Customer retention in call centers can be an uphill struggle. However, call center customer churn can simply relate back to your center’s service level, agent performance, and overall customer experience. Here are 5 simple ways call center teams can ensure they satisfy their customers with every interaction and maintain customer loyalty.
1. Figure Out the Extent of Your Customer Churn Problem
Improving customer retention can have a significant impact on your call center or contact center. Even a 5% increase in retention can result in a 25-29% increase in revenue (Think Impact). That can support sustainable growth in your business and reduce the time and cost associated with acquiring new customers. However, understanding your customer retention rate is impossible without the right analytic tools.
You can learn more about customer satisfaction by tracking metrics, such as:
- Average Handle Time (AHT)
- Call Quality Assurance
- First Call Resolution (FCR)
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Tracking these metrics over time will help you learn which customer retention strategies are working and preventing customers from switching to a competitor. You can also use surveys and market research to complement the above metrics and learn more about why customers churn.
2. Identify Key Customer Pain Points
Poor customer service is one of the biggest reasons for churn in a call center. That doesn’t always mean an agent is to blame for a negative experience. A customer might cancel a subscription or service because of factors outside of an agent’s control.Prioritize identifying customer service trends and pain points of the people contacting your call center.
Powerful analytics and reporting can help you identify the most-logged wrap codes from agents and discover the most frequent customer complaint types. By paying attention to these details, you can rectify the issues that result in complaints, better understand customer experiences, and reduce the number of people who contact your organization. You can also optimize call center workflows and improve retention rates.
Robust analytics tools let you analyze contact center metrics on flexible and customizable dashboards that generate granular reports about every single process in your center—something your current UC or contact center system might not do.
3. Understand Agent Behavior
Agent behavior can positively or negatively affect customer retention for call centers. An agent that doesn’t communicate the correct information to a customer over the phone might cause that customer to churn. However, an agent that provides impeccable customer service during a call might lead to a customer returning to your company and purchasing more products.
As well as consistently tracking agent activity, you can survey top-performing agents to understand why they have such a good track record with customers. You can even incorporate feedback from these agents when training new agents in your call center or provide tips from top performers to existing agents when measuring their performance. You can identify top-performing agents using agent scorecards and monitoring quality assurance (QA) procedures.
4. Guide Customers to the Right Agents
Some agents handle certain calls better than others. An agent might excel at customer experience, while another has years of sales experience. Routing calls to the right agent at the right time can enhance the customer experience and improve customer retention quickly.
Say one of your customers has a complaint about a faulty product. The customer calls your center, waits for 20 minutes, and finally reaches an agent. The agent then transfers the customer to another department, who handles complaints. The customer has to wait another 15 minutes until the second agent has wrapped up their previous call. These types of poor experiences happening regularly frustrate customers, opening the door for your competitors to swoop in and provide better experiences.
Call routing or automatic call distribution (ACD) can prevent scenarios like this from happening. You can automatically assign calls to the appropriate agents, enhancing performance and speeding up resolution times. Use call center analytics software to ensure your call routing procedures work.
The best tools generate metrics that help you learn:
- How long do agents wait for an interaction with a particular customer?
- How long do agents spend communicating with customers during ACD and non-ACD interactions?
- How long do customers have to wait to communicate with agents for ACD and non-ACD interactions?
5. Invest in Video for Customer Support
Self-service options like video tutorials and guides allow customers to solve problems and get answers to queries without interacting with an agent. That can free up resources and allow agents to spend more time communicating with customers who reach out to your contact center.
Using self-serve customer service options like videos can make customers feel more empowered to return to your business in the future. While many customers may still prefer to talk to a live agent, providing alternative communication options can help you expand your customer service channels and optimize customer retention.
Reducing Churn
Preventing customer churn in your call center won’t happen overnight. However, identifying your customer retention rates, focusing on the customer experience, tracking agent behavior, and investing in self-service options can help maintain customers’ interest in your products and services. Using robust call center analytics and reporting will quickly improve your retention strategy and reduce churn.
Learn more about improving your call center customer experience with Brightmetrics here.
