November 2018 - VCC Live

Archive for November, 2018

Call Center Consulting: Increase Your Cross- and Upselling by Utilizing Expert Advice

Posted on: November 28th, 2018 by Attila Szűcs No Comments

While cross- and upselling is vital for any call center, achieving successful sales results depends on a couple of factors. Firstly, a reliable technology solution will put you on the path to success. Secondly, leveraging call center consulting will help your call center move ahead. Ultimately, it is the combination of the two that will make the biggest difference.

In this article, I’ll take things a step further and tell you how you can increase your cross- and upsell figures by relying on call center consulting services. Don’t miss out on this one!

Building a better IVR experience with the help of consultants

While there’s no doubt IVRs are designed to improve customer experience, to be honest, they rarely serve their purpose. And, needless to say, a customer frustrated with dealing with a troublesome IVR will not consider upgrading their service. On the other hand, if you manage to provide a seamless customer experience via your IVR, you’ll more likely to be able to successfully use cross- and upselling tactics, and encourage your customers to purchase.

Therefore, the secret of increasing sales via IVR technology is simple: provide your customers with an exceptional IVR experience and make sure they leave your business 100% satisfied.

Designing an IVR solution, of course, requires significant time and resources. In addition, businesses often involve a third party in the project, making the process even more complex and time-consuming.

However, although you may not believe it, you can actually also design your IVR solution on your own…but only if you utilize the knowledge of industry experts. And if you decide to leverage call center consulting services, the chances are you’ll end up with a better-constructed IVR that truly fits your needs. In addition, if your consultant is also your provider, you can be sure that your IVR will be perfectly integrated with your other systems.

By relying on VCC Live’s industry knowledge, for example, our customers can design their own IVR solution together with our team of consultants, who provide advisory services and support during the design as well as the implementation process. The results are well-constructed and tailor-made IVR structures designed to fit specific business needs.

Creating powerful scripts by utilizing call center consulting

When it comes to cross- and upselling, it is still the human factor that helps tip the scales in the right direction. Therefore, if you want to improve your sales figures, then make sure to provide your agents with the right tools they need in order to close as many deals as possible. A powerful call center script is definitely one of those tools.

When used properly, they can help your agents provide an excellent customer experience, as well as allow them to benefit from cross- and upsell opportunities. On the other hand, a lack of effective call center scripts can easily turn your customer service into a nightmare and reduce your sales performance levels.

By relying on call center consulting services, you’ll be able to build powerful and successful cross- and upsell technique scripts. Providers that offer consulting services work with a great number of call centers and acquire an in-depth industry knowledge over the years. In addition, they can offer invaluable insights from several other industries, and their industry-specific mindset allows call centers to think outside the box and come up with ideas they would never have previously thought of.

Call center scripts can have a powerful effect on your business – but only if the script you use is powerful itself. One thing is for sure: if you get it right, it definitely works, so make sure to rely on experts. And speaking of powerful call center scripts, as a first step, it may be a good idea to check out our ultimate guide to building effective call center scripts.

Real-time payment – leveraging the latest industry trend

Real-time payment is definitely the next big thing in the call center industry. And, as the name suggests, it is the perfect tool to increase cross- and upsell figures.

Real-time payment, also called instant payment, is becoming and more and more popular, mainly due to customers’ increasing expectations for speed and convenience. It’s no surprise, therefore, that forward-thinking businesses reacted to this new demand and started to offer a portfolio of real-time payment solutions.

How can real-time payments help in reality? Well, let’s say you receive a call via your IVR and your agent successfully closes an upsell deal. Normally what you receive will be merely a promise, but with real-time payments, you can now turn promises into actual payments. In other words, you can close the sales cycle.

Furthermore, as already mentioned in a previous article, the greatest chance for a successful conversion is during a conversation. And thanks to the latest technology, it is now possible for agents to initiate bank card payments during a single phone call. Yes, really!

