Author: XACT

There’s a lot of training that can help an agent become great at customer service and representing a brand. Agents need to know how to use the technology involved. They need to know what solutions they’re allowed to offer. In addition, they need to be well-versed in the brand’s services and/or products. But, beyond that, they also need to have a few soft skills. These are the skills that will define whether they’re an OK agent or a great agent. But soft skills aren’t easily learned by just reading a how-to. It takes some training. That’s why, at XACT, we include soft skills in our comprehensive training. We know that it’s essential for excellent customer service.

What are some of the soft skills that make an agent great? Here are a few of them:

Tone of voice: You may have heard this saying before, “it’s not what you said, it’s how you said it.” The tone of a person’s voice can change the whole meaning of what is being said. That’s why it’s important that customer service agents learn how to use the right tone in every situation.

Empathy: Service agents need to learn how to be empathetic towards customers. When someone reaches out to a company it’s because they want something. Maybe an item arrived damaged or they have a question about a product, as an agent, you need to listen and show genuine concern for the customer. When a customer feels cared about, it will increase the likelihood that they’ll remain loyal and even recommend the brand to others.

Positive attitude: Agents need to learn how to have a good attitude, this can mean learning how to control emotions when customers reach out to them with a heated demeanor. Customer service agents also need to learn how to use positive language in order to better assist customers.

Active listening: Customers get frustrated when they have to repeat themselves. Agents should be skilled in active listening so that customers feel heard and receive the best solutions.

Effective communication: As a customer service agent, it’s important to know how to effectively communicate with a customer. The right balance needs to be found between saying too much and saying too little. Customers should know exactly what to expect and be able to understand what is being said. Your words should communicate clearly without being confusing.

Mastering these soft skills can help agents better assist customers and help brands maintain a great reputation. That’s why, at XACT, we include this as part of our training program. Learn more about the customer service solutions we have to offer and our comprehensive training by reaching out to us at (877) 922-8877.

You can do several things as a business to help achieve greater success. Things like staffing an excellent management team, concentrating on customer needs, focusing on employee retention and coming up with new ideas can aid the growth of your company.

However, you can also stunt the growth of your company. Things like losing customers, not having access to the latest technology and overworking your internal staff can hurt the business.

This is where outsourcing comes in.

It can be dangerous to rely solely on internal staff to keep customers happy unless you have a huge business with many agents available 24/7. Even so, it could be more costly to hire enough agents internally to handle customer demands than to outsource simply. Inevitably, if you don’t have enough agents, though, your internal staff will end up overworked, and you will most likely lose some customers because of a lack of availability.

What is the result of not having enough agents available?

Your overworked internal staff will be less satisfied with their job. This can lead to a more significant turnover rate. Also, overworked staff members will feel less productive and more irritable (from the stress). An agent who handles stress/irritability will have less patience when working with customers. When a frustrated customer calls in, this can lead to greater stress on the agent and the potential for an exasperated problem if the agent loses their cool.

Customers also want and expect quick answers and solutions.

They want to reach out to a business when it’s convenient for them. If you don’t have enough agents, you won’t offer 24/7 support. There will also be longer wait times as customers try desperately to reach out to someone for assistance.

When the internal staff is overworked, there will be less focus on customer communication. These staff members will have other priorities they need to accomplish as well. As a result, some calls and emails may get missed. Calls may also be hurried along, resulting in potential miscommunication.

Outsourcing your customer solutions can solve these problems.

The right company can also offer the latest technology, allowing you to stay more competitive with your customer service offerings.

If you’d like to know more about how an outsourcing partner could assist you and what technology is available, please reach out to us at (877) 922-8877. We’d love to help your business grow!

Some businesses can halt their growth by trying to do everything internally. While it may seem like it’s better for businesses to keep everything in-house, the opposite can be true.

When you try to keep everything internally, it can overload the current staff members, cost the business more money and stunt growth. But, when you outsource certain tasks, you can free up more employees to handle essential responsibilities.

It also allows you to accomplish more of your goals and meet the growing customer demand. On top of all of this, it helps increase customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction can result in higher customer retention as well as acquisition.

At XACT, we know this to be true, which is why we offer several services that can help you expand. Here are five ways we can help your business grow:

Customer Help Desk

We offer a multi-channel help desk solution for organizations looking to provide top-tier service and support. Our specialists can assist your callers with common and uncommon questions. We’re available to assist with multiple methods of support.

Chat and Web Support

When your customers are online and need assistance, it’s paramount that your customer support solution offers easy, innovative and flexible ways of supporting your product or service. That’s why we offer assistance at the click of the mouse or a screen tap. Our technology, as well as our expertise, can integrate that seamlessly into your application, website or communication solution.

