Call Center Archives - ListenTrust

The Benefits of Bilingual Call Centers

by Valeriia Mamleeva | Jan 31, 2023 | Call Center

Group of happy call center smiling business operator customer support team phone services agen working and talking with headset on desktop computer at call center

You’ve probably heard of bilingual call centers, but do you know the benefits of partnering with one? Read on to find out more about the advantages of working with a bilingual call center.

Key Points

A bilingual call center is a customer service contact center that employs representatives who speak English and another language.
Bilingual customer service representatives can switch between speaking in English and another language to provide improved customer service.
Businesses that partner with bilingual call centers can expect benefits like improved customer experiences, increased conversion rates, enhanced brand affinity, and a competitive advantage over their competition.

What Is a Bilingual Call Center?

Before we dive into the benefits, let’s define what a bilingual call center is. A bilingual contact center specializes in responding to customer requests in English and another preferred language, such as Spanish.

Bilingual customer service representatives have a wide range of responsibilities that include switching between speaking in English and another language to provide an excellent customer experience. Bilingual customer service representatives can quickly place orders, answer questions thoroughly regarding a product or service in the customers’ preferred language, and efficiently process payments and returns.

The Benefits of Partnering With a Bilingual Call Center

Let’s explore a few major benefits of bilingual call centers and what bilingual customer service representatives bring to the business table.

Improves the Customer Experience

Delivering a great customer experience means never saying the word, “no,” but if your call center doesn’t employ bilingual customer service representatives, “no” is the first and last word your customers hear. Partnering with a bilingual call center improves the customer experience by ensuring each of your customers receives support from a representative that speaks and understands their preferred language.

Boosts Conversation Rates

If customers don’t understand call center representatives, landing a sale is even more difficult. But when customers are communicating with a bilingual customer service representative about your products and services in a language they understand, they’re more likely to make a purchase. By working with a bilingual call center, you can boost your conversion rates and decrease time wasted on prospects due to language barriers. Bilingual customer service representatives are also proven to be fast and organized critical thinkers, capable of grasping cultural nuances that monolingual employees might not be able to understand.

Enhances Brand Affinity

Brand affinity is the holy grail of business success that results in happy, loyal customers. One way to enhance the connection between your brand and customers is to partner with a bilingual call center that employs call center representatives who speak the same language. Bilingual citizens in the U.S. and abroad live and work in bustling communities with like-minded, culturally similar individuals, sharing their business and personal experiences. When a bilingual customer has a positive experience with your brand, they’re likely to become a repeat customer and tell their friends and family about your company. By working with a bilingual call center, you encourage customer longevity by offering everyone, regardless of language skills, the opportunity to love your products and services.

Improves Diversity

Relying on a bilingual call center to handle your customer service needs shows that your business embraces diversity, giving customers a good first impression of your company. It also shows that you have cultural awareness and operate a modern, flexible organization that appeals to individuals from all walks of life.

Increases Market Expansion

U.S.-based organizations often find expansion into foreign markets unattainable due to language barriers. There’s simply no way to expand into a new, non-English speaking market without hiring and emphasizing the use of the local language for sales, customer service, and product support. Communication is the key to establishing yourself in a new market, and hiring bilingual customer service representatives is a great start toward creating a more international work environment where you can learn about the needs and preferences of your new potential market.

Gives Your Business a Competitive Edge

Working with a bilingual call center also gives your company a competitive edge, making your brand stand out from the competition. For example, let’s say you’re the only company in your market space to offer customer service in Farsi or Tagalog. By hiring bilingual customer service representatives who speak your customers’ preferred language, you have the competitive edge in those bilingual communities. If you’ve resigned yourself to only selling or interacting with the English-speaking world, you’re not in the same league as other businesses that have the ability to communicate with international or non-English speaking customers. You might offer a better product or service, but no one in the bilingual community will ever know—unless you work with a bilingual call center with representatives who speak the same language.

With more than a decade of experience, ListenTrust is the leading bilingual call center in the U.S. Hispanic Market.