This method of providing customers with the option of making real-time payments during phone calls is a unique technology solution, and is available as part of VCC Live’s software solution.

Of course, the technology is complex and requires a thorough planning and implementation process. And, again, this is where call center consultants can make all the difference. When we implemented the solution for the first time, as well as the technical implementation process, we also provided our customer with in-depth training on how to use the payment option and effectively approach customers and close deals using it. The results spoke for themselves!

As you can see, you can benefit greatly from choosing a provider that has in-depth industry knowledge and is ready to share it with you. Make sure to bear this in mind when looking for a new provider!

How to Master Your Call Center Wallboard

Posted on: November 22nd, 2018 by Dóra Rapcsák No Comments

An engaging call center wallboard can work wonders for your business, engaging your agents and improving productivity, but only if it’s used properly.

Even today, though, many call centers feel they are taking a shot in the dark when they decide on what information should be displayed on their wallboard.

In this article, we’ll give you some pro tips to get the most out of your call center wallboards, as well as showing how they can help improving your call center’s efficiency. Have a look!

Less is more

A call center wallboard is only effective and efficient if it conveys a simple and clear message that can be quickly grasped. If you don’t communicate the right information in a simple way, then it will only distract your agents, rather than engage them.

So, when it comes to designing your call center wallboard, always bear in mind that sometimes less is more. Yes, we know it’s a cliché, but it’s definitely true here, especially if currently your wallboard is loaded with a bunch of information.

As such, make sure to avoid displaying too much information on your wallboard – keep it simple, clear and easy to understand, so that your agents can actually make use of the information displayed, instead of wasting their time on it.

In particular, wallboards are definitely not for long text messages. Instead, try and concentrate on displaying the most important figures and short encouraging text messages that help increase agent productivity.

Last but not least, one obvious but often overlooked consideration is that if the data shown on a board is not physically visible to everyone, then what’s the point? One important rule for wallboards is that they need to be easy to see – even for agents sitting at the other end of the room.

Engage your agent team

As we all know, call centers are about hitting numbers. In such a fast-paced and competitive environment, agents often find themselves experiencing high levels of stress. And the fact that call center wallboards are normally used to display agent performance doesn’t help things.

While publicly displaying information on agent performance may encourage agents to stay motivated and challenge each other, it can also backfire. When things aren’t going well, chances are the very same data will increase stress levels. Therefore, when displaying agent performance figures, always try and encourage your agents with positive messages such as “keep up the good work”, even during bad times.

Furthermore, call center agents often feel that they are nothing more than just another cog in the call center wheel. As such, if you want to truly engage with them, make sure to acknowledge and reward them, especially those agents who constantly contribute to the successful operation of your call center.

Luckily, you can use your call center wallboard to help express your appreciation towards them. For example, it may be a good idea to find a spot and display the “agent of the week/month” on your board. You can be sure that it will help you engage your agents as well as motivate them to hit their target numbers.

Add some personal touches to your call center wallboard

Call center wallboards are normally used to display real-time statistics, and KPIs such as service levels and call queues. Sounds a bit boring, doesn’t it? But who said you can’t add some personal touches to your wallboard?

In fact, your call center wallboard can become an excellent tool to communicate with your staff. You may not think so, but by adding some personalization to your wallboard, it can help create an engaging company culture and boost team spirit.

For instance, by displaying birthdays on your wallboard, you can make your agents feel they are valued by the company. In addition, displaying internal communications messages and details of social events, such as team building activities, on the board will definitely improve the team’s morale.

The possibilities are infinite, just make sure you also leave enough space for business-related information!

In our connected world, with so much data available, it would be a shame to miss out on leveraging your call center wallboard. Make sure you follow our tips and you too will be able to design an inspiring board for your team!

How to Increase Revenue With Customer Self-Service

Posted on: November 15th, 2018 by Dóra Rapcsák No Comments

Customer self-service is a new support channel that everyone is trying to get their hands on. That’s no surprise, as it can not only create happy customers but also help reduce costs and increase revenue.

