Belief in the Concept!

Belief in the Concept!

by Guatecall News

In the previous post we spoke about how a contact center interaction can essentially make or break relationships with customers and/or potential prospects.  We spoke about how many call centers whether on shore, near shore or off shore need to improve their game both through infrastructure as well as processes and personnel.

We touched on the concept that millennials working in call centers today are feeling the pressure of management on one side and customers on the other.  They are looking to earn an honest living and are looking to do just enough to maintain their position and earn a paycheck.

Being that these representatives are the face of the company, we surely expect maximum effort and genuine desire from our agents on every contact whether by phone, chat or email.  So how can we achieve this ideal?  How do we motivate the age group that seems to be unmotivated?

At GuateCall, our Central American contact center in Guatemala, we believe that our people need to be inspired and motivated by a higher purpose.  A higher paycheck is obviously a great place to start and the bigger the pay the more motivation it brings. The question becomes is it the sustainable type of motivation that looks to benefit, not just the “I”, but our customer and our customer’s customer?

We found that a key element in meeting and exceeding our customer’s expectations is by applying the three Beliefs. These beliefs are at the core of our training and are constantly referred to throughout the call center.  They have become part of the culture of our company.

The Three Beliefs are:

–Belief in the Concept

-Belief in the System

-Belief in Yourself

Today we will be discussing the first belief, Belief in the Concept. A typical customer trains our trainers on their company, what they do, how they do it, how long they’ve been doing it and all their systems and processes.  These trainings are obviously a key to understanding our customer’s needs and how to accomplish the tasks necessary.   When these trainings are completed and we establish GuateCall’s trainings to our employees, we have our trainers and managers look at the customer and figure out the “why”.  The “why” this company is needed and what purpose do they serve?  How they benefit the life of their customers and what makes them a “needed” part of the customer’s life?

Once this is figured out, sometimes it could be a bit challenging ;-), we apply these ideas to our training and our Quality Assurance. We also create interactive training sessions that allow our trainees as well as our seasoned agents to come up with their own ideas as to why this company is needed by their clients. They also come up with new benefits that maybe have not been thought of before. We then consistently remind our team about them.  These reminders could come from a team lead mentioning it on the floor, a QA analyst messaging the team or just a quick who has a new benefit they’d like to share with the team message. (Many times those get rewarded with a treat or a round of applause.)

It’s crucial to get a strong buy in from the agents about who they represent and their importance to society.  The key to making this a core belief for the agent is the consistency in which it is discussed.  All ideas are great, but could be easily put in the back of the agents mind if not brought up consistently.

Our next Belief system is the Belief in the System.  This will be discussed in a future post so please look for it on www.guatecall.com .

 

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall. GuateCall is a Near-shore contact center provider of multi-channel bilingual English and Spanish services located In Guatemala, Central America. Whether through voice or chat, we can provide superior services to your organization. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall and Call Center services in Latin America, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222 or by e-mail perry@guatecall.com.

 

 

 

Contact Center Solutions

Contact Center Solutions

by Guatecall News

Contact Center Solutions and interactions can essentially make or break relationships with customers and/or potential prospects.

That’s a scary thought when we consider that most companies contact center solutions infrastructure is out of date, under budgeted and in desperate need of upgrades in hardware, processes and personnel training.

Major decisions need to be made about how to tackle these issues.

I’m not a hardware guy but am thankful to our amazing IT team that keeps up with the latest and greatest and keeps our systems running smoothly and efficiently.

What I do know a little bit about is contact center solutions processes, training and especially working with people.  With a large percentage of contact center solutions employees being millennials, the usual this is how the company does it and this is what we expect schpil followed up by all types of measurements for conformity will not win brownie points with contact center solutions employees and for sure not give the level of service today’s customer demands.

To address this in our contact center solutions company, we implemented the Three Beliefs.  These Beliefs are the core of our interaction with our clients and with our client’s customers.  Our employees embrace them and they are consistently spoken about during training and daily interaction. They are one of the main reason’s we consistently provide services that meet and exceed the expectations of even our most demanding clients.

