Customer Service Call Centers - Top 5 Myths That Must Die

As call centers have mushroomed and businesses across the globe have become dependent on them, a number of myths about call centers have gained currency and are refusing to die. In order to properly appreciate the operation and utilization of call centers it is important that these myths are dispelled. Given below is a brief account of some such stubborn call center myths that are better done away with:

Call center is merely a numbers game

While statistics play a vital role in the operation of call centers, it is the quality and personality of work that determine their actual value. This is what should be taken into consideration while zeroing in on a call center. The size, reach and manpower of a call center may speak a lot about its success but when it comes to its utilization for a particular company it is the way it caters to the specific needs of the company and the kind of connect it is able to establish with the customers that finally counts.

If customers get highly professional service assistance at a personal level from somebody they take to be a company representative, their allegiance towards the company is sure to get a boost. Numbers and metrics have nothing to do with this simple logic. Call centers are much more than numbers.

Selling undermines the services that call centers offer

This is an allegation that call centers have been facing since their very inception. By their very definition, call centers have the duty to cash in on the incoming customer calls and use the opportunity of interaction with the customer to make a sale. This may outwardly appear to be a shrewd business strategy but if understood in the right perspective the process makes immense sense to all the parties involved.

In the first place, the product suggestions that the agents offer to the customers are in keeping with the requirement and financial position of the customers. The representatives are experts and experienced professionals who can be trusted for need-specific suggestions and balanced advice. Secondly, there is nothing ethically wrong in trying to tap customers for possible future dealings with a company that is already offering good services to customers. There is no element of compulsion or force attached to it.

Customers hesitate in buying from call centers

This misconception derives from the above myth and is reflected in the misconstrued attitude that some businesses have towards call centers. Certain organizations, in their attempt to retain control over customers, regard their products to be too complex and specialized to be delivered by a call center. They fail to understand that customers can be served via multiple sales channels and call center could be one of them. Treat call center employees at par with your own sales employees. Employing call centers ensures customer satisfaction as well as a boost to product sales.

Call centers have set measures of optimum performance

Operations in a call center are heavily loaded with systems and measures to track productivity and performance in terms of the length of calls and customer experience. An attempt is made to capture every aspect of a call ranging from talk time, calls per hour, rate of abandonment and waiting time of a caller to the number of sales, callbacks, referrals, escalations and so on.

The fact is that there is no set measure of optimum productivity with regard to the speed, volume or quality of call. Some customers would say that they prefer a quick solution to their problem while others would bet on the service experience. However, these two aspects of speed and quality are not contradictory to each other. Therefore, data tracking and improvement is best done in accordance to the needs of the company and the objective with which they hire a call center rather than any universal criteria that uniformly govern call center operations.

Call centers just receive and make calls

This is an erroneous notion that still persists among certain sections. Call centers have evolved much beyond being just call centers. In-house call center can hardly match the energy and expertise with which outsourced call centers operate.

When customers dial a number for assistance they expect a live person to personally attend to them, listen to them, understand their problem and resolve it with all respect and patience. This is easier said than done. It takes a trained expert in a highly charged call center environment to handle such calls days in and days out and go further to tap the customer to do future business with the company. Taking and making calls are just the medium through which call centers perform an entire gamut of customer related tasks.