Self-service is a form of customer support that allows customers to perform routine tasks without interacting with a call center agent. Needless to say, customers quickly embraced the idea.

There’s no doubt that customer self-service is shaping the future of call centers. In this article, we’ll discuss how you can increase your own call center’s revenue by leveraging the advantages of this new technology.

Reduced labor cost

As we all know, labor is the single biggest cost for any call center. Saving costs by reducing staff numbers, however, is a gamble that is not worth taking, as during peak times it may actually end up costing you more in terms of poor service. Luckily, customer self-service provides an ideal solution for reducing call center labor costs without risking the quality of your customer service.

The cost benefits of customer self-service are obvious: if your customers can solve their problems on their own, that will result in significantly reduced customer service call volumes, and so substantially reduce the amount of support needed. As such, a smaller team of call center agents will be able to take care of remaining customer calls.

In addition, customers who use self-service tools to help themselves also cost less for businesses to support, with self-service portals, mobile apps and FAQ pages being cheaper to operate than live agent assistance.

Customer self-service helps cross- and up-sell

Strange as it sounds, sales figures can also be greatly increased via customer self-service. In particular, self-service solutions empower companies with the opportunity to target customers with cross- and up-sell offers.

While it requires significant resources and time to train agents on cross- and up-selling techniques, in contrast, self-service platforms can keep a record of products or services purchased, and make offers based on customers’ purchase history.

For example, a telco provider’s self-service portal can provide the perfect opportunity to offer customers a targeted upgrade offer on their subscription.

Or, when customers revisit your webshop’s FAQ page, you can send them items suggestions based on their previous choices.

Happy customers spend more

In our fast-changing world, time is money, both for customers and companies. It’s hard to imagine now but, only a few years ago, the only option for resolving even the simplest tasks was for customers to call the relevant customer service team. These days, however, customers prefer to solve their problems themselves, rather than spending the time calling customer service lines and being put on hold. And again, by setting up a self-service portal, the most frequent issues and questions can be addressed online, without customers having to contact a live agent.

What’s more, customers are willing to pay for better customer experience. Therefore, while making the investment in customer self-service technology may seem costly, you will be able to win back (and more) these costs through adding premiums to your product prices. And, by providing them with information quickly and efficiently will definitely improve overall customer experience, and help turn new customers into returning customers.

One thing is certain, acquiring a new customer is much more expensive than retaining an existing one. However, by stepping up your customer service and making customer experience simple and fast through self-service, it has been proven that customers will return to a business, time and time again. In fact, according to research conducted by the Aberdeen Group, self-service users retain 68% more of their customers year-on-year, compared to non-users. Convinced yet?

Sum up

Advanced technology solutions and ever-higher customer expectations are driving major changes in customer service. Amongst other things, call centers need to understand the importance of giving customers the ability to resolve their own issues. Make sure you also leverage customer self-service, because success is sure to follow.

Customer Service Innovations: Building a Next-Generation Customer Service – Part 1

Posted on: November 14th, 2018 by Ákos Philippovich No Comments

As the world continues to change around us, it also brings considerable increases in customers’ expectations. In order to adapt to these major developments, businesses need to keep up with customer service innovations and leverage the advantages of new technologies.

Two things are certain. One: customers now want to see the whole picture before making a purchase. And two: as their expectations grow ever higher, customers are willing to pay more for quality products and services. However, in return, they expect exceptional customer service and the customer service representative to be a personal advisor.

So, are you ready to build your next-generation customer service? If so, then let’s take a look at the most promising customer service innovations that will definitely help drive your business towards new levels of success.

Providing agents with customer support tools

Call center agents take hundreds of calls on a daily basis. Therefore, providing them with the right support systems is, without doubt, a must. Recent studies clearly demonstrate that the biggest frustration for call center agents is caused by the outdated IT systems they use, hindering them from becoming a self-confident personal advisor to customers.