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A Bilingual Call Center That Builds a Better Brand Experience for Your Customers

Customer engagement isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution—the best way to find out what gets your customers excited is for someone who understands their language to listen to them. At ListenTrust, we partner with companies to help them build a better brand experience, provide enhanced customer service solutions, listen to customer needs, and earn their trust.

Our Bilingual Call Center Services for the U.S. Hispanic Market

ListenTrust understands what motivates the U.S. Hispanic market and provides our clients with excellent bilingual call center services for Spanish-speaking customers. With our services, you get:

A highly educated, motivated team of bilingual customer service representatives
Spanish-speaking agents with a naturally neutral accent
A uniquely profitable “soft offer” approach attuned to U.S. Hispanic consumers

Contact us today for more information on partnering with a bilingual call center that helps you build a better brand experience for your customers.

How to Hire a Call Center for Your Business

by Valeriia Mamleeva | Jan 26, 2023 | Call Center

If keeping up with customer service inquiries is becoming difficult, it’s time to consider hiring a call center—but how do you choose the right provider? Read on to learn tips for hiring a call center for your business.

Explaining Different Types of Call Centers

Before we dive into tips for hiring a call center that meets your business’s customer service needs, let’s take a look at different types of call centers and where they operate:

Domestic Call Centers

Domestic call centers, also known as onshore centers, are located in the same country as the businesses they’re servicing. However, domestic call centers aren’t necessarily located in the same time zone as the customers they’re serving.

Nearshore Call Centers

Nearshore call centers are located in a different country than their customers but in a nearby region with a similar time zone. For example, for US-based businesses, nearshore call centers may be located in Canada, Puerto Rico, or Mexico.

Offshore Call Centers

Offshore call centers are located in a different country than their customers, typically somewhere quite far from the businesses they’re servicing. For example, a business in the US may use an offshore call center in India or the Philippines.

What Companies Need to Hire a Call Center?

Any business that requires customer service representatives to provide assistance and support needs to hire a call center, including business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), e-commerce, and nonprofit organizations. While some businesses have an in-house call center team to take care of customer service needs, it’s typically more cost effective to outsource customer support by hiring a call center provider.

Companies operating in the following industries should consider hiring a call center:

Healthcare
Legal
HVAC
Agriculture
Energy
Financial
Government
Information Technology
Real Estate
Telecommunications

Tips for Hiring a Call Center for Your Business

Before partnering with an outsourced center to handle your customer service needs, consider these tips for hiring a call center:

Identify the Center’s Location

First, find out where the contact center is headquartered and where its agents are located. Considering these types of location factors will help you decide whether a domestic, nearshore, or offshore center is the right option for you.

Understand Inbound and Outbound Services

Call centers typically provide inbound and outbound services. Inbound answering services include taking incoming customer calls to answer questions about your business’s products and services, providing technical support, and processing orders. Outbound services include implementing lead generation strategies, such as following up with previous customers, cold calling potential new customers, and compiling survey data. The goal of outbound services is to strengthen and develop new customer relationships to increase sales. When hiring a call center for your business, it’s important to get an understanding of the different inbound and outbound services they offer to choose the best options for your business needs.

Ask About Reporting and Metrics

Since call centers directly communicate with your customers, it’s also vital to ask about how they analyze their effectiveness. Many centers use call center evaluations that include detailed reporting and metrics to measure agent performance.

Each call center has its own way of measuring performance, but there are four common call center metrics considered industry standards for measuring performance that reveal customer satisfaction insights:

Customer experience
Agent productivity
Call initiation
Call center operations

By hiring a call center that prioritizes metrics in these four areas, you can rest assured that the center is maximizing customer satisfaction and maintaining high performance.

Consider Availability

Hiring a call center that’s always available to support your customers should also be a consideration factor. Reliable centers have 24/7/365 availability for your customers, and many outsourced call centers also have disaster recovery services to ensure that downtime caused by a power outage doesn’t impact productivity.

Is There a Required Call Volume?

