Create Amazing Customer Experiences with Outbound Call Center Software
According to Esteban Kolsky, a customer strategist and found of ThinkJar, 67% of consumers cite bad experiences as the reason for churning – a nice way to say they are no longer a customer.
A call center’s primary concern should be improving customer experience as much as possible since, according to customer experience consulting firm Walker, customer experience will be a brand’s key differentiator in 2020 and beyond – even overtaking price and product.
What’s one way call centers can foster exceptional customer experiences?
Outbound call center software.
The good news is, 61% of consumers prefer being helped by customer service over the phone, according to LivePerson’s Connecting with Consumers report. So what call centers need most is software that improves the over-the-phone customer support experience. That’s where outbound call center software comes in.
4 Features of Outbound Call Center Software That Creates Amazing Customer Experiences
The right outbound call center software can make agents more responsive, more productive, and more empowered to solve caller problems quickly and satisfyingly.
Here are 4 features of outbound call center software that creates better customer experiences.
Agent Gateway
A common feature of great outbound call center software is a great agent interface or Agent Gateway. It’s defining functionality is the management of customer profiles during a live call.
Agents can see data about existing customers, create new customer profiles for callers, add new leads, and see a host of basic and in-depth info about customers.
But the software goes well beyond CRM-style features. Here are a few more things it can do:
- Assist agents in resolving calls quickly by giving them expert tips.
- Assists agents in maintaining compliance while on calls.
- Easily document actions taken using checklists and other fillable fields.
- Route callers to agents who are best able to handle their requests.
- Provides manager-to-agent messaging.
- Allows managers to barge-in on a call when necessary.
- And catalogs important metrics for business intelligence
Interactive Voice Messaging (IVM)
Interactive Voice Messaging (IVM) gives call centers the ability to send pre-recorded messages that can be programmed in a male or female voice in multiple languages.
This software can be programmed to provide a near-instant way for customers to speak with a live agent if they want to. It also allows call centers to conduct surveys, gathering critical data about their customers and how they perceive their customer experience.
And, if customers need to pay a bill, they can do so directly through the IVM without wasting precious call center resources – making it easier for everyone to get what they want.
Manual Dialer
A manual dialer is a key component of any TCPA compliant call center, and is very useful for agents who hope to provide a superior customer service experience.
A manual dialer relies on Manually Approved Calling (MAC), which is when one set of agents review and approve calls before passing them onto a second party of agents. The first set of agents either approve or reject a call based on information provided about the caller.
This way, no agents are wasting time calling people who shouldn’t be contacted.
Predictive Dialer
A predictive dialer is an automated system instead of a manual one. This type of software greatly increases agent efficiency and reduces the amount of manpower needed to operate a manual dialer.
Agents are connected to calls only when a live person answers the call, which means agents don’t have to waste time waiting for a call to be answered or for a voicemail message to begin playing.
The predictive dialer also weeds out any fax machines or other automatic answering services sometimes listed as caller numbers.
What’s really cool about predictive dialers is they can learn to speed up or slow down their dialing based on the answer rate of agents. So if a call center is at maximum capacity of calls, the predictive dialer will adjust accordingly.
The Next Step in Creating Amazing Customer Experiences
Outbound call center software is an important first step in creating outstanding customer experiences. But call centers can do much more with the right information about their customers and their call center itself.
With the right performance metrics and business strategies, call centers can move to the next level in achievement and customer satisfaction.
But this requires a specific type of software that generates charts, graphs, and in-depth reports on the most important KPIs.
Call centers can obtain this software, and in this business intelligence (BI) webinar, TCN will show call center executives and managers the benefits of BI and how to implement it today.