Customer Care

Contact centers are increasingly being used to up-sell and cross-sell products. They offer an excellent platform to do so and gain valuable topline for the company. Since contact centers are a major cost center, it is in the best interests of a business that it tries to drive revenue through contact centers. The launch of a live up sell and cross sell program should be preceded by adequate employee training and a pilot program as well. Training is crucial in imparting the soft skills that can make or break a sales pitch. Agents need to say the right thing at the right time.

The major trend that contact centers have witnessed over the past few years is shifting of contact center operations to countries where labor is cheap. Since employee cost is a very high running overhead cost, a reduction in this cost is a powerful incentive to offshore contact centers. The flip side to offshoring is that very often customers complain about a drop in quality of service.

A good word spoken by a satisfied customer is worth hundreds of dollars of advertising. At the same time, a disgruntled customer can do serious damage to your reputation. Prevention is better than fire-fighting. There is always a reason why a customer acts difficult. Know the reasons and treat each customer accordingly.

CRM software is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg that is customer relationship management. The basics of CRM do not change. The human angle to it is all important and it is these good old-fashioned virtues that decide the success of your CRM initiative.

There are some strict no-no’s that you should be aware of with reference to offering customer service. The key is to keep the negatives out and accentuate the positive. Remember never say “we never”, “we don’t”, “we can’t”, “you’re wrong” or other such phrases.

One of the oft cited facts about CRM is that it is most effective when you exceed customer expectations and the best way to do it is by providing proactive customer care. One of the great things about proactive customer care is that it does not let problems arise so that time and effort spent in problem solving is less. Needless to state that customer satisfaction with a business is greater when transactions happen without ever having to resort to calling the contact centers.