The first step for any call center is hiring the right representatives. The second is giving them the right tools to do the job. A predictive dialer is the best tool for a call center agent as it speeds up efficiency, productivity and eliminates downtime. Significant attention is always necessary in hiring the call center professionals and some things to look at when using a predictive dialer is typing speed, accurateness, computer literacy, as well as previous industry experience. To offer the best support for clients, call center agents should have adequate knowledge of the services and products they are offering. Having a well thought out training program will lead to improved preparation and is necessary to get the customer’s questions appropriately answered. Increased performance and productivity of a call center can be achieved by employing quality agents that use a predictive dialer.
Here are some of the different uses of a predictive dialer:
1) Business events
2) New manufactured goods marketing
3) Extraordinary sales announcements
4) Purchaser surveys
5) Elector registration
6) Community announcements
7) Fundraising
8) Service pickup/delivery phone notifications
9) Service reminders
Predictive dialers are the most commonly used dialers in call centers. These are automated dialing systems which place calls by dialing numbers without human intervention on behalf of the company and helps to manage the calling list with a CRM. When manually dialing agents often encounter problems of undeliverable calls such as no answers, busy, fax, or some other issue where the call cannot be completed. A predictive dialer skips over all of these calls allowing the representatives to take care of the person on the line while the dialer brings another individual on the line. This saves a great deal of time and allows the agents to handle more prospects with hardly any downtime.
Successful call center executives know how to increase and sustain customer relations. Having a sociable and welcoming individual on the line ready to talk to prospects and customers is a necessity. The representative needs to know how to sell to customers and negotiate issues. They should be watchful of the fact that an existing customer is always easier to retain, no matter how much he/she is difficult to deal with. Good agents are able to calm the tension of the person on the call, and better the chances of retaining them. Sufficient knowledge of phone manners is also fairly significant for a customer care representative. If an executive is knowledgeable in these skills, he/she would be able to turn every incoming or outgoing call into an opportunity.
The responsibility of a customer care representative is to communicate with clients and potential clients. Good communication skills become an indispensable characteristic of the successful agent. A good communicator is a good listener as well. The agent should have enough patience to listen to all that a customer has to say, and then offer a practical solution to the problem. Customers want themselves to be heard. This is the reason they prefer speaking to live agents rather than with an automated system. A quality agent should be cognizant of this and keep listening and comprehending as the first steps in any conversation.