Leveraging comprehensive call center software may sound obvious to you. But can you integrate your software solution with other systems? Integrating systems, such as integrating your call center software with your CRM system, allow your agents, for example, to access a customer’s history real-time before they answer the call. As a result, your agent performance will dramatically improve.

Furthermore, as product features and legal environments become more and more complex, call center agents need in-depth knowledge in order to serve customers effectively. Setting up a knowledge base, such as an FAQ page, self-service portal or forum, will not only help you create a community but also reduce call volumes and narrow down calls to those involving more complex issues.

Utilizing a number of different systems is definitely a necessity for any modern call center. However, and importantly, make sure you choose easy-to-use customer support tools that allow your call center agents to concentrate on customers rather than spending their time navigating through systems.

Speech recognition technology

As we all know, customer calls contain a goldmine of invaluable information. And with the recent development of speech recognition technology, it is now a lot easier and cheaper to make good use of those calls.

Speech recognition technology, one of the most promising of recent customer service innovations, is capable of recognizing a huge amount of vocabulary in many languages, identifying relevant words and phrases, analyzing tone of voice and even estimating the age of callers. The system then converts the collected conversation data into digital analytics.

Amongst other things, speech recognition technology in call centers can be utilized for customer profile building, conversation transcription, quality assurance, and marketing purposes. In fact, by leveraging this new technology solution, call centers can better understand customer needs, identify customers who need particular attention, pinpoint industry trends, and analyze customer behavior and purchasing patterns, while identifying problematics products/services and help low-performing agents improve.

And, as these days customer service is all about personalization, it is important to know that speech recognition technology can be integrated with your customer information databases, enabling your system to actually identify the customer by the time the call is answered. Amazing, huh?

Video contact center

Let’s admit it, the lack of a visual element has always made customer interactions with call centers more difficult. However, visual content has now started to become increasingly popular in several industries, and the call center industry is no exception.

In fact, using video for customer service purposes is one of the most promising call center innovations. Among other things, it enables advanced real-time support, personalized customer experience, and an increased first call resolution rate. Video also opens up new opportunities in call centers, allowing customers to switch from self- to live video service or request a call-back through video chat, and letting agents send tutorial video attachments via email or live chat. Also, recent improvements in the legal environment allow contact centers to identify their new or existing customers via video channel. This significantly reduces the time and efforts to do legally binding business via call centers.

Video can be even implemented into IVR solutions, providing systems with the ability to use dynamic or static video information for caller assistance. For example, IVVR (interactive voice and video response) can be used in customer service for a variety of situations, such as delivering complex instruction sets to users whenever and wherever the instructions are needed.

Furthermore, video contact center solutions work effectively with features such as co-browsing and screen sharing, allowing your agents to remotely guide customers and gain control of their screen when necessary.

New customer service innovations are appearing every day. Those who keep up will survive and thrive, those who cannot will suffer a slow and inevitable death. So make sure you don’t get left behind!

How to Prepare for a Call Center Agent Interview

Posted on: November 9th, 2018 by Dóra Rapcsák No Comments

You may not think so but working as a call center professional has great potential: if you perform well in your job there’s no doubt you will thrive – and so will your career.

Although call centers have a bad rep, the industry has changed a lot in recent years. One significant change is that the demand for call center professionals is definitely on the rise. According to a survey carried out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, call center agent jobs are expected to grow 5% between 2016 to 2026, and 39% between 2014 to 2024.

Furthermore, working as a call center agent now requires a lot more than carrying out the same repetitive tasks. As customers these days can rely on self-service options to resolve their own issues, they only contact customer service teams when they have complicated issues. So, instead of handling simple tasks, agents need to rely on their solid industry knowledge and problem-solving skills in order to best serve customers.

