Call center and customer service operations have become an essential component of businesses, regardless of if they are small or large. Keeping these operations running smoothly is critical for providing consistent, high-quality customer care. The key element of success in any call center has always been the quality of communication between managers and agents, a close monitoring of the calls to ensure the best customer service experience — but that’s easier said than done when those agents don’t sit together in an office building. With increasing globalization, many companies are in need of multilingual call centers, which may require multiple customer service teams and not all these teams can meet in one place. If you decide to outsource your multilingual call center, then your agents could be located several time zones away. In this article, we’ll explore the 5 contact center management factors that guarantee remote call centers can secure next-level customer service operations.
1. Prioritize high-quality communication
For a remote call center, prioritizing high-quality communication that incorporates important customer service soft-skills and communication techniques is fundamental to superb contact center management. First, this will help your call center agents understand the team’s mission and make sure that everyone has a clear picture of their roles and responsibilities. A manager’s responsibility is to set clear expectations for the team. It is paramount to guarantee that all employees understand what they are expected to do and achieve as part of their responsible role. Additionally, it is necessary to make sure the company’s employees understand how their work will be measured and evaluated by others. Secondly, customer service agents often are under a lot of stress when handling customer complaints. Actively listening to and communicating with struggling agents may significantly help their abilities and improve their performance. Lastly, when you prioritize communication at all levels of the organization, from leadership management to frontline employees, you’ll be able to build trust between all parties involved in delivering customer service.
It’s important for managers to take an active and genuine interest in the success of their teams, not just from an organizational perspective but also from an individual one too.
2. Create a culture of recognition and growth
When overseeing a group of employees, it is important to help them feel like they are doing meaningful work. This not only motivates employees to work productively, but also makes them feel valued. This is no different in remote call centers. You can encourage a workplace that fosters growth and recognition by:
Recognizing employees’ contributions and providing regular feedback that acknowledges employees for their successes and contributions.
Creating training opportunities. Training your employees in new skills will allow them to learn and improve at what they do, leading to happier customers who will be more likely to return in the future.
Providing career advancement opportunities. Your agents may have aspirations of becoming managers or other higher positions, so making sure that opportunities are offered for career advancement in addition to giving out raises each year based on time spent with the company will create a boost in individual and company growth.
3. Keep culture in mind when hiring remote employees
Culture is a significant contact center management factor when hiring remote employees. A good match between your company’s culture and the individual’s personality will help them succeed in the role and stay motivated. The same goes for call center professionals, as it’s important for managers to understand how culture impacts performance, especially if you are hiring remotely.
If you are choosing to outsource your call center, then it is important to partner with a call center that understands your company, your mission, and knows how to deliver customer service accordingly.
Achieving high levels of customer satisfaction requires building a team with clear goals, a sense of purpose, and an understanding of what it means to deliver exceptional service on behalf of your clients. These qualities are easier to achieve when all members of your organization share similar values; however, they are even more crucial when working across time zones or national borders where face-to-face interaction is not an option.
4. Allow customer service agents to solve problems their own way
While having a script for your agents to read off may be effective for newer agents, there comes a point where agents have gained enough experience to solve customer service issues in ways they find fit. It may seem like you must always keep an eye on your remote call center agents but sticking to the script may not be the most effective way of resolving an issue. Also, when unique situations arise, allowing them to come up with their own solutions means that the agents are less likely to ask the manager for assistance, saving the customer time as well.
5. Make sure you have the right tools
When it comes to managing a remote call center, you’re going to need some essential tools. These include:
Software for quality assurance and performance management
Software for communication
Project management software
Luckily, technology for these purposes are continuously being developed to further ease the challenges of remote managing. Software such as Callnovo’s global SaaS CRM platform provides an all-in-one software that can keep track of all aspects of the project and is also easy to implement. Having a powerful software such as this will help your operation run much more smoothly.
Conclusion
In an increasingly technological world, remote work is becoming more prominent, particularly in the call center industry. And as we’ve seen, there are many benefits to this arrangement. But for a business to benefit from remote call centers, its approach towards it must be careful and strategical. This involves building a well-rounded in-house team or finding a trustworthy outsourcing partner and developing an understanding of the agents working with you, especially their skillsets, where those people will be located and why that location is most efficient.
If you do choose to outsource your customer service project, Callnovo Contact Center — with its substantial knowledge on how to manage a call center remotely — is the perfect partner to help you set up your operation. In addition to Callnovo CRM and Cloud Contact Center technology platform, Callnovo’s Client Success team has managers around the world. They have abundant management experience and take full responsibility in handling the call center management team remotely. The Client Success Managers can efficiently coordinate with Callnovo’s call centers globally and make operations successful. If you want to focus on the business core operation and decide to simply outsource the tedious and professional call center management work, then our Client Success Managers take over while keeping you fully up-to-date on the operation.
Whatever direction you choose to go with your call center, through mastering intricate details of managing a remote call center via your in-house team or via outsourcing partner, you will be able to build a reputable call center with motivated agents and elevate your customer care experience!