Customers today have come to expect a lot more from the agents handling their customer support calls, emails, or messages.
Let’s illustrate with figures.
78% of American consumers expect their complex issues to be solved after speaking to just one person. A whopping 86% expect seamless transitions between channels during a service conversation, and another 92% would abandon a brand after two to three negative experiences.
The expectations are high, making training essential from the very beginning of a contact center build.
So what makes contact center expectations different from the days of the traditional call center, and how can proper training cover these new complexities to create a team of agents that is intelligent, adaptable, and efficient?
Let’s explore how B-Lynk’s contact center training helps teams understand concepts and how to use them to leverage all the application can offer.
Contact Centers vs. Traditional Call Center
Unlike traditional call centers, contact center agents engage with customers across all channels, including phone calls, texts, messaging, apps, email, or social media.
Traditional call centers aim to help customers toward the end of their journey – typically, when a customer picks up the phone to call the business, it’s a last resort or they are looking to speak to someone directly who can solve their problem.
Contact centers, on the other hand, aim to reach and support customers earlier on in the process with quick response times through whatever channel is most convenient for the customer.
Complexities of Contact Centers
Customers now expect certain efficiencies and complexities from contact centers that they would likely not have anticipated from a call center.
For example, many contact centers are now employing the use of new technologies like AI through virtual associates or chatbots to eliminate repetitive manual tasks or front/back-office processes. While these technologies can reduce the workload of human agents, these features can be complex and unintuitive before training.
In our fast-paced world, today’s customers also expect assistance for their issues on-demand. In many cases, they don’t want to wait on hold to speak to a representative, they would rather hop online and use a self-service option to get the problem solved right away. This demand has increased the expectation of contact center agents to be incredibly responsive, helpful, and efficient for every customer challenge.
Doing Contact Center Set-Up Right
The time to get your contact center in shape is not in the midst of an influx of calls, messages, emails, and social posts requesting help. In fact, that’s when your end users are expecting you to be performing your best.
It’s critical you set up your contact center right on the front end if you want to perform at the level expected when push comes to shove. That means all of your agent training, from relevant user support content to a robust understanding of the product must be completed confidently before calls or messages of any kind start coming in.
If you don’t have all of your ducks in a row by the time you reach high contact volumes, your team will be struggling to stay afloat and keep your customers happy.
B-lynk Training Ensures Your Contact Center Build Is Done Right
Training saves time and resources and ensures a contact center is configured to leverage all the application can offer. This improves agent satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and the success of the service.
B-Lynk offers multiple training services and solutions to provide your contact center team with the knowledge they need to handle customer requests with ease. Our custom how-to and instructional-style training videos cover your specific offering and can empower your contact center team to help users understand even the most complex aspects of your product or service.
If you want to get your contact center off the ground the right way, with informed and empowered agents who are confident in handling customer requests of any kind, contact B-Lynk to learn more about the best training options for you.