How to improve a call center’s performance

In today’s world, where customer service is so important, outsourcing your work to a call centre or maintaining an in-house team is imperative. Having a well-structured team and delivering services effectively is mandatory for smooth functioning and eventual success and target overhaul. Hitting plateaus and suffering due to black days is also very common, which can easily bring down the overall performance of the call center. There are some universal issues that all call centers face, be it in Dubai or Delhi.   

Here are some ways you can look into immediately if you’re leading a team into customer service and support:     

Be clear on what your success targets are

Success targets are many and may vary from organization to organization. So focus on what are important, scoring targets, creating a wholesome work environments, overall revenue etc. It is advised to use intrinsic and motivational techniques to push people towards doing their best instead of lighting a fire under them - it may be detrimental instead.   

Have solid performance metrics

Average handling time should be one of the metrics and not a definite or the ultimate one. Tap customer satisfaction levels, lifetime value of customers, new sales etc. One should also revisit various ways to improve such performance – should one install electronic data management system for better tracking or handling of work, how is one measuring conversions etc. One should hit the balance between efficient business costs and revenue generation.

Have a well segmented IVR route for the customers

Customers are more likely to get agitated if they call the central helpline and get connected with the wrong executive. Improve the routing so that matching the customer to the right agent becomes easier and improves customer experience. This can also help increase job satisfaction from the executive’s point of view, since they are able to help the customer with the information they were seeking in the first place.   

Introduce effective flexible working plans

Having an austere working plan and schedules might introduce discipline but it’s hard to keep the motivational levels up if there isn’t some flexibility provided to the way an individual functions. There are certain unavoidable circumstances in which a person may not be able to put in their 100% or not function within the original scope of hours. For such cases, establishing a flexible working scenario where an executive can put in work hours as productively as possible is very important.