Providing good customer service to customers in any situation is necessary for any call center. This is the reason call centers invest in talented agents, the best call center solution, etc. At the time similar to the COVID 19 pandemic, it becomes even more crucial for call centers offer exceptional customer services. People are panicking and looking for answers to their queries.
On the other side, call centers are dealing with multiple challenges. One of the major challenges is the shortage of money because of tighter government rules, declining business, and more. One of the solutions to balance the situation is applied by many call centers is that they are removing agents. It is necessary to keep agents because it is necessary to provide good customer services. Still, if you are running or managing a call center and removing agents or if you are facing an increased number of calls and cannot hire more agents, in this article, you will learn how to handle calls with agent shortage.
- Use Automation available in the call center solution
A call center solution offers a wide array of features to benefit call centers with amazing benefits. There are many features available in this software which offers automation. For example, call broadcasting and SMS broadcasting features can be used to send common information to all the customers with a single click. It ensures that the customers do not call in the call centers for that. The nested interactive voice response helps in answering all frequently asked questions and much more.
- Increase working hours with overtime pay
If you are working with the limited staff and not able to serve all the customers, then it is necessary to increase the working hours. As mentioned earlier, it is necessary to serve the customers and maintain a good customer relationship. As per the experts, the recession has begun and people have started losing jobs and business. Thus, maintaining good customer relationships can help in retaining business as well. To make sure all customers are served, if you need to extend the working hours, you should not hesitate. Also, to be fair, and to keep agents motivated to work well, do not forget to give them overtime pay.
The call rush might be temporary and hiring new agents might not be a good idea. On the other hand, you also need to serve customers. Thus, increasing working hours and paying overtime to the existing agents would be a wise choice.
- Go remote
Regardless of the pandemic situation, going remote is advantageous for call centers. The call center software providers have started offering the “Work from Home” add-on and cloud call center solutions. Adopting this will let your agents save time and money on commute so they can work longer. On the other hand, you can save money on managing on-premises call center staff, infrastructure, so on and so forth. Thus, going remote and working virtually until the market comes to the normal would be a great idea. The call centers can serve customers with limited staff and increased ROI.