Some call centers require a minimum call volume. If you own a small business, a center that requires a large volume of inbound and outbound calls might not be the best option for you. If you’re considering partnering with a contact center with a minimum call volume requirement, try to accurately estimate your current volume to determine if their services might be a good fit for your needs.

How Many Customer Service Agents Do I Need?

How many customer service agents you’ll need depends on your business’s call volume, average handle time (AHT), and your specific customer service goals regarding service level and target answer time. Make sure to ask centers you’re thinking about partnering with to determine how many agents they think you’ll need to meet your business objectives.

Consider Multilingual Services

If your business targets international customers, you may want to consider partnering with an outsourced call center that employs agents who can speak multiple languages. Hiring a call center that specializes in multilingual services ensures that every customer feels connected to your brand, no matter what language they speak.

Other benefits of multilingual call center services include:

Reduced call times
Enhanced customer experience
Improved cultural sensitivity
Increased productivity
Improved sales

At ListenTrust, our call center focuses on Spanish language and bilingual English and Spanish agent services.

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Hire a Call Center That Exceeds Your Expectations

When you partner with ListenTrust, you’re hiring a call center that aims to exceed your expectations by offering everything you’d expect from an outsourced provider—and more. We’re a nearshore contact center that provides inbound and outbound services, detailed reporting and metrics to improve agent performance, and 24/7/365 availability. We also offer full support in English and Spanish to ensure that your customers feel connected to your brand, no matter which language they speak. Contact us today to learn more about our services.

A Guide To Multichannel Contact Centers

by Valeriia Mamleeva | Dec 15, 2022 | Call Center

Key Points

Multichannel contact centers use one software platform to manage multiple customer-facing support channels.
Multichannel contact centers can enhance the customer experience with a wide range of communication tools and insights.
Customer support channels that multichannel contact centers use include phone, email, SMS texting, social media, and outsourced live chat support.
The main goal of a multichannel contact center is to streamline all of a company’s communication tools to provide a satisfactory customer experience, a seamless journey across multiple touchpoints, and an improved level of customer care.

What Is a Multichannel Contact Center?

manage multiple customer-facing communication channels, such as voice, email, webchat, social media, and SMS texting. Multichannel contact center agents can connect team members and customers across multiple channels and switch between channels at any time during a customer interaction.

Additionally, multichannel contact centers can also enhance the customer experience with a wide range of communication tools and insights, such as:

Real time and history data and analytics
Customer preferences
AI-powered assistance
Searchable internal knowledge bases and help desks
Contact routing and customer interaction summaries
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) integration

The main goal of a multichannel contact center is to simplify the way all of a company’s communication tools are used to provide an efficient customer experience, an easy journey across multiple touchpoints, and better customer care.

Essential Customer Support Channels for Multichannel Contact Centers

There are a few essential customer support channels that multichannel contact centers use:

Voice Calls for Inbound and Outbound Call Centers

The most common customer support channel is using phone communication to follow up with leads, make sales, and solve customer problems. By using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, multichannel contact centers connect with customers through internet-based voice calls rather than traditional telephone networks. This streamlines the customer’s journey to solving their issues.

Common VoIP technology features that benefit multichannel contact centers include:

iOS and Android mobile applications
Call forwarding, transfer, routing, and hold options
Call recording and transcription
Call queuing
Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
Customer and call data integration with CRM systems

Email

The second most common customer support channel that multichannel contact centers use for customer communication and support is email.

Email is commonly used to:

Send newsletters and welcome messages
Reach out to customers that left the queue without a solution
Send purchases and sales receipts
Introduce new products and services
Announce upcoming events and sales
Send automated messages using AI technology
Follow up about support or sales interactions with customers requesting more details

SMS Texting

Agents at multichannel contact centers also send SMS text messages from desktops and mobile devices to communicate with customers and team members. Users can send two-way SMS and MMS messages to their internal team or mass, one-way automated text messages to customers. By using texting as a customer support channel, multichannel contact centers ensure customers receive details about products and services, shipping notifications, company announcements, and more.

