25 Ways to Improve Your Contact Centre Operation

With increased demand from customers, and many contact centres even expected to do “more with less” each year, there is a lot of pressure to improve your operation.

To help, we have put together some top advice to help you streamline and improve your customer experience, gathered from two of our recent webinars.

Top Tips for Streamlining and Improving CX

Here are 25 top tips and ideas for you to try:

1. Have Regular Discussions With Employees

Have regular discussions with frontline employees to get their input on what can be improved for customers.

Thanks to Rosie

2. Invite Senior Management to Listen to Calls

Ask senior management to sit side by side with the frontline, so they can listen in to calls and get first-hand knowledge of customers’ issues and questions.

Thanks to David

3. Survey Your Frontline Teams

Survey your frontline teams to ensure that they are engaged.

How can staff that are not engaged really deliver the exceptional customer service that your customers deserve?

Thanks to Kim

To find out how to measure employee engagement, read our article: How to Calculate an Employee Engagement Score

4. Agents Should Listen Back to Their Customer Calls

The frontline staff should listen to their own calls with some space and perspective to listen ‘between the lines’ for improvements to the customer experience.

Thanks to Emily

5. Don’t Make Assumptions

Ensure you don’t make assumptions about what your customers need.

Instead, work to build a strong, robust understanding of what their expectations, wants and needs are.

Thanks to Katie

6. Run a Mystery Shopping Exercise

We use a third-party provider to complete a mystery shopping to help us uncover key issues and inefficiencies.

Thanks to Kate

For advice on mystery shopping, read our article: How to Implement a Mystery Shopping Program

7. Make Chat Your Main Point of Contact

We’ve optimized our operations and reduced costs by making the chat channel our main point of contact for customers.

Currently our chatbot handles and resolves about 50% of all incoming chats via self-help options.

Thanks to Andy

8. Learn Everything You Can About AI

We’ve been working on learning everything we can about artificial intelligence (AI).

All to make strides towards AI helping us with basic troubleshooting and ordering.

Thanks to Tina

9. Introduce Scripted Compliance

We’ve found automation works well in the QA space for scripted compliance.

However, it’s not great for more complex matters.

Thanks to Dan

10. Listen to Your Customers

Listen to feedback from your customers, so you can give them what they want, as well as nip any time-consuming issues in the bud.

Thanks to Monika

If you are looking to get more customers to give feedback, read our article: 9 Ways to Encourage Customers to Give Feedback

11. Give Each Other “Kudos” Coins

Recognition and showing gratitude are essential to employee happiness, engagement, and retention.

Getting this right has a noticeable, longer-term impact on the customer experience too, as happy staff = happy customers.

To help with this, we’ve added an app called Matter to our internal Slack.

This gives employees a chance to recognize each other and give each other “Kudos” coins that transfer into real money. We are getting HUGE engagement and really excellent feedback!

Thanks to Nicole

12. Set Up an Agent Process Review Team

We have set up an agent process review team to understand the processes from the agent perspective.

This is not only engaging them in changing the process to improve the customer experience, but is also great for their personal development.

Thanks to Sue

13. Treat Customers Like They’re the Centre of Your World — Because They Are!

Your customers are the most important part of your business, and they come before products or profit. Treat them like they are the centre of your world — because they are.

Thanks to Emma

14. Run Controlled Tests to Help Get Buy-In From Leadership

Always kick-start any proposed changes with a controlled test to prove your assumptions.

This helps gain buy-in from leadership to expand customer-centric approaches for the wider contact centre and even across the entire organization.

Thanks to Julie

15. Always Ask for Feedback When Making Changes

Whenever you are making changes to how a service desk is communicating with customers, you should always gather feedback and ideas from both groups to increase the chance of a successful and more efficient rollout.

Thanks to Raymond

You may also want to implement helpdesk technology. To find out more, read our article: Helpdesk 101 – An Introduction to Helpdesk Technology

16. Get the Team Involved in a Pilot to Help Reduce Bugs

Before automating anything, we “pilot” it amongst teams of agents first, starting with a small group of 10, then 50, and so on before launching live. Of course, collecting feedback along the way.

This ensures bugs are reduced, and more importantly, it’s a positive, simplified experience for the customer.

Thanks to Sean

17. Invest in Training and Quizzes

We uncovered that the quality of agent responses was the root cause of a lot of our customer pain points and inefficiencies.

As this was driven by poor agent behaviour, we’ve invested more into training and quizzes to help streamline our operation.

Thanks to Andy

18. Proactively Engage With Frustrated Customers

Proactive communication with any frustrated customers will show that you do you care about them – and that you’re aware of their problem and want to help them fix it.

It’s a far better approach than just waiting for them to come through to your contact centre agents.

Thanks to Karlis

Handling frustrated customers can be tricky. For advice on how to end these interactions on a positive note, read our article: How to Deal With Frustrated Customers – And Make Them Happy

19. Scripts Should Be Used With Flexibility

Scripts have a time, a place, and often even a benefit, but they need to be used with flexibility to empower agents to meet customer needs.

Thanks to Katie

20. Develop Your Website to Improve Self-Service

A sure-fire way to streamline your contact centre is to develop your website to encourage and improve the self-serve options – including improved access to chatbots and easier searching.

Thanks to Kate

21. Mystery Shopping Can Help Pinpoint Struggling Agents

Mystery shopping exercises have helped us pinpoint where some agents are stressed and finding the role hard.

This has helped us offer more support and coaching sooner to help them work more efficiently.

Thanks to Charlie

22. Create a Test Environment for Your Chatbot BEFORE Real Customers Try It

We discovered first-hand that, when launching a chatbot, it’s good to first create a test environment – with either several employees you trust or a controlled group of customers.

This helps you to resolve issues beforehand and ensure that self-help options genuinely help save everyone time.

Thanks to Andy

23. Reduce the Need for the Telephony Channel

Wherever possible, try to reduce the need for telephony channel, as this has the potential to improve efficiency for all parties.

We’re currently exploring chatbots, live chat, and self-service options to find what’s best for our customers.

Thanks to Charlie

24. Use Sentiment Analysis Tools

To improve customer satisfaction, use sentiment analysis tools in combination with your contact centre. This will help point you in the right direction of where to start with improving your customer experience.

Thanks to Karlis

25. Don’t Forget the Personal Touch

Technology brings efficiency – personal touch brings effectiveness.

Thanks to Molly

If you are looking to discover more great advice and insights, you should watch these webinars next:

• Recorded Webinar: What’s Next for Customer Experience?
• Recorded Webinar: Simplifying and Automating the Contact Centre