With Christmas just a few weeks away, call centers are experiencing an unprecedented volume of customer inquiries, and in today’s ultra competitive marketplace companies just can’t afford the repercussions of poor customer experiences. After all, social media and ratings sites make it easy for consumers to swap stories and discuss their interactions—both good and bad—with an organization. It’s important to remember that despite how wonderful a product or service is, today’s consumers simply won’t spend their hard earned money on poor customer service.

Customer service can be challenging enough -- it’s hard to please everyone -- but adding multiple communication outlets to the mix requires even more ingenuity.

“Trick or Treat?” is a fine question to ask at doors on Halloween night, but when your customers come a knockin’ for service, there should be no response that isn’t a “treat.” In other words, with consumer experiences serving as a major differentiator in today’s marketplace, if you hope to remain competitive, your customers should always be “treated” to excellent service when they reach out to your contact center.

So, how do you make certain you aren’t frightening consumers away with scary, or just plain bad, customer service? The best way to ensure you are offering quality customer interactions is to employ well-trained, highly professional contact center agents. And the most efficient, cost-effective way to coach and train agents is to adopt Click2Coach—contact center software from Envision.

Online self-service is usually very convenient for such processes as checking your bank account anytime, anywhere; refilling a medical prescription with just the click of a button; or finding answers to commonly asked questions on a company website, for example. However, this type of self-service can be frustrating without the right technologies and processes in place.

While voice is still the primary communication channel preferred by consumers, self-service portals are becoming increasingly popular, according to Forrester. In fact, the use of Web self-service is sure to rise in 2014, with 72 percent of businesses already reporting a surge in customers preferring to find answers and resolve issues on their own.

Dealing with medical issues is generally unpleasant—inconvenient and anxiety-producing. Often these issues require repeated visits or phone calls to doctors’ offices and hospitals, which, in and of themselves, are time-consuming and nerve-wracking, nevermind the pain or discomfort the patient is feeling from his or her health concern.

Therefore, due to the “side effects” of their medical condition, patients may be more on edge than the average contact center customer when calling for assistance; after all, these are not your typical contact center inquiries about appliances or tech devices. The gravity of these issues makes customer satisfaction in healthcare a bigger challenge than in other, less personal, industries.

As the “dog days” of summer roll on, providing and improving customer satisfaction grows both more important and difficult. Why? Because scientific research proves that, for many people, as the temperature increases, patience decreases.

If you’ve noticed a little more of an edge in your customers’ voices recently, don’t panic because it may have more to do with the heat than anything your business is or isn’t doing. Still, bearing in mind that people tend to be a little crankier this time of year, it’s important that you have the tools to make sure your agents operate at peak levels. Even when the mercury creeps toward triple digits, improving customer satisfaction should remain a top priority.  

Chances are your sales department uses customer relationship management (CRM) software to manage critical customer data and to streamline business processes. Now think of what CRM can do for your contact center agents when integrated with your existing contact center software. The possibilities are endless.

Eighty percent of companies believe they deliver exceptional customer service, but less than 10 percent of consumers agree. These numbers make it abundantly clear: contact center managers must know how to strategically use customer data in order to understand how their customers truly feel about their company’s quality of service.