5 Big Call Center Mistakes to Watch Out For [Infographic]

We live in the age of the customer and increasing expectations are making it harder than ever for contact centers to feel good about their operations. In fact, only 1% of customers feel that their expectations of good customer service are always met. *Ouch* It’s like what they say, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Today, contact centers and agents have to strive for excellence at every single touch point of a customer interaction to convince customers that they’re doing everything in their power to meet their needs. And as you can imagine, this task is much easier said than done.

Effective contact center communications involve a number of factors, and sometimes, even when everything appears to be in place, business needs can change. In order for managers to successfully optimize agent performance, it’s important that they keep their eyes peeled for these 5 big mistakes that happen every single day in the contact center:

1. Putting Customers on Hold

• 25% switch because they are tired of being kept on hold. (NewVoice)
• 62% have to repeatedly contact a company to resolve an issue. (Harvard Business Review)
• 53% are irritated if they don’t speak to a real person right away. (NewVoice)

2. Inconsistent Communications

• 82% view accuracy and quality of information as the most important attribute of customer experience. (Deloitte)
• 29% switch because they are annoyed by a lack of staff knowledge. (NewVoice)

3. Shuffling Customers Around

• 72% blame their bad customer service experience on having to explain their problem to multiple people. (Zendesk)
• 56% have to re-explain an issue when speaking to customer service. (Harvard Business Review)

4. Not Paying Attention to Metrics

• 80% of customer service organizations use customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores as their primary metric for gauging customer experience. (Harvard Business Review)
• Training reps to respond to customers who have given low marks on surveys can increase resolution rate by 31%. (Harvard Business Review)

5. Insufficient CRM Software

• Innoppl Technologies showed that 65% of sales reps who have adopted mobile CRM have achieved their sales quotas. While only 22% of reps using non-mobile CRM have reached the same targets.
• 91% of companies with more than 11 employees now use CRM software.
• 39% see an opportunity to improve revenue by leveraging reporting and analytics. (Deloitte)