Your contact center is the first place customers approach when they need assistance or have an issue that needs to be resolved promptly and efficiently. On top of this, consumers have higher expectations of service representatives and companies than before, therefore it's essential to keep your call center performing at its best. 

How to Use Salesforce Data to Personalize Every Service Call

There are a few reasons why customers calling your call center are irate long before speaking with them. Customers feel frustrated when their interactions with companies aren't personal. Consumers also don't appreciate when they have to repeat the same information every time they call in because they've been handled by a different agent. 

By integrating your phone system and Salesforce CRM, you can alleviate a lot of frustration and stress for your customers and agents. Contact Center and CTI solutions that deeply integrate with Salesforce deliver key features like scree pop, automatic activity capture, workflow automations, reporting and more,  that can literally transform your call center's performance. 

For example, agents making outbound or inbound calls can instantly view the customers details as soon as a call is connected. Additionally, they can also instantly see their entire call and interaction history with that customer.

Pairing this with Salesforce call routing is a gamechanger. All incoming calls are delivered to the most appropriate agent or team based on existing Salesforce data like record owner, case owner, opportunity owner and more.

How to Manage Your Screen Pop with Salesforce and What Are They?

Screen pop displays customer information on an agent's computer screen when they answer the call. That could include a customer's profile, activity details, purchase history and much more.

Screen pop drastically improves customer experience because agents have all the right information when customers call in. 

Agents and call center managers should be able to manage screen pop settings in Salesforce and be able to customize what information is shown to the agent, for example, the customer profile, newest opportunity, an open case, or even a custom object. 

To make a few changes to your screen pops:

1. Login as Salesforce Administrator. 
2. Go to Setup > Platform Tools > Feature Settings > Service > Call Center. 
3. Select Softphone Layouts. That will take you to the splash screen. Click on Edit next to the Default Layout. 
4. Scroll to the bottom between the Screen Pop Settings heading. Here you can make any changes you'd like to your configurations to make screen pops easier to use

How Do You Measure Call Center Performance?

Most call centers implement key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine if they perform well and meet business goals. Usually, this involves measuring metrics like:

Abandon Rates and Blocked Calls

The abandon rate is the percentage of inbound phone calls made to a call center abandoned by the customer just before interacting with a rep. You can calculate it by dividing abandoned calls by total inbound calls. As expected, the abandonment rate directly influences waiting times and customer dissatisfaction. 

Average Speed of Answer 

Also known as AVA, the Average Speed of Answer is the total wait time callers stay in queue, divided by the number of voice calls handled by reps. In addition, this rate includes calls serviced by an interactive voice response (IVR) system and calls managed by live analysis. 

Service Level

A call center service level is a way to measure how well customer standards are met and, subsequently, customer satisfaction. Calculating it involves the percentage of calls handled, average response time, average time to resolve customers' issues, and other relevant metrics.

Looking at these metrics, it seems deceptively easy to achieve your call center KPIs: answer as many calls as possible, as quickly as possible. However, in reality, maintaining high levels of performance within a call center is more challenging than anticipated. 

Call center jobs are tough. They involve long, inflexible hours in a high-stress environment, which is often why staff turnover rates can be as high as 44%! Keeping your teams engaged and finding tools to increase performance (without making staff feel like they are being monitored or micro-managed) is critical to the call center's success. 

‍

How Salesforce Gamification Improves Call Center Service Performance

Gerald May said the only difference between work and play is attitude. Gamification takes gameplay elements and applies them to work environments to energize teams and increase job satisfaction and engagements. 

By effectively using gamification, call center managers can turn daily, often overlooked, tasks into rewarding activities to increase performance and engagement. With gamification, call center personnel can offer a better customer experience, like prompts to update customer information or more detailed notes. 

Further, staff can earn rewards by completing tasks and even compete with each other via leaderboards, resulting in much more personalized and effective customer interactions.  

According to a recent webinar, companies are seeing up to a 240% increase in areas like data entry, where they've previously seen poor performance due to gamification. 

Best Call Center Practices: What Your Rep Should Never Say

Most call centers have best practices in place. Yet, sometimes, agents go off-script. It's important to be explicit about what your agents or reps can and can't say. Provide better alternatives so they are fully prepared to answer customer queries in a professional and empathetic way. 

Call center reps must avoid the following: 

Negative Language

Rather than use negative language, try responding with positive actions. For example instead of saying:

"It's not possible for us to provide that item any time soon because it's out of stock.

Try this:

"The product will be back in stock in September. I can place an order for you right away, and you'll be the first to get it as soon as it's made available." 

Insufficient Information

"I'm not sure. Let me transfer you to a different agent." 

No one likes being put on hold or being transferred to a different rep. However, if customers understand why they are being transferred, they will feel better about the whole experience. 

For example: 

"I'm not the best person to answer that. My colleague David has a lot of experience with this issue. Let me put you through to him; he'll be with you in a minute." 

By explaining the issue and offering a timeframe for the solution, you can quickly manage the customers expectations.

Bad Attitude

"You're the only person that's ever complained about it." 

It doesn't matter if no other customers have complained or if the consumer is making a mountain out of a molehill; it's essential to recognize their anger or frustration and not to minimize or dismiss it.

Simply stating, "I'm sorry to hear about that. Let's see how we can fix this" will go a long way to reducing customer frustrations. 

Why Call Center Etiquette Matters

The same report shows that customers' experiences with call centers impact their goodwill towards the company. 

In fact:

• Even with digital communication tools, 79% of customers still prefer speaking to call center reps. 
• And, customers stop recommending a business after a negative call center experience. 
  

In other words, ensuring customers consider every interaction with your company as a positive experience is, by far, the best way to maintain business success. 

Screen Pop Increases Call Center Performance and Customer Satisfaction

Speak to your contact center software platform about how screen pop can help you meet your call center and customer goals. Set your teams up for success and encourage good behavior and improved performance through screen pop, gamification, convenient configurations, and personalization. 

PhoneIQ is an innovative contact center platform for companies using Salesforce and puts effective management and measurement capabilities in your hands. Analyze customer feedback and call center interactions to ensure your call center is running at optimal levels and track the metrics that matter the most. 

Sign up for a free 7-Day Trial to find out more. 

‍