Many businesses rely on the use of call centres to stay in touch with and service their customers. As with any other area of commercial operation, you need to ensure your call centre is effective. Let’s take a look at what you can do to improve its performance.

1 Set targets

All call centres have targets for the number of calls handled and similar metrics; however, to ensure maximum effectiveness, you need to set targets that are relevant to your business. These need to look not just at commercial targets but also at staff development. Imposed targets can be seen as alienating; therefore, working with your team to establish the targets helps to keep everyone on board.

2 Simply the best

There are always training opportunities presented by calls that are handled well. Recordings of these successful calls can be used as a training aid for other staff. Similarly, you can get staff to critique calls to establish what is good and bad and use this to establish a set of criteria for what constitutes a successful call.

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3 Business data

To handle calls successfully, agents need to have the customer information they need to hand. Integrating your call handling system with your CRM ensures the right data is at their fingertips when a call comes in.

4 Use automation

If you take advantage of wholesale VOIP termination rates from a supplier such as https://www.idtexpress.com/, you can use sophisticated options such as initial voice response (IVR) menus to sort your incoming callers and ensure they are connected to the right people.

5 Flexible working

Increasingly, customers do not want to be restricted to nine-to-five office hours when contacting businesses. Companies are therefore looking to extend the hours their call centre is open. This often goes hand in hand with enabling staff to work more flexibly. Allowing operators to vary their hours and work from home boosts productivity and helps staff retention.

6 Understand the business

Call centres can sometimes seem to operate in isolation; however, it is vital to recognise how they serve the enterprise as a whole. Holding regular meetings with stakeholders from other areas of the company can help to ensure the call centre is serving their needs effectively. This can also help other departments to understand how their actions and decisions affect the call centre.