The Three Beliefs are:

–Belief in the Concept

-Belief in the System

-Belief in Yourself

I will write a paper on each of these Beliefs as each is so vital to the success of our customers. Look for a follow up post on our blog at www.guatecall.com in the coming days. It will give more of an insight as to how these beliefs allow our team to deliver outstanding customer satisfaction and increased revenue for our clients.

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall. GuateCall is a Near-shore contact center provider of multi-channel bilingual services located In Guatemala, Central America. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222 or by e-mail perry@guatecall.com.

It’s Not The Call Center – It’s The Company

It’s Not The Call Center – It’s The Company

by Guatecall News

Companies are spending lots of time and money trying to increase customer engagement and sales.  There are new roles, departments, endless meetings.  There are new tools, new metrics, gamification, QA structures, bonuses, Multi-lingual service. The list goes on and on.

Yet with all of that, customers are generally dissatisfied with the service they receive when reaching out to companies via phone or chat.  More than that, customer service representatives are generally just as excited to give exceptional service as the client is to reach out to the company (a bit of sarcasm).

So why is this the case?  First thing that comes to my mind is Classical conditioning, think Pavlov’s dogs.  If you’re not familiar with this term, look up Pavlov’s dogs on the internet.  It’s a study done in the late 1800s by a Russian physiologist named Ivan Pavlov. (Pause here and read up on it if you don’t already know.) Customers today are conditioned to assume they will receive an uninterested, unknowledgeable, scripted customer service representative on the phone or web-chat and the customer service agent is assuming they will get more complaints, more issues and generally just wants to do good enough to hit his metrics, get good QA scores and make a living.

So what is a business to do?  How do we break this cycle?

From a call center operations perspective it’s nice to think that the reason that people don’t do what you need them to do, or conform to your standards, or make good choices is simply that they don’t know enough.  If the problem is a lack of knowledge than its easy to give more training, give them a couple of tests to make sure they got it and you’re good to go.

What about those dreaded employees who constantly show up a few minutes late to their station to log in? Oh, that’s easy you say. Just let them know that being late isn’t allowed.  Give a DP. Threaten to fire them if this happens. It tends to fix the issue.

The thing is all these and more are symptoms of a bigger issue. Your reps most likely view their job as a temporary necessity.  They want to do what is expected and get paid.  They don’t necessarily care about the same things that the company cares about and the reason they don’t care isn’t that they don’t know what you know or can’t figure out how to show up to work five minutes earlier.

The challenge for a company is to understand their call center IS their touch-point with the customer.  It is the key to customer experience and must be treated, not as a necessary evil that constantly gets budget cuts, but as a marketing opportunity that can be utilized to increase company revenue and customer satisfaction.

A great way to start making a change is to educate our people about our belief systems.  What is it that we care about as a company? What DRIVES us, what’s our PURPOSE  and WHY it matters.  This coupled with great training, good pay, fun atmosphere and a SINCERE caring for our people, not only in words but by action, will help drive a change in the culture of the contact center. Invest in the contact center and watch a truly measurable difference occur.  Not in your KPI’s, but  in your company’s bottom line.

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall. GuateCall is a Near-shore contact center provider of multi-channel bilingual English / Spanish services located In Guatemala, Central America. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222  or by e-mail perry@guatecall.com

Customer Experience in Latin America

Customer Experience in Latin America

by Guatecall News

It all started with a phone call I received today. On the other side of the line was a great guy that I met in Guatemala, Central America a couple of years back (Joe). We exchanged small talk for a while about family and life in general and then we got to the reason for his call. Joe was presented a job offer to sell call center services in the New York City area. He remembered that I was in the contact center industry so he was hoping I could share some insights and experience and help him get a head start in his new call center career. I was more than happy to help.

