Looking for challenges faced by contact centers? But have you ever imagined a contact center and customer interaction scenario? Maybe you haven’t. No worries, let’s do it now!
Imagine a customer explaining his issue, waiting on one side of the call, and an agent on the other side sitting in front of his screen and toggling between multiple tabs to get the solution. The scenario seems full of frustration on both sides, right?
Now, the question is what are the factors that created this bothersome moment for both the parties? Below are some of them.
For customers, it’s – long with time, lengthy explanations, and poor experience.
For agents, it’s – multiple screen toggling, handling customer frustration even after maximum effort, increased AHT, and low productivity.
These are only a few contact center problems that occur during customer-agent interactions, you need to know many more ways to improve them. Let’s read further and know them all with solutions.
Contact Center Challenges and Solutions
1. Lots of Tools and Lack of Integration
Agents in many contact centers use multiple tools and outdated applications on individual screens to complete their day-to-day operations. It makes simple tasks complex and consumes a lot of time impacting customer experience. It increases the wait time for customers and screen toggling time for agents as they use multiple applications to offer a single solution. It deteriorates agents’ productivity which ultimately hampers overall organizational goals.
Solution – Seamless Integration
Using multiple tools while handling each conversation becomes crumble some for contact center agents. And, the best solution to eliminate this issue is to integrate the business applications and telephony system using a Smart CTI Connector.
After successful integration, agents can use the required tools on a single screen and manage interactions from various channels without shuffling the screen. It saves time, boosts productivity, and improves customer satisfaction. The simplest solution to multiple contact center problems can be CTI integration.
2. Low Customer Satisfaction
Contact centers are nothing without satisfied customers; therefore, offering optimum customer service is their prime goal. It has been noticed that customers willingly pay higher prices if they get quality products, services, and customer support. If customers are not happy with the assistance they receive, they switch to competitors, leading to business loss and poor brand image. Therefore, offering unmatched customer experience is always the prime focus of contact center managers.
Solutions – Make Customers Feel Valued
Making customers feel valued by letting them know they matter to the company helps gain and retain their trust. There are multiple ways of doing it, such as – running marketing campaigns, offering personalized customer service, and valuing their feedback.
When talking about the role of a contact center in improving customer satisfaction, personalized interactions, quick response, self-service, IVR support, and valuing feedback, are some of the best ways to keep customers satisfied. All this can be done easily using tools and technologies, such as – Agent Accelerator, infiBot, and Smart CTI connector offered by NovelVox. These tools help agents better understand their customers’ queries and give an overview of past interactions, their details, and more.
3. Data Silos
A lot of information and customer data is required for smooth workflow in the contact center. In most cases, it is found that information is stored on multiple platforms in different formats making it complicated for agents to access them while assisting customers. Searching data on different platforms wastes agents’ time, and effort and reduces the First Call Resolution (FRC) rates.
In some cases, information is available to employees across departments which makes it challenging for agents to connect with them to get those details and use them on time while interacting with customers.
Solutions – Have a comprehensive knowledge-base
Keeping all the required data handy for everyone on the team is important for smooth functioning. Having a centralized knowledge base with updated information is the best way to cope with this issue. A hub of information with all the required data acts as a one-stop solution for the majority of customers’ queries.
The knowledge base should be properly managed, well-structured, and integrated with the supporting tools like agent desktop, CTI connector, etc. Furthermore, the knowledge should be organized and well-written in such a way that it’s easy for agents to understand.
4. Long Call Wait Time
Waiting in a queue and listening, “Please wait, one of our agents will get in touch with you soon”, sounds so frustrating, right? We understand that customers feel annoyed every time they listen to this. Long wait time is the biggest problem for contact centers and customers. It deteriorates the CSAT score and causes business loss.
There can be multiple reasons for long call wait times, such as -technical glitches, high call volume, insufficient agent training, lack of call routing and queueing software, etc. The solution to this problem is mentioned below.
Solutions – Implement smart tools and systems
Long wait times can be reduced by implementing effective tools and systems in the existing workflow. It will help streamline the tasks, promote proper call distribution, and more. Some of the effective solutions are mentioned below.
- Incorporating Smart CTI connector that comes with advanced call control and call routing features. Call routing capabilities of the existing telephony system are supported in the advanced CTI connectors allowing calls to land on the screen of the right agent. It reduces the effort of call transferring and also shortens the call waiting queue.
- Having an advanced IVR can also help in reducing long waiting times. Instead of making the callers wait it can help book an appointment as per their availability. With self-service features and AI implementation, agents can get their queries resolved on their own and reach out to agents if something is too complex. This will reduce agents’ workload, offer quick solutions to customers, and eventually reduce the call waiting time.
5. No Self-Service Option for Customers
With technological advancement, customers are more inclined towards self-service features. Many customers don’t look for agents’ interaction for small queries, they want to resolve their issues on their own. However, self-service features are not in place in many contact centers.
So, this unavailability of resources for customers causes more pressure on agents by increasing more assistance cases. Agents have to handle multiple interactions via calls, messages, social media, emails, etc., at a time. This reduces the productivity of agents and impacts the overall workflow in the contact center.
Solution – Use smart self-service tools
Introducing self-service options can eliminate the contact center problem. Using AI-powered tools like InfiBot offers quick assistance to customers by using knowledge-based tools. The bot will first understand the customer’s query and then access the knowledge base to get the most relevant solution to the issue.
Furthermore, having how-to-guide, troubleshooting instructions, and FAQs in place can also help resolve this problem. Self-service is the best way to assist customers who are looking for quick solutions to their queries.
6. High Agent Attrition Rate
Undoubtedly, employee attrition is increasing day by day in the contact center. Agent turnover on average is 42%, as stated by NICE in one of its reports. This issue affects multiple aspects of contact centers. Hiring employees, training them as per business needs, and then employees step out. This has been a continuous cycle in contact centers for years now.
But, what’s the reason behind this? Attrition happens because of multiple reasons –
- Handling frustrated customers
- Strict working hours
- Fewer growth opportunities and more
Now, that we have discussed problem number one, let’s know its solution.
Solution – Rewards and Training Sessions
Agents generally deal with occupational burnout after handling customer interactions throughout the working hours. However, resolving customer queries is part of their job role but sometimes it becomes discouraging for them when they deal with multiple complex queries back-to-back.
Offering rewards and recognition can be one of the ways to keep them motivated towards their job. Furthermore, competitive compensation and benefits, and better training sessions can help them stay productive and loyal to the company.
Long Story Short
No matter what the industry or business is, problems are there in every sector and there is nothing wrong in talking about them. But, when discussing the issues, we need to know about pointers that help fix them.
In the customer service industry many call center software problems will arise now and then, but relying on a trustworthy contact center solution provider like NovelVox can be a game changer for businesses. We offer solutions to almost every challenge related to contact centers through our out-of-the-box tools and customized solutions. Reach out to our experts, and know us better. Book a demo today!
