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Advice to Call Center Reps

I have been observing the BPO wave for the last one year and actually exeriencing the Call Center Quality of Service. After observing for a while and going through various good/bad experiences, I thought I will write a post giving advice to the actual work horses in the Call Center Industry.

An year or so ago, when I made calls for support they started getting diverted to India and that made me feel very elated. Earlier most of the calls used go to Delhi and surrounding areas. These days I observed a lot of calls going to South India especially Bangalore/Hyderabad/Chennai, which gives me an impression that call center industry is picking up in South India too. Well, this conclusion is based on my exerience, not based on real statistics.

During my calls I have talked with very good/good/bad/pathetic support people. On the whole what I observed is that the number of bad support calls that I am experiencing have increased over the one year period of time, which actually prompted me to write this post.

Here I am going to list some advice, (I have stopped giving advice to people, when one day while giving lecture to my brother, he retarded telling that 'Success Is Different For Different People, Your Thinking Process Of Success Is Not Similar To Mine', so true right, but now I want to give some advice which might help to quench my thirst for giving advice), for the Customer Service Reps, how they can deliver better support.

Here We go, read the free advice:

1. When somebody calls you for support start with a warm smile, instead of that stiff regular greeting. Show enthusiasm in your tone and make the customer feel that you are there to help him solve the problem.
   
2. Get your accent right, its a must. I dont want to struggle understanding what the rep is talking about. I guess the best accent is that of News Readers. Yes, did you observe News Readers they usually don't have regular collaquial accents, instead a real good decent CLEARLY spoken accent which makes every body love to hear to news readers. Watch news and observe how CLEARLY they speak and adapt that style. That should help a lot in day to day customer support. Once you get the basics right (Speaking Clearly), then you can start adapting accents if your management insists on that.
   
3. Talk with confidence and you will get that confidence when you have considerable knowledge about the product/service you are supporting. So work hard and get a good understanding of the various features of the product/service you are supporting. That will give you a lot confidence and an automatic smile while you talk which will make customer feel that he/she is talking to the right rep.
   
4. There is usually an akward silence in the calls and nobody likes a silence on phone, some times it feels as if the connection is lost. Just make sure that it is not there or reduced considerably. While trying to find out the solution you can engage the customer with some light hearted talk and I am sure they would love that. Make sure that you make the customer smile/laugh while doing the service that effort put into making the customer smile/laugh will help a lot in making things go easy. You have to get adapted to doing multi tasking.
   
5. Let the customer realize that you are trying every way possible to solve the problem. Customer calls with a problem and probably they are in a bad mood which is normal thing a lot times, so make them feel good and dont' make them feel that you are just trying to get some info from them and spitting out some info to them. That thing will make customer feel more frustrated after the call. Guess what, on the other side of the phone there are human beings, so talk in a way as if you are talking to human being, instead of machine.
   
6. Develop the attitude of being polite, that's inbuilt into the western culture which is kind of rare to find in Indian culutre(No offense please, just my opinion). You will know it only if you expericence it. It does not matter how warm/lovable you are at heart, all that matters is how warm/lovable are while you speak. So, learn how to be polite/warm/affectionate while you speak. That is what basic communication skill is all about. Understand that there is lot of observation going on across the world on Indian Call Centers and be prepared to take the pressure with a smile and attitude.
   
7. Most important thing, you need to be continuous learner. I have read some where that Indians have good knowledge, but they dont' usually participate much in user groups and enhance their konwledge. User groups is the best way to keep yourself at the cutting edge. So start user/study/conversation/book/lecture/seminar/accent groups and participate in them with diligence and make sure that you are at the cutting edge. Ask the best reps in your office to give lectures in those meetings and take tips from them, always appreciate people with knowledge and try to learn from them. If ask them they would love to give it to you. That will help you a lot, this is my personal experience.
   
   
   

These are just some points that came to my mind and hope these help you people to provide a better customer service. I did not include one point above, here it is, develop a attitude of being able to talk causually to the customer, like talking to a friend, instead of being stiff lipped professional. This will bring down the barriers of communication. This is my personal opinion, you can take it if you want.

I guess enough of lecture, and my thirst for giving advice is also quenced by now, so guys rock and roll.

If anybody wants to make any comments/suggestions please feel free to do so and may be forward this link to all your buddies.