Social Media

Using social media as a customer support channel is fairly new to the contact center industry. However, research shows that using social media as a customer service channel has increased from 33% to 55% since last year. Today, many multichannel contact centers are using AI-supported chat bots or live agents to offer customer support through company-branded social media channels, such as Twitter and Facebook.

Outsourced Live Chat Support

Outsourced live chat support includes embedding an instant messaging feature directly into the backend of a company’s website to allow customers to chat online with a live agent or chatbot at any time. Chatbots can handle simple customer support inquiries, like basic purchase questions, newsletter sign ups, and tracking information. Chatbots can also categorize customers based on their query by gathering information about their needs to transfer them to the right live agent. Live agents can also use outsourced live chat support to offer in-depth support to multiple customers at once, making it easier to give personalized service or product recommendations and assist customers with recurring issues.

Hearing from a call center agent is often the first interaction a customer has with your business, so it’s critical to choose the right kind of call center for your needs.

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The Benefits of Multichannel Contact Centers

There are many benefits you can get out of partnering with a multichannel contact center. Below are some of the most impactful benefits of working with a contact center that specializes in managing multiple customer support channels:

Improve Customer Service

Since multichannel customer service software allows agents to easily navigate between channels and different agents, multichannel contact centers improve the customer service experience. Contact centers with knowledge bases and CRM systems can also gather data across multiple departments and update the software instantly, so new agents can quickly access customer information to save time and avoid asking the customer questions they’ve already answered to prevent frustration.

Collect and Review Unique Data Metrics

Multichannel contact centers provide you with important performance metrics, monitor KPIs, perform data analysis, and send customized and pre-made reports. By working with a contact center that provides you with extensive data and metrics, you can assess the effectiveness of the center’s business strategies.

Below are some common metrics that multichannel contact centers keep track of:

Average Call Abandonment Rate
Percentage of Calls Blocked
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score
Average Time in Queue
Average Handle Time
First Call Resolutions

Improve Agent Performance

Multichannel contact centers improve team and individual agent performance by collecting call center metrics. Each call center has its own way of measuring performance, but there are four common multichannel contact center metrics considered industry standards for measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) that reveal customer satisfaction insights:

Customer experience
Agent productivity
Call initiation
Call center operations

By measuring these four areas, multichannel contact centers make sure their agents are maximizing customer satisfaction and maintaining high performance.

ListenTrust, a Multichannel Contact Center Delivering Awesomeness

ListenTrust is a multichannel contact center that delivers awesomeness in everything we do, from email and social media to live chat and phone communication services. By striving for improvement in four key areas—passion, people, product, and process—our core values ensure our customers are always successful. Contact us today to learn more about our customer support channel solutions.

The Benefits of Inbound Call Center Solutions

by Valeriia Mamleeva | Dec 13, 2022 | Call Center

Indian call center agent wear headset work in customer support

Partnering with an outsourced agency to provide you with inbound call center solutions has a wide range of benefits. Let’s take a deep dive into inbound call center outsourcing services and the benefits of partnering with a nearshore center.

What Is Inbound Call Center Outsourcing?

Inbound call center outsourcing agencies are a type of call center that answers calls from customers as they come in. Agents working at inbound centers perform a wide range of tasks, such as answering questions about products and services, handling customer complaints, processing orders and payments, following up on customer inquiries, and upselling and cross-selling products and services.

Different Types of Inbound Call Center Solutions

Contact centers that take incoming calls from customers offer a wide range of services that result in a superior customer experience and increase brand satisfaction. Let’s explore the different types:

Customer Support Outsourcing

Customer support outsourcing includes agents responding to incoming calls from customers and prospects. The number of calls agents can answer varies depending on the center’s size, call volume, industry, and complexity of the issues that need a resolution. To ensure customer satisfaction, inbound call center agents are equipped with a wide range of skills, such as active listening, attention to detail, and English, Spanish, or bilingual support. They also know best practices for navigating customer calls effectively, from how to answer a call properly and techniques for placing a customer on hold to ending the interaction positively.

Direct Response Call Center Campaigns

Direct response call center campaigns involve selling your products and services. Direct response call centers aim to boost campaign efforts by representing your company’s brand, voice, and vision positively to encourage prospects to take a specific action that leads to making a sale.

