If you own a call center company, elevating the quality of outsourced customer support services entrusted to you by your clients is your sole responsibility. But that is not as easy as it sounds. You must live up to their expectations—you must bring their customer service to a higher level.
One of the many downfalls existent in this kind of business is customer retention itself. Due to its influx, some call center businesses just don't know to deal with them, and they are unable to distinguish new customers from previous ones. It is crucial in this business, as there is a thin line that separates new from existing customers—in description and approach.
A US Small Business Administration and US Chamber of Commerce study stated that obtaining new customers costs as much as five to seven times more than retaining customers.
In turn, this loyalty prompts them to choose the brand as their first option in buying. This loyalty also transcends from purchasing to brand reputation, as customer loyalty always translates to good standing, which is easier to disseminate in this day and age of social media technology.
Yet it doesn't mean that customers must be treated differently. Business owners must know how to accommodate them so that the existing customers will not jump off to a competitor, and so that they can transform new customers into future "loyal existing" customers.
To do this, you must mold your outsourced customer support into something that would make both new and incoming customers trust and stick with you.
Use principle as a bridge
Now, customers are not just typical buyers of the brand—they also trust those with principle and belief that they can identify with. There was this study by Corporate Executive Board saying that 66 percent of 7,000 respondents cite "shared values" as the primary reason for sticking with a brand.
Be painstaking in knowing your customer details
A common mistake among companies when it comes to examining potential customers is that they are not conscientious about it. Identifying customers does not end with knowing their basic wants and needs, economic class, or age—you must know everything about them, from their pains, to goals, to aspirations, to what irritates them, to what makes them happy, and so on. This would be essential in creating future brand strategies—especially those that are culturally and behaviorally focused.
Moreover, customers enjoy businesses that know them. For instance, it is delightful to know if a call center agent knows customers beyond their purchase records—say, their name or how they reacted to the brand's service. Familiarity gives birth to relationship; relationship creates loyalty.
Tickle their ears
Customer service is like music. Would you listen over and over again to a band whose sound simply annoys you down cold? Use the words that your customers love to hear—free, immediately, now, new. Any word that would make them think that they would save money will make them buy.
Reward them constantly
Indeed, knowing your customers well would later positively affect your reputation as a call center business. Yet all listed above, as you are only a representative of their brand, would be impossible if you wouldn't communicate it to the brand you are servicing. However, in turn, the brand will see it as your assertiveness as a business—and that is reputation.
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