4 Key Signs That Your Contact Centre Needs an Upgrade

Josh O’Farrell of Spearline shares four key signs that may just suggest that it’s time to make an upgrade to your contact centre processes and technologies.

Maintaining excellent customer experience is essential for your business’s contact centre to thrive and excel.

But it can be very easy for contact centres to lower their guard, think everything is fine and that their customers aren’t suffering in the process.

You never know when your business may need an upgrade, and it’s best to be proactive. To stay ahead and be mindful of how well your contact centre is performing, here are four key signs to look out for.

1. High On-Hold Times

Nowadays, customers have very high expectations regarding customer service, particularly contact centres. Providing high-quality service is important, especially after a poor experience. According to Oracle.com, 89% of customers will migrate to a competitor.

If you ask customers what can ruin their contact centre experience, “waiting on hold” is almost always at the top of the list. By replacing hold-time with a callback, the irritation can be avoided.

2. Customer Complaints on Your Business’s Social Media

Social media acts as a platform to allow customers to publicly complain and vent their frustrations. Almost a decade ago, 50% of Facebook users and 80% of Twitter users expected a response to a customer service request in less than 24 hours.

No doubt these stats have increased further with the rise in popularity across these platforms. One of the most common social media grievances, it turns out, is waiting on hold for long periods of time.

If you see multiple complaints on social channels and adding agents is not a practical option for you, callbacks are a great way to tackle this issue.

3. High Abandonment Rates

If a contact centre has lengthy waiting times, most callers will more than likely hang up. Abandonment leads to continuous redial (which can burden the contact centre system) and, of course, it can lead to customer churn.

By hiring more agents, you will be able to lower waiting times, reducing abandonment and churn. However, hiring more agents can be a strain on your budget. An inexpensive way for your contact centre to reduce abandonment and lower waiting times is to implement callbacks.

4. Poor Call Quality

Poor audio quality will have a negative impact on your customers’ experience. If your customers fail to connect or have to constantly repeat their issues to their agent, they can easily get frustrated, abandon the call and move to a competitor.

Just as your customers suffer from poor quality audio, so too do your agents. A call shouldn’t require an overload of effort, and the agent certainly shouldn’t feel fatigued afterward.

By proactively testing your numbers regularly, you will be able to detect any issues your centre could potentially face. Once alerted, you will be able to ensure your customers don’t face a poor audio quality call.

This will eliminate the need for a callback as their experience with your contact centre will hit the right notes on the first call.

For further information on audio quality monitoring and measurement, visit www.spearline.com