Our chat technology, integrated directly with our skill-based routing omnichannel environment, directs your requests to agents efficiently and effectively. We design the look and feel of the chat interface to match the colors and tone of your site or application.

Short message service (SMS) is easily the fastest growing method of communication today. We can provide a short code (6 digits or less) or use your existing support number and enable SMS, instantly allowing your number to be both phone and SMS enabled. By offering text or call, your customer has both flexibility and choice.

Outbound Survey/Response

We can help your organization reach customers in more effective ways than ever. Using our tools and technology, we can engineer campaigns to market, survey, respond and interact.

Service and Support Dispatch

Our Service and Support Dispatch solutions are designed to get time-sensitive, critical information out to your teams quickly, assuring support is only a phone call, email, SMS or chat away.

Telephone Answering Services

Our answering service solutions can provide coverage and customer support that might ordinarily be out of reach for most small businesses trying to hire full-time, in-house employees. With XACT, you can provide customers with friendly, professional answers even when you’re not available. You can also rely on us to get the message exactly how you want it (by phone, fax, email, SMS or through our customer portal).

Learn more about all of the services we have to offer by reaching out to us at 877.XACT-877. We’d love to discuss your unique needs and how our solutions can help your business grow.

Have you ever had this experience? You have to phone your mobile phone company because you went over your data limit and want to upgrade your plan. After a brief discussion with a call center employee, you are interrupted by work and decide to pick it up another time.

Later that day, you have a few free minutes at your work computer. You choose to do a little more research on data options on your cell phone company’s website. As you are searching, the chat feature pops up, and you begin another conversation with another customer service agent who reviews the notes from your last interaction. He or she helps you upgrade your plan to add more data. Ahh…convenience!

The days of customer service issues being resolved exclusively over the phone are a remnant of the past. Customers want solutions fast. They want to communicate with companies in a way that’s convenient for them. They expect that whatever way they contact a business, a record of their previous interactions will be kept. And they expect the experience to be top-notch. That’s why you need to offer omnichannel customer service.

Omnichannel customer service unifies a customer’s experience. If you offer text, chat, email, and/or phone support and answer questions and comments from social channels promptly, that’s multi-channel. If you offer a number of options and more — including support agents who have access to all of their previous chat, email, social media, and phone call records and who work hard to engage the customer seamlessly to resolve any problems or concerns — that’s omnichannel.

Providing an integrated customer service system that offers your customers choices in how they communicate with you is critical in today’s world. It’s one component of offering high-quality customer service that helps attract and retain customers. The key with any omnichannel customer service effort is making sure that customer service inquiries are handled by cheerful, helpful and knowledgeable staff, however customers contact your company. Having the right people and providing them with the right technology and tools is critical. Training and investing in your customer service team has never been more important.

Now, more than ever, customer service — and choices in how customers can access it — is critical to customer retention and loyalty. Today’s consumers expect more from their customer service experience. If you don’t have the ability to deliver a top-notch omnichannel experience, partner with a company that can deliver it. Learn more about us on our website: https://www.myxact.com/

Have you ever worked with a customer service agent to only end up being more frustrated? Maybe the agent asked you to repeat yourself one too many times. Maybe you simply didn’t feel heard or maybe you left with an unresolved question/problem. There are many reasons that you could have walked away with a heightened frustration. In that instance, did you want to do business with the company again or did that want you to go elsewhere?

It’s much easier to do business with a company that offers great service. You can rest easy when a problem or a question does arise because you know it will be taken care of. However, not all companies invest in experienced and trained agents. Training takes time and hiring multiple full-time customer service representatives can take more money than the budget may allow. That’s where outsourcing comes in. It can be an affordable way for companies to invest in trained agents.

When you choose the right outsourcing company you can bet that the agents will be trained and that makes all the difference. Great training helps agents build more knowledge of how to handle any situation that may come their way, so they’re prepared and not simply reacting to a customer when something unexpected comes up. It also helps an agent better represent a company by taking time to learn their brand voice.

Training helps representatives truly understand what customer service is all about. They can become better listeners, learn how to use the latest technology, how to respond to various situations, how to start and close conversations successfully, etc.

When customer service agents get exceptional training, they are able to improve customer satisfaction. They are better equipped to handle the calls, emails, texts, etc. with patience, knowledge and understanding. Customers will leave more impressed and less frustrated with the company. These representatives can actually turn frustration into satisfaction. They can give customers a great experience with the company, building up the business’s reputation. And satisfied customers will be more likely to stick around as well as applaud your services online through positive reviews.

Customer service is a learned skill. It’s something that shouldn’t be handed over to just anyone because it can make or break a company. That’s why it’s essential that you invest in agents who are thoroughly trained and able to build your brand up.

At XACT, you can count on this. We invest time into training and knowledge development so that our agents are able to represent companies and assist customers in the best way possible. Learn more by checking out our website today.