The Top Mistakes Agents Make
by admin on 01/12/11 at 2:38 am
The call center profession can be a very tedious job.
While it provides an avenue for human interaction, compared to the soulless task of say, data encoding or number crunching, often it’s the social interaction itself that is the biggest source of stress for call center agents. After all, you can only listen to so many screams, insults, and Fidel Castro-style one hour monologues before you throw the headset on the floor and walk away.
And yet, this same source of frustration is the very essence of the industry. Being a call center representative is like being a doctor: your job is to help people, no matter what the problem is and how bad it gets.
With your duty clear, here are some of the mistakes that agents commonly make.
Being too technical
The call center world is full of jargon. Whether it’s VoIP or ACD, telling your customer that ATB (all trunks are busy) and you will give them the BTTC (best time to call) can be frustrating for the caller, not because he has to call back but because he doesn’t even understand what you’re saying.
Remember to come off your technological high horse when dealing with customers. If there’s one acronym you should remember on the customer side, its KISS:
Keep it short and simple, stupid.
Too long-winded
Like the drive-through guy at McDonalds, a lot of agents have a pre-memorized spiel when taking calls.
This is fine in terms of efficiency, but it when every response has been preset, you might be taking things a little too far. For instance, many call center reps answer a short question with a very long answer, because “that’s what instructor used”. But it isn’t necessary to follow the line word by word. A short answer will suffice, or better yet, one that follows the rule book but not the very same sentence.
You are not answering machine, so think of your responses before talking automatically.
Robotic tone
Like the pre-memorized response, delivering your answers in a robotic, soulless tone is also a no-no.
In fact, it’s just as bad the cheery artificial optimism demanded by some call center companies, the one where the agent is obviously smiling through their teeth at gunpoint. Learn to balance between these two extremes, and adjust your tone of voice depending on the situation at hand.
Asking pointless questions
Let’s face it: from time to time, you do the same.
It might be because the system is taking too long to load, or you just want to cover all the possible bases. Our advice: don’t.
If you want to pass the time, tell the customers the truth: the system is still loading. Meanwhile, you can show your human side and ask how their day went or compliment their corporate housing Austin pad or product choice. Don’t clutter their mind with more questions that you really don’t need.
