Understanding the Importance of the Contact Centre

The last few years have shown that customer service is still of great importance to customers. Many businesses have lost a proportion of their customer base due to poor customer service, support or communication, during more testing times.

To help your business understand how to keep your customer base and even improve your customer services, either in-house or via an outsourced contact centre, we have put together a series of fact sheets highlighting the areas that customers find important. These fact sheets help explain why businesses must continue to prioritise customer service, and what communication tools will be the most effective.

The Value of Caring

Have customers changed post-Covid?

Since 2020, there were fewer opportunities for face-to-face interactions with businesses and increased communications with contact centre agents. At the start of the pandemic, businesses had to react drastically to the crisis and customers showed leniency for sub-standard services. The pandemic quickly became part of our normal lives, so it was no longer a valid excuse for poor customer service.

Empathetic service valued by customers

It’s no surprise that customers want:

» Quick resolutions

» Access to customer service at their convenience

» Offered preferred channels of communication

» Proactive support

But Zendesks report reveals that customers also value more helpful and empathic agents;

“Customers still value speed, but increasingly want empathy and access to preferred channels”

Being helpful and understanding has always been key to providing good customer service, but it holds more value in a post-pandemic era. With more customers likely to go online or pick up the phone to engage with businesses, more interactions are taking place with contact centre agents, so having a caring and humane workforce holds more importance.

To read about the importance of being socially responsible and how to involve staff when creating company policies, download the Value of Caring fact sheet by Clicking Here.

Prioritising customer service

The contact centre industry has faced unpredictable challenges in dealing with the pandemic. Whilst many organisations coped by reacting quickly and efficiently, others simply struggled. With customer expectations and customer knowledge on the rise, those wanting to survive must provide a high standard of customer service.

Retention and loyalty 

According to ‘Zendesks Customer Experience trends report, 2021‘  companies must prioritise their service, or risk losing customers.

Retaining customers through excellent service

Customers are willing to pay more

Customers want and demand higher levels of customer service as it offers them reassurance and trust with the company they are dealing with. The Institute of Customer Service found that customers were even willing to pay more, for excellent service:

‘Why do you prefer excellent service. even if it means paying more?’

For detailed information on the customer satisfaction via sector, areas to improve on and recommendations for organisations, download the Improving Customer Service fact sheet by Clicking Here

Customer communication channels

The covid lockdowns and social distancing rules resulted in fewer face-to-face interactions than before. With customers still needing to reach organisations, they sought different channels to do so.

The Institute of Customer Service (ICS) found that face-to-face interactions fell from 42.8% to 36.2% from 2020 to 2021. Customers used alternative methods such as websites, contact centres, email, apps, web chat, text messaging and social media to make contact.

Channels used for customer experiences recorded by the ICS

The range of channels offered by the organisation was put to the test, as was their response to customers. With fewer face to face experiences, the strain on the other channels showed as customer satisfaction fell for email, app, web chat experiences.

Customer satisfaction by channel

Download the fact sheet to learn more about the tools used and thought to be effective by contact centres, and how automated chats were preferred for more simple tasks by Clicking Here.

Contact centres you can count on

Why choose Whistl for your outsourced order fulfilment services?

Whistl is the UK’s leading provider of personalised contact centre solutions. With over 20 years of experience and a support team of over 350 agents, we tailor our support to your needs, to provide exceptional customer experience.

How Whistl can help your business

Here at Whistl, we can provide tailored customer service solutions for your business needs. Whether you require a dedicated team for all enquiries, your office has reached capacity, or you need help managing peak periods, our inbound customer servicemanagement could be the solution to all these challenges.

When outsourcing your contact centre services to Whistl you receive the very best in support and customer service, as we work to be an extension of your business. We mirror your brand guidelines and ethics to ensure that our connections you’re your customers are aligned to the relationships you would look to create directly.

By outsourcing some or all of your contact centre solutions to Whistl your business will gain access to both a wealth of customer service experience and improved technologies. Working across a number of different business and industry sectors we can manage all your customer interactions, across relevant channels, whilst providing your business with a seamless experience, for every single customer.

Gain more understanding of your customers’ interactions with relevant insights, available from our tailored reporting solutions. Whether you need to understand more on the patterns of contact, the reasons for contacts or how to improve trust or financial returns, Whistl is on hand to support your business with insight for guidance and improvements for your customers’ experience.

For additional information View Whistl’s Company Profile