These days, it seems like good help is hard to find when it comes to growing and sustaining a retail business or brand. As your online competition and customer expectations continue to grow, extending your current workforce is a smart move. Outsourcing call center services that cater specifically to retail businesses ensures that your customers are well taken care of, increases customer acquisition and retention rates, and keeps your operational costs low. When it comes to retail, call centers offer exceptional helpdesk support and close pending tickets a lot faster.
As a business owner or manager, you know that the quality of customer support you offer is crucial to the growth and survival of your business. Call centers offer quick, easy, and responsive email, phone, and live chat support so your customer inquiries are handled in a timely manner.
The quality and level of customer service you offer can make or break your business. Statistics show that customers are willing to pay more for better quality service that includes offering quick resolutions to their inquiries or problems. All it takes is one bad experience for customers to abandon ship and switch to your competitors instead and this can decrease your customer lifetime value significantly.
The best way to remedy customer issues quickly is to hire a professional retail call center service that can meet your business needs. Here are a few tips for choosing a reputable and reliable call center service that caters specifically to the retail industry.
Ask the Right Questions
Partnering with a retail call center is just like hiring any other employee. Asking the right questions during the interviewing process will give you a good insight into how each prospective call center operates and whether they’ll be able to accommodate your needs. Here are a few questions you should consider asking:
What Is Their Hiring Process?
A business is only as good as the employees they hire. In order to hire quality employees and customer service representatives, call centers need to have thorough and rigorous hiring processes that actively weed out unlikely candidates and highlight top talent. You only want the best of the best customer service agents representing your business.
All candidates should have a minimum of five years experience working in the retail industry in customer-facing positions to qualify. The call center should also perform comprehensive background checks and offer in-depth training so each candidate is well-versed in your business protocols and policies.
Do They Focus Specifically on the Retail Industry?
Hiring a call center that specializes in the retail industry ensures that their customer support team has the right type of experience to handle your customers. Customer service agents who are trained and have experience working in the retail industry can answer questions and address concerns with exceptional authority. Specializing in a specific industry empowers customer service agents to engage in knowledgeable interactions with your customers and provide them with the information they’re looking for. It also helps them establish a stronger customer rapport and build up loyalty.
How Do They Treat Their Employees?
Employee morale is a good indicator of the level of service quality you can expect to receive from a retail call center. Happy employees that have all of the necessary resources, software, and training required to perform their jobs translates into greater productivity, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. These are people who actually care about their jobs and the success of the company that they work for and it shows in how they treat customers and engage with them.
Make sure that the call center you hire offers excellent pay and benefits packages to ensure employee satisfaction and low attrition rates. Beware if a call center has high attrition rates as this is a sign of a potentially toxic or unpleasant work environment that can impact their customer interactions and experiences.
Define Your Retail Business Goals
Before you can successfully outsource a prominent call center to represent your business, it’s important to define the parameters and goals of your company. What are you hoping to achieve with your business? What is your timeline for achieving those goals? Are you interested in increasing online interactions?
Are you an e-commerce retail business that wants to boost website traffic and online sales? Or are you planning on launching a new product or service in the near future that needs to be promoted? Having a clear vision of what your business goals are enables the call center you partner with to help you create a custom roadmap to achieving those goals. Retail industry-oriented call centers have immense expertise to help you scale your business and customer base, but you have to provide them with a little direction.
Understand Your Business Demographic
Before you can entrust your business dealings to a third-party entity, you need to conduct thorough market research that enables you to define and understand your business demographic. Who do your products and services cater to the most? Demographics are defined by age, socioeconomic circumstances, and geographical locations of your base clientele. Defining your key demographic makes it easier to find a suitable retail call center that can cater to their needs, especially their language requirements.
English and French are Canada’s official languages. To cater to a Canadian audience on a widespread scale, it would therefore be helpful to hire a call center that hires representatives that are fluent in both languages.
Retail Call Center Support from 3C Contact Services
As a leading call center support provider in North America, 3C Contact Services has revolutionized the way in which the retail industry operates and manages customer interactions. We offer a wide range of remote customer support services that can be custom-tailored according to the requirements of your business and customers. Contact us today to learn more.
