How Call Centers promote customer loyalty through emotional Responses

For any company performance, success, and customer loyalty are of utmost importance. And almost of all the organizations make these elements an integral part of their company goals. But more often they overlook the fact that customers are people with the emotions.

And if you want to achieve long-term success, evaluation of day-to-day performance level is not going to make you reach your goal, the aim is to develop customer loyalty towards your brand. You can achieve it only if you make an emotional connect with the customers.

And this is where call centers using the most advanced call center software can be of great help. After all, it needs a good combination of people with the right technical expertise and updated technology at their behest to change the world for you.

What Is More Important- Emotional Bonding Or Performance Metrics?

That is a question every organization must ask in its board meeting. According to Howard Lax, emotional bonding between employees, companies, and customers is much more important to success and loyalty as compared to the performance metrics.

Fulfilling the demands of the customers and meeting their expectations is the primary need for any organization. But a good performance cannot be considered fair enough if it is restricted only to buying and selling a routine.

If you want the business to move ahead, it is important that as a company you are successful at evoking emotional responses from the customers.

Lax gives a very valid reason for this. According to him, people are more likely to keep in mind the name of a company if they experienced an emotional impact during the dealing.

In the case of an experience that offers good service but no emotional impact, the customers are more likely to forget it. So, it indicates that more than the performance metrics, a company must first focus on providing a unique combination of emotional impact and good service to the customers.

The Lax’s theory says that organizations failing to have an emotional hook make their customers bored who are more likely to take interest in other brands from the competitors who apart from offering great service also offer positive memories.

How To Measure Emotions? Is It Possible?

Despite the fact that evoking positive emotional responses from the customers is critical to developing customer loyalty, it is very challenging to measure emotions. There are only a couple of ways using which organizations can measure emotions.

1.    Through surveys

2.    Rating scales (By asking the customers to rate their experience)

3.    Neuro-measurements

4.    Implicit association measurement

These measuring parameters are yet to be perfected and hence do not give you an appropriate insight into the emotional responses of customers to the brands.

However, the important point here to consider is that companies must focus their efforts to create lasting memories in the minds of the customers regarding their buying experience and the product since it is highly critical to developing loyalty.

Only then you can expect the customers to come back to you for buying your products and services repeatedly.

Ways To Evoke Positive Emotional Responses From Customers

There are several ways you can use to evoke emotional responses from the customers. But you must be prepared to work hard. Contact centers play a major role in this whole process and more often call center agents get fed up or frustrated while practicing these ways.

1.    Make A List

So, in the case you are planning to outsource your customer care unit to a call center you need to keep in mind a few things:

•    Experience related to your field

•    Approach, culture, and philosophy of the call center

•    Complete information about the staff including account, phone, supervisor, management, and turnover rate

•    Locations such as offshore, nearshore, onshore

•    Training procedures

•    Quality and quantity control by the supervisors

•    Problem resolutions

•    Scripting

•    Tracking capabilities

•    Reporting

•    Interconnection and data transfer

•    Systems-computer and phone

And the list can go on depending upon the type of business you are handling.

2.    Hiring Right People And Training Them

It is an art to hire right people for the right position. And you will have to put all your hiring expertise to use while hiring people for the positions of contact center agents.

These people must be naturally energetic, empathetic, eager to help others and positive thinkers.

Once you have hired the right people, it is time to train them properly using examples from the real world that reveal details about the successful customer experiences which was a result of efficient working by a call center.

Encouraging the new contact center agents to work alongside their seniors and experienced agents is a good idea to help the newbie grab the ropes and fulfill the expectations of the company.

3.    Practice What You Preach

It is important that the senior officers including the call center managers lead by the example. They should practice what they preach.

If you expect your agents to keep customer service top priority and show empathy towards their problems, the top-level officials of the company must also show understanding towards the agents.

They should co-operate and help them at every level of learning and training.

4.    Keep A Positive Approach

The contact center agents represent the image of the company. And as a rule, every positive interaction results in positive response.

So if you are aiming to get emotional responses from the customers and develop brand loyalty, you must train your agents to handle all the complaints and issues with excessive positive nature.

One of the most critical points to remember while handling the customer call is to always keep the attitude under control.

Agents who fail to tame their attitude pose a negative face of the company which can discourage the customers to contact the customer care again.

So when the companies train their agents they must integrate positive-speaking approach into the syllabus.

5.    Speak Properly, Do Not Mumble

It is quite tiring for call center agents to keep up their stamina all through their long working shift. Even then, even a brief period of lapse during the interaction can be enough to divert the prospective customer to your competitor.

So agents must be always attentive and speak properly with the customers. They should not get lackadaisical and just mumble a few things during the call.

Agents must always speak loudly and clearly as if they are very much excited to hear the customer’s queries and issues.

Giving the agents more physical space such as building cubicles for a bit more privacy can be one way of doing it.

6.    Compliment Your Customer

It is a human tendency to always remember criticism as well as appreciation. When a customer comes to you all tensed with a problem, the best way to ease the tension is by adopting the professional flattering technique.

Good words will always shift him from negative mood to positive mood. Such interactions are always effective and generate positive result.

7.    Personalizing Communication

Most of the call centers nowadays use advanced software and hence their agents have an easy access to the entire database including the names and call details of the customers.

The call center agents can make the interaction more personalized and evoke an emotional response by calling the customer by his name.

It will certainly create a much better emotional connection instead of just saying,” Thank you for your business.”

8.    Identify Your Name

If agents announce their name at the first while speaking with the customers it gives a personal touch to the entire communication.

When the customers know with whom they are speaking, the next time they will have a query they will think of having an ally in the company which is quite encouraging.

These are just a few ways companies can evoke positive and emotional responses from the customers and encourage brand loyalty.