Direct response inbound call center services include:

Lead qualification and capture solutions
Event registration
Fundraising and donations
Membership renewal
Appointment setting and reservations
Call overflow management

Outsourcing Customer Service for E-Commerce

Outsourcing customer service solutions for e-commerce and retail businesses expand customer support options to accommodate today’s buyer. The days when customers purchased products and services over the phone are long gone—e-commerce call center solutions aim to reach today’s online buyer by offering a wide range of live chat support solutions, including:

Virtual reception
Order taking
Logistics management
Product and service Inquiries
Technical support

Having a responsive e-commerce customer service team on reserve can help turn small hiccups into positive brand reviews.

Inbound Call Center Solutions for the US Hispanic Market

Studies show that 67 million American-based consumers speak a second language at home, and only 63 million are bilingual with English language skills. Although the US is an English-speaking country, there are a significant number of non-English speaking customers in need of support. Outsourcing your customer service needs to an inbound call center that employs multilingual customer service reps creates an environment of trust and easy communication between your business and customers, both domestic and international.

Inbound call center solutions for the US hispanic market often result in:

Higher close rates and average order values for direct response and digital marketers
Greater donor performance for non-profit fundraising organizations
Higher customer satisfaction scores and “save the sale” rates

Inbound Call Center Outsourcing for Nonprofits

Inbound call center outsourcing solutions for nonprofit organizations provide potential donors with a satisfying customer experience. They call in a way that builds trust, resulting in an increase in recurring donations and additional one-time donations.

ListenTrust offers all the inbound call center solutions you would expect from a first-class center—but then, we go above and beyond.

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Explaining Nearshore Inbound Call Center Solutions

Nearshore call centers are located in a different country than their target customers but in a nearby region with a similar time zone. For example, for US-based companies, nearshore call centers may be located in Canada, Puerto Rico, or Mexico.

The Benefits of Outsourcing Customer Service Needs With a Nearshore Contact Center

Working with a nearshore call center to provide you with inbound call center solutions has a wide range of benefits. Nearshore call centers are in close proximity to the border, so many agents have family in the U.S. or lived there at some point in their lives, which allows agents to relate to your customers, products, and services. Nearshore call centers also operate in similar time zones so you can avoid adjusting your schedule to accommodate them.

Outsourcing your customer service needs by partnering with a nearshore contact center is also more cost-effective than hiring internal staff to provide you with inbound call center solutions. Setting up an in-house call center requires a great deal of technology, equipment, space, and trained staff to handle sales and customer support. You also need to consider salaries and benefits and hiring costs, which greatly exceed the call center costs of outsourcing your customer service needs with a nearshore center.

Providing Superior Inbound Call Center Solutions

At ListenTrust, our core values encourage our agents to strive for improvement in everything they do. They challenge themselves by daring to dream big and aim to exceed expectations by never accepting mediocrity. ListenTrust’s professional agents also always have each other’s backs by honoring their words with actions, keeping a positive attitude, and speaking honestly. Lastly, we’re proud to say that our agents always do what’s right. Contact us today to learn more about our inbound call center solutions.

Important Call Center Metrics To Keep on Your Radar

by Valeriia Mamleeva | Oct 4, 2022 | Call Center

When partnering with an outsourced call center, there are important call center metrics to keep on your radar. This blog explains the metrics that will help you monitor the overall performance of your call center agents.

Key Points

Call center metrics help you gauge the overall effectiveness of your outsourced customer service team.
There are many types of call center metrics, and the ones worth measuring depend on your business and campaign efforts.
Each call center has its own way of measuring performance, but four common call center metrics are considered industry standards.
Some common contact center KPIs to keep on your radar include average call abandonment rate, percentage of calls blocked, the average time in queue, and first call resolutions.

What Are Call Center Metrics?

Call center metrics help you gauge the overall effectiveness of your outsourced customer service team. By keeping track of metrics like agent performance, productivity, and other activities, you can ensure your center operates efficiently, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and revenue for your organization.