If you’re thinking about starting a career in the call center industry, then the first challenge you’ll need to overcome is to nail a call center agent interview. In this article, we’ll show you how you can prepare for and get the most out of your interview. Read on and go get that job!

Research, research, research…

Needless to say, never go to an interview unprepared. If you want to make a good impression (and we trust you do), make sure to allocate enough time to research the company and the position you apply for.

Call center agent interviews usually start with some opening questions. There’s no doubt you’ll be asked questions regarding the position, so make sure you have detailed information on what call center agents do on a daily basis. There are tons of articles out there (for example our articles on the most important call center agent skills and useful agent life hacks), or you can even turn to a friend who is already working in the industry.

In addition, many interviewers ask candidates questions about the company’s history, and it’s definitely a plus if you can answer these questions. In fact, being well-informed will make you more confident, while demonstrating that you’re serious about working for the company in question.

Language competence

In today’s globalized world, businesses are constantly expanding into new markets, while also focusing on creating a solid online presence. And as multilingual customer service departments are on the rise, call center agents often find themselves interacting with customers who speak a different language. You will also talk to a bunch of customers with a strong accent, so it’s vital that you have advanced language skills.

There’s no doubt, most call centers are constantly on the lookout for agents with excellent language proficiency, so your language skills will probably be tested during any call center agent interview.

It’s definitely a good idea to refresh your grammar knowledge as interviewers may ask you to fill out a language test. Plus, you can be sure that you’ll be required to use your language skills in an everyday conversation as well.

Situational questions

Call center agents interact with hundreds of customers on an average day, and have to resolve all kinds of customer issues. As you’ll be the face of the company, it is of utmost importance how you’ll handle difficult situations.

Therefore, you can be pretty sure that you’ll be asked to participate in situational exercises. During a situational exercise, you’ll be put in a problematic situation where you’ll need to come up with the best solution.

These exercises are used by interviewers to review the candidate’s capability to react to a situation when faced with conflict. Our best advice here is to try and remain calm while relying on your problem-solving skills. Also, putting yourself in the customer’s shoes will definitely help you come up with a customer-centric solution.

Typical call center agent interview questions

Last but not least, let’s look at some classic questions you can expect during a call center agent interview.

Why do you want to work as a call center agent?

It’s no secret that agent turnover is extremely high in call centers. Therefore, motivation is one of the most important traits interviewers look for in candidates. Make sure to think over why you applied for the position in the first place and prepare with an honest but persuasive answer. Whether you have ambitions to climb the call center ladder or simply enjoy interacting with customers, make sure to express it during the call center agent interview.

Are you technologically savvy?

These days most call centers utilize several technology solutions, and agents are required to use them on a daily basis, so don’t be surprised if the interviewer asks about your computer proficiency, such as your familiarity with certain systems.

As call centers use different systems, don’t worry if you’re not familiar with all of them. Once you get the job you’ll be trained on how to use them. Just make sure to demonstrate your willingness to learn.

Are you a good multitasker?

Call center agents work on several campaigns and deal with a great number of customers. And these days customers expect answers quickly, meaning you’ll already need to think about a possible solution as you listen to the customer. As a result, the ability to multitask is of utmost importance for any call center who wants to thrive in their job.

Can you perform well under pressure?

If you want to work as a call center agent, what you can be sure about is that you’ll face plenty of unexpected issues. In addition, you’ll get into situations where you simply cannot find the solution at first. In such cases, you’ll need to try and remain calm in order to sort out the issue in the shortest time possible.

As working under pressure is highly characteristic of any call center agent job, you’ll need to convince the interviewers about your ability to perform well in a stressful environment. Start by remaining calm during the call center agent interview, then share some examples from your previous jobs where you managed to successfully resolve a stressful situation.

Interviewing for a new job is never easy. But if you follow our tips to prepare for your call center agent interview, you’ll definitely have better chances to get hired. May the odds be in your favor!