How well can your call center agents handle conflicts with customers? Conflicts are unavoidable during customer service interactions. Agents may encounter irate and frustrated customers, or they may run into unreasonable complaints and requests. In these cases, they must be able to communicate clearly with customers so they can reach a common understanding.
Are you screening your prospective employees for these skills? Tech-savviness and language proficiency often top the list of the most desirable qualities of customer support reps. These are the same things that call center managers look for as they aim to build a stellar support team. But as we focus on these qualities alone, are […]
One would think that empathy would come naturally for everyone, as it’s one of the main building blocks of effective communication. But in our modern world, fixation on technology and the continuously shrinking attention span are crippling our ability to understand how others feel. This is bad news for companies—especially call centers—whose success depends on […]
Taking control over a conversation without offending a customer is one of the most important communication skills every support rep must master. For contact centers that receive an overflowing amount of calls, keeping conversations short is crucial. Support reps must solve problems quickly so they can attend to pending customer requests. The tricky part, however, […]
Scripts may be effective in steering conversations in the right direction, but they rarely work for communicating empathy. Empathy, long been regarded as an essential component of successful customer support, makes interactions more meaningful. Taking it out of the equation is like punching a gaping hole right through otherwise productive dialogs. Without it, brands are […]
