6 Ways to Promote your Call Center Culture and Improve your Customer Service

6 Ways to Promote your Call Center Culture and Improve your Customer Service
"The way your employees feel is the way your customers will feel." -Sybil F. Stershic / We really like this quote. We believe that a good call center culture is key to give a great customer service.
We always try to motivate and educate our team to keep our clients happy. Just imagine, every day thousands of calls are made to customers with problems, complaints, questions, or willing to buy something. Customer Service is an everyday activity… Well, not an activity. It is a way of life in contact centers, an attitude.

For this reason, managers must promote the call center culture to provide great customer service. There are many ways to do it. Here we give you 6 simple ways to advocate your customer service call center culture!

1. Hire for soft skills rather than hard skills
Empathy, respect, patience, just to mention a few, are skills that are hard to train but very valuable when it comes to offer great customer service. Therefore, we need to look for soft skills rather than hard skills. You need to hire people that know how to treat people, everything else can be trained. In addition, to keep a strong company culture, you also need to keep in mind the company values when selecting people for your team, since these are going to be the people who will help you reach your vision.

2. Leaders must speak to their team
When teams know they are accomplishing something with their work, they feel more motivated and willing to do things better. To keep your team motivated, always communicate their progress in work and goals, always congratulate them when they achieve something as a team and celebrate them when possible. A message from the C-suite level leaders is very valuable for the team, they feel important and they realize how their efforts contribute to the whole company.

3. Ask agents for improvement feedback
We like to feel recognized, that our voice has power, that our leaders care about what we think and what we do. Sometimes, agents have a better idea about customer concerns and needs, they might know something we are missing in the process or something that we can improve. It is valuable to ask our agents for feedback and implement the best ideas. Companies can also implement a monthly improvement program where agents can suggest ideas to enhance the processes and service.

4. Make sure everyone in the call center knows customer service is a priority
Managers, supervisors and agents are constantly asked to reach numerical goals and it’s is easy to forget that what is most important is customer service. It is important to send this message to all company members. Numbers can stress people and make them have poor interactions with customers. This is not what we want. You can analyze if the metrics you currently have are affecting your level of service. Give incentives for good customer interactions. Make everyone in the call center remember that happy clients are what gives value to the company.

5. Educate your management team
From the moment an agent is hired, we give them training and often we try to keep them updated in processes and systems. But, how constantly do we educate our management team to be better leaders? This needs to be a constant scheduled activity. Managers are the ones that transmit the culture to agents and if they are not into the company culture, we cannot expect our agents to make our customers happy.

6. Offer a great service to your team
Set an example. If you want your agents to give a great service, give them an exceptional one too! Never forget that small things matter. Always say hello with a smile, listen to their complaints, help them, give them answers when they need them, make some time to get to know them better to see what they want and keep them motivated.

It’s not that hard to start, right? There are a lot more things you can do to promote your contact center culture. Share with us what you do or what you want to start doing to improve your customer service culture.

At Call Center Services International we keep our agents motivated to give an exceptional customer service to our client’s customers. Learn more about CCSI’s Mexican contact center workforce here.