7 tips to create a five-star call center

The 7 tips to create a five-star call center

• Hire passionate, knowledgeable agents who can handle both sales and support conversations
• Ensure language proficiency so agents can go beyond scripted responses
• Make customer focus the core of every interaction, not just a metric to track
• Set clear, specific goals for your team to drive accountability and performance
• Review and update your call scripts regularly so they stay relevant and effective
• Integrate cloud-based call center software to eliminate manual data entry and sync customer data in real time
• Stay current with call center market trends to remain competitive

The software layer is where most call centers fall short. CloudTalk’s Smart Call Routing, CRM integrations with HubSpot, Salesforce, and Pipedrive, Power Dialer, and real-time Analytics give your agents the context and tools they need to resolve issues faster and sell more effectively without switching between multiple systems.

It’s high time to create a five-star call center once and for all – and here’s how to do it.  

How to create a five-star call center?

1. Have the right people on board. 

Having productive and motivated professionals on board is often what makes it or breaks it when it comes to the success of any team, including the one working in a call center. Basically, your people are your biggest asset – especially if they are provided with proper training, resources and tools (which we will cover a bit later). 

The only issue with this is that many of the call center agents out there are only working temporarily (and half-heartedly), which is why hiring the top talents might be difficult – but still necessary. You should hire only those individuals who are passionate about your products or services at least to some extent and thus, can easily become familiar with your offer and answer all questions, no matter if related to sales or customer service. At the same time, you also can’t forget about taking care of your employees, encouraging and motivating them whenever needed. 

2. Ensure language proficiency.

There’s nothing more frustrating than getting in touch with a representative who is lacking the necessary language skills. This really makes it difficult to help customers with their questions and problems, not to mention that it can be frustrating for the caller. Luckily, there’s an easy solution for that: make sure your agents are fluent in English and any other language that’s relevant to your business. 

It’s not only the ability to communicate with callers that’s important – your agents should also be fluent enough to be able to go the extra mile when resolving the doubts of your customers. This is what makes them want to stay with your business for longer. 

3. Focus on your customers. 

More than 95% of call center professionals view customer satisfaction as the most important call center metric. At the same time, many companies tend to train their agents to follow scripts and respond to any concerns in a generic manner. These two approaches don’t really go in line. “Copy-pasting” your answers constantly might get the job done, but it won’t necessarily provide your customers with the experience they deserve.

The truth is: a five-star call center has to care about its customers. It might seem minor at first, but trying to build relationships with your callers can truly pay off in the long run. 

4. Set clear team goals. 

The key to proper management and getting everyone to work together is always to define specific goals for your whole team. Otherwise, you might find it difficult to track the performance of your call center in the first place. 

Most likely, your sales & customer support agents will be motivated by different things, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Setting specific goals for everyone, however, can help you boost team spirit, and also make all team members hold each other accountable for their results.  

5. Take a closer look at your scripts. 

Most of the call center managers know that a cold calling script can truly help the sales & support agents, especially during their onboarding process. What’s often overlooked, though, is the fact that these scripts should be updated every once in a while. If your scripts have been serving you for way too long, it’s probably high time to change them. Here’s how to create the best scripts for your team, in case you need some advice. 

6. Leverage & integrate call center software

In 2018, the software market for call center was already worth $16.28 billion. That’s hardly surprising, given that powerful software can make it much easier to operate a call center. As a matter of fact, nowadays great call centers use cloud-based, integrated tools to manage customer relationships, and sync important data easily. Not to mention that relying on integrated systems also eliminates the chance of losing data entirely, or making a mistake when entering it manually to various systems. Speaking of, here’s our list of the best tools for sales & customer support teams, including our very own CloudTalk. 

7. Keep up with the global call center market. 

This might seem quite obvious, but it’s still a relevant step to take in order to ensure a stellar call center. Given the predictions about the steady growth of the global center market, keeping an eye on the latest updates may become necessary to stay competitive. In order to do so, you should be researching and trying out the latest tools and technologies, collect data from your own call center and draw conclusions from it, as well as read relevant blogs (exactly like this one!). It’s not a lot of effort, yet, it can bring your call center some unexpected results.

Start running a five-star call center now

Operating a stellar call center doesn’t have to be difficult, especially with the right software and talented people on board. If you truly want to take your operations to the next level – take into account our 7 tips, and give CloudTalk and its integrations a try. You’ll be surprised how much easier the life of your sales & customer support agents will get, which will affect the overall customer experience as well. Good luck!