remote team?
The information about the customer issue and which department the issue falls to is usually gained with the help of IVF bots. Once the information is secured, the call is routed to the desired department and the CSA for resolution.
- What is a remote call center?
The remote call center is a virtual environment where teams of CSAs are working remotely all over the world on cloud-based software to resolve customer issues.
- What are the types of IVR?
The two types of IVR are inbound and outbound IVR. Outbound IVR is for handling outbound calls (calls from CSA to customer), and inbound IVR is for handling inbound calls (calls from customer to CSA)
Final Thoughts
Remote work is going to stay here for a long time and we cannot deny it. Instead of debating whether it is good for the overall business results, we can better find ways to accommodate remote work and bring more efficiency. Call center software is a great tool that can enforce the remote team to work efficiently and meet the business KPIs.