Customer Behaviour Trends Driving The Evolution In Businesses And Call Center Solutions | Industry Outlook
By: Mehul Shah, Co-founder of Elision Technologies Pvt. Ltd | Friday, 29 January 2021
In the 21st century, customers are more aware of their rights. They are well informed about the fierce competition in the market. Moreover, they have many public platforms to raise their voice easily and for free. All these facts place customer experience in the center focus of any business and become a dominating factor for its growth or doom.
Nowadays, as technologies are evolving, it has become necessary for businesses to leave the traditional tools behind and grab the tools developed by leveraging the advantages of cutting edge technologies. A call center solution is one of the tools, which has brought revolutionary features that can help businesses, regardless of industry verticals, fulfil customer demands and expectations. It also helps businesses to match the pace with the technology evolutions taking place in the world and gain a competitive advantage.
Let me share the top 6 customer behaviour trends, which make the use of a call center solution necessary for businesses. Not only this, but these customer behaviour trends have also brought an evolution in the call center solutions.
1. Customer demands more options to reach customer support centers
According to several surveys results, customers have their own preferred communication channels. Therefore, they demand to have more options to reach a customer support center other than phone calls. For example, customers sending tweets regarding their experience prefer to get a response within an hour. Usually, each business caters to multiple age groups and each age group has its own preferred mode of communication. Therefore, it becomes necessary for businesses to use multiple communication channels. It benefits not only in delivering an extraordinary customer experience, but it also helps in increasing lead generation and goal conversion.
Handling each communication channel individually not only increases efforts, but also affects many productivity KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Thus, integrating all communication channels into the call center software and using an omnichannel call center solution becomes necessary.
2. Customers like to communicate with skilled agents
The foremost priority of customers while contacting a support center is to talk to skilled agents or executives. Agents with poor knowledge
fail to impress customers and build a strong build. Along with training, it also requires advanced tools, which have features to enhance the knowledge and skills of the agents. The call center software with integrated software like CRM, help desk ticketing system, etc. let agents know the whole case of the customer. Moreover, if businesses use the sticky agent feature of call center solutions, it also helps in projecting a brand that has skilled agents.
3. Customers love brands that deliver personalized responses
Nowadays, customers not only want to get answers to their queries, but they also like to feel valued by the companies. Therefore, personalized greetings and responses become a plus point for businesses that want to retain their customers for a long. Technology advancements have made this possible by showing the customer history and preferences to agents or executives, who take customer calls.
A call center solution is one of the tools, which has brought revolutionary features that can help businesses, regardless of industry verticals, fulfil customer demands and expectations
4. Customer needs regular updates
The ultimate agenda of reaching out to your sales team or customer care team for any customer is to get a convincing and satisfying response. In a majority of call centers or businesses, agents and executives tend to read the script. Common answers are “We are sorry, but we cannot help you with that” or “We are checking the issue and we will update you soon”. This kind of response frustrates your customers more and they are more likely to move out and use the offering of your competitors. The solution here is to be specific and straight. For example, if it is going to take 2 days, simply inform the customer about the same. The customers should be updated via any mode of communication regarding the status of their raised concerns. The callback feature of the call center solution can be used here to keep customers posted. This lets your customers know that you are working on their issues and will soon come up with a resolution.
5. Quicker resolutions to concerns are what customers want
This fact has been a dominating factor in all industry verticals. Instant resolution is what they need, which is called first call resolution in the technical term. Along with using call center solution features, adding some more tools built by leveraging the power of cutting edge technologies and giving the required training and real time coaching to your team can help increase first call resolution.
6. Customers like to have self serving options
Call center automation is one of the functionalities available in the call center solutions, which introduce automation in businesses. All frequently asked questions and commonly carried out actions can be automated using these functionalities. Customers like self serving options as they save customers’ time as well as make them feel satisfied by taking actions independently.
With the technology evolution tools like chatbots, voice assistants, WhatsApp bots, etc. have also started becoming part of the modern call center solutions. These tools developed by using the power of RPA (Robotic Process Automation), AI (Artificial Intelligence), and ML (Machine Learning) technologies are contributing majorly to call center automation to improve customer satisfaction with reliable and accurate self serving options.
These 6 customer behaviour trends are not only dominating businesses, but also enforcing technology companies to evolve tools that revolve around meeting these customer demands.
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