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Five Tips for Ongoing Customer Service Success

Achieving immediate customer service initiatives is relatively easy. However, setting high customer expectations can create an ongoing and unsaid expectation of excellence. Almost all call center customer service centers should strive to provide the best service possible for numerous reasons. Once a high standard of customer service is set, it is important to keep the quality of service up to par for both seasoned employees and new hires.
Below is a list of five tips and initiatives that call centers can implement to keep quality consistent:

1. Invest in Ongoing Training

It is important to invest in ongoing customer service training for new employees as well as experienced call center customer service representatives. Experienced employees often need a refresher. In addition, it is important for managers to measure individual employee strengths as well as areas of improvement. Know where each individual employee’s basic knowledge level is at in order to craft individualized training initiatives at the small group and individual levels.

2. Provide Continual Support at Different Levels

Use the information gathered from universal quarterly training sessions to provide support for employees at more targeted levels. Groups of employees that demonstrate need for improvement in specific areas can attend a training session as a group. Employees that need extra support of very specific support can meet with a manager or a senior representative periodically to bring them up to speed. A call center should work as a single functioning unit. Repeatability of service provided is crucial for success.

3. Design a System that is Standardized and Repeatable

In an ideal scenario, a customer would have an equally positive experience with any given customer service representative. It is important to design a system for customer service that is highly organized and repeatable for each individual employee. Training, payment processing, wait time, and quality of customer service should all be standardized. Call center managers should strive to provide the highest quality of service overall rather than a system in which some employees provide exceptional service, most employees provide fine service, and some employees provide poor service.

4. Look for Ways to Improve an Existing System

Another benefit of implementing a standardized system for customer service representatives that is highly repeatable is that it is also testable. A testable system allows call centers to measure the efficacy of new initiatives. It is almost impossible to know if a new initiative or procedure is helpful if the current system is not standardized. Call centers can further improve levels of customer satisfaction and overall efficacy by having the ability to test and measure new customer service initiatives.

5. When Change is Detrimental

Change in and of itself is not detrimental to a call center or to providing customer service per se. Overall change can optimize existing systems for call center representatives and customers alike. However, a constant fluctuation in the quality of service provided can be highly bothersome for customers. Ideally, customer concerns can be addressed quickly and with tact. It is important to set a standard and implement that standard on a universal level.

Quality, Consistency, Repeatability

The right ongoing training is one of the most integral parts of providing consistently high quality customer service in a call center environment. Keep all employees on the same page, and keep customers happy by having different call center representatives all function according to standardized procedures.

This is a guest post by Laura Russell. You can get to the heart of customer service through her write ups. Get more ideas about call center customer service and work provide the best services to all your customers.

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