How Is Call Center Efficiency Measured?

Outsourced call centers manage a wide range of data from various platforms, focusing on different business processes and using metrics to monitor the data efficiently. There are many types of call center metrics, and the ones worth measuring depend on your business and campaign efforts. For example, a call center specializing in direct response services might measure fundraising and donation metrics.

Call Center Metrics—Industry Standards

Each call center has its own way of measuring performance, but there are four common call center metrics considered industry standards for measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) that reveal customer satisfaction insights:

Customer experience
Agent productivity
Call initiation
Call center operations

By making sure your outsourced call center measures these four areas, you can rest assured that your agents are maximizing customer satisfaction and maintaining high performance.

Contact Center KPIs To Keep on Your Radar

Below are some common contact center KPIs to keep on your radar:

Average Call Abandonment Rate

The average call abandonment rate is the percentage of callers who hang up before connecting with a call center agent. By tracking the average number of calls abandoned, agents can develop new strategies to connect with callers before they hang up.

Percentage of Calls Blocked

This call center metric calculates the number of inbound callers who receive a busy tone. Calls are typically blocked due to a lack of agent availability. Contact centers use this KPI to ensure staff volumes are high enough to meet the needs of inbound callers.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score

The CSAT score tells you how satisfied a customer is with your product, service, or the agent they connected with. Typically measured by conducting customer surveys, the CSAT score is a leading KPI of loyalty and long-term revenue for your business. The score is often based on the following customer satisfaction levels:

Very satisfied
Satisfied
Not satisfied
Very unsatisfied

Average Time in Queue

The average time in queue measures how long inbound callers wait in call queues before being connected to an agent. Contact centers use this number to lower queue waiting times by hiring more agents or developing ways to reduce call lengths on individual calls.

Service Level

The service level call center metric monitors agent productivity in real time based on the percentage of calls answered within a specific number of seconds.

Average Speed of Answer

The average speed of answer call center metric is the average time it takes for agents to answer calls within a specific amount of time. The quicker calls are answered, the better the average speed of answer.

Average Handle Time

This metric tracks the average time it takes for an agent to complete a call, starting from when they pick up the phone to when they disconnect the call.

Average After-Call Work Time

This call center metric measures the average time it takes for agents to complete their work post call. This includes tasks like updating the system, logging the reason for the customer contacting the call center, and scheduling follow-up calls.

First Call Resolutions

First call resolutions track the percentage of calls in which the contact center agent addresses customer issues without transferring, escalating, or returning the call at a later time. If your outsourced call center has a good track record of first call resolutions, it’s a good sign that their agents are skilled at helping customers efficiently the first time they call in.

Occupancy Rates

Occupancy rates measure how much time agents spend on live calls or finishing work related to those calls.

When working with an outsourced call center, it’s important to take note of common challenges that agents and staff must overcome.

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We Help You Track Important Call Center Metrics

Other call centers lack the understanding and awareness to track KPIs with a comprehensive reporting system. As an industry leader in bilingual call center services, ListenTrust’s experienced agents establish common contact center KPIs with you, helping you understand the importance of different performance metrics and how they yield success for your business.

We start by creating an optimized dashboard where you can review your metrics as they improve. Our team knows that every call impacts your metrics—that’s why we use a robust reporting system with high visibility that updates KPIs in real time. Our experienced account executives relay everything you need to know about our performance metrics, from excellent service KPIs to key areas of improvement. Contact us today to learn more about how we help you track important call center metrics to achieve optimum performance.

How To Improve Call Center Agent Performance

by Ike Oji | Oct 3, 2022 | Call Center, Culture

Key Points for Improving Call Center Performance

IVR is a tool that collects information from the caller before they’re connected to an agent to improve call center performance and increase customer satisfaction.
Blocking undesirable phone numbers and using comprehensive IVR menu options are two ways you can improve call center agent performance.
Outsourced contact centers that offer continuous training for their employees increase productivity and agent performance.
Another way to improve call center agent performance is motivating agents with user-friendly technology, including sales software, productivity metric reporting systems, CRMs, and help desk tools.
Service level, average abandonment rate, average speed to answer, first-call resolution rate, and average call duration are important metrics call centers should keep on their radar to improve call center agent performance.
You can improve call center agent performance by rewarding successful agents with bonuses, increased salaries, or tokens of appreciation.

Improve Call Center Agent Performance With These Tips

Whether you’re already using an outsourced call center to help grow your business or looking for a new center to help with your needs, here are a few ways that quality companies improve call center agent performance. That way, you can look for key indicators that you’ve chosen the right company:

Use Interactive Voice Response To Segment Customers

Poor inbound call distribution can harm call center performance. That’s why it’s common for contact centers to implement interactive voice response (IVR) to increase call center productivity. IVR is a tool that collects information from the caller before they’re connected to an agent. The information is shared with the agent in real time, so when the customer connects with a live representative, they get a solution faster and agents are free to resolve more complex customer problems.

Eliminate Avoidable Calls

Another way to improve call center agent performance is eliminating avoidable calls by:

Blocking undesirable phone numbers
Publishing FAQs on your website
Using a comprehensive IVR menu

When you eliminate calls that don’t require immediate attention, agents have more time to make customers connections on calls that benefit your business, increasing call center productivity.

Offer Continuous Training

Outsourced contact centers that offer continuous training for their employees increase productivity and agent performance. Many continuous training programs give team members the resources they need to resolve customer service issues—like how to communicate with angry customers—and grow their product and service knowledge. Training programs are also an opportunity to provide agents with individual feedback using call monitoring tools.

Monitor Calls and Share Best Practices

Call monitoring tools allow new and experienced agents alike to learn best practices for resolving customer problems. Many centers hold training sessions where they offer good and bad customer engagement examples to reinforce positive customer interactions, pushing team members to improve performance.

Empower Agents With the Best Technology

Another way to improve call center agent performance is motivating agents with user-friendly and innovative technology, including sales software, productivity metric reporting systems, CRMs, and help desk tools. Using the best technology that’s easy to navigate eliminates IT-related frustrations and motivates agents to excel in their roles.

Monitor and Analyze Your Metrics

Monitoring and analyzing productivity metrics is an excellent way to increase productivity and performance. For example, service level, average abandonment rate, average speed to answer, first-call resolution rate, and average call duration are all important metrics call centers should keep on their radar to make sure performance and productivity are always improving.

Reward Successful Agents

Research shows that 69% of employees would work harder if they were recognized for their efforts. You can improve call center agent performance by rewarding successful agents with bonuses, increased salaries, or tokens of appreciation for their hard work, like a gift certificate to their favorite coffee shop or fast food restaurant. Even a small gesture goes a long way.

Make Data-Driven Changes

The final way to improve call center agent performance is to make changes based on real-time data and metrics. By reviewing data regularly to uncover problems related to agent performance, you can help employees adjust their customer service approach, resulting in improved performance and productivity.

There are different types of call centers that operate in unique ways to help businesses grow, from inbound and outbound to automated centers.

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Using Call Center Performance Management To Increase Productivity

ListenTrust uses call center performance management to increase productivity for your business. Our performance management process starts at the recruiting level, where we take the time to find employees who have what it takes to be successful as a call center agent.

During the hiring process, each candidate is asked to complete a personality and skill assessment so we can get an idea of their work ethic, skills, and behavior to make the right recruitment decisions. Our efficient process ensures that by the time an agent begins training and onboarding, they already have the foundation to succeed at ListenTrust—that’s where ListenTrust University comes into play.

ListenTrust University: Our Call Center Performance Management Training Program

ListenTrust University is our company training program that connects team members with coaches and trainers who provide feedback and areas of improvement for call center agents. This program also gives our employees the opportunity to understand specific clients and business needs.

Other ways we improve call center agent performance include QA processes like live and recorded call audits and email reviews. We point out the good and the bad, using examples of best practices executed by successful agents and not-so-great customer interactions to improve call center performance in the future. Contact us today to learn more about how we increase call center productivity to help your business succeed.

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