The first thing I needed to establish was where the outsourced call center was located. I was told it was nearshore in Latin America. He was excited to mention that since he knew GuateCall (our outsource contact center) was also located in a nearshore Central American country, Guatemala. He knew I would understand the market and the capabilities of the call center industry in the Americas.

However, I cautioned him not to bundle all contact center capabilities and services of the Americas together and not to make generalizations about nearshore outsourcing. At GuateCall, our customer service capabilities and culture are very different from many business process outsource centers I know.

I gave an example of two different restaurants on the same street. Restaurant “A” had great food and great customer service and Restaurant “B” had average food, decent staff and was pretty much marginal. Their location was the same, but Restaurant “A”, with the great food & staff, clearly had management that created a culture in which the employees could thrive and succeed in. The employees took ownership and pride in their work and it showed in the customer experience at the restaurant. While I acknowledged that the pool of workers in an area makes a difference, I still stuck to my original premise that the main difference between one company/ restaurant/ call center and the next is the culture on the floor that is implemented by management. It’s the law of “sow and reap”. What management is invested in will clearly show in the end product.

I then proceeded to ask him about the “type” of customer he was targeting. He mentioned that in New York City there are a lot of companies and vendors selling on Amazon.com and he thought he could take advantage of this market by offering them an agent taking customer service calls and responding to emails. He envisioned one agent servicing 2-3 different vendors.

I’m well aware of many contact centers that offer this type of “shared services” and even though I understand the financial reasons for wanting to opt for this type of service, I explained to Joe that GuateCall won’t take on that kind of business. There was just complete silence on the other side of the phone. He asked me why I would be willing to turn down good business.

I again gave him Restaurants A & B on the same street example. A good nearshore contact center that delivers excellent customer service cannot be all things to all people. The culture that management has implemented on the floor of the call center and how that translates to servicing clients defines who your customers are and if they meet your profile.

As an example, a vendor sells a product on Amazon.com and for whatever reason, the consumer wants to return it. A canned call center response could be sent with no issue. However, going a step above could be reaching out to the customer to understand the reason for the return request and finding an alternate solution. Going one step further still would be to understand the product lines thoroughly and be able to give better product recommendations based on that knowledge and possibly even creating multiple sales (up-selling and cross-selling) from the customer interaction.

A follow up call to make sure the customer was happy with their new products would most likely win over this client for future purchases. It could also create referral business.

Today, retail space is so competitive and pricing is very transparent. Companies are looking for ways to differentiate themselves from their competition. Taking a page from Zappos.com, I believe the best way to go about this competitive edge is excellent customer service. Consumers want to be serviced on their terms: voice, chat, email and social network. They don’t want to sit on the call que, they want to make the most of their time and they for sure want to speak to someone that can give them more than a canned response. Consumers can tell if they are speaking to a knowledgeable person or just another “call center agent”.

Being in the contact center business, I am constantly being told about all the negative interactions people have with call centers, especially foreign ones. However, once they learn that there are different types of contact centers with different quality levels: with very little or no accents; are knowledgeable about the products they represent and with immediate response times, they tend to be more open to the nearshore outsourcing concept.

I go on to explain to Joe that outsourcing is the same as any other business. There are call centers that specialize in different industries and there are higher quality, average quality and lower quality call centers.

I also mention that service levels go hand in hand with the commitment of the company that outsourced to the call center. How much do they want to invest in their customers? How much time and training and continual training of employees they decide on can be a huge game changer. Not only training that is based on the products or systems, but also training the mentality of the call and how to listen beyond the words being said. Training that puts yourself in the customers’ shoes and figuring out how to go that extra mile. Reinforcement of those trainings on all interactions on the floor from team leads, quality assurance as well as team agents, to make the customer service experience exceptional.
A great fit between the client, the call center and the end consumer ensures this.

Concluding my conversation with Joe, I encouraged him to speak with the manager of the call center he would potentially be representing. To have an open and honest conversation to make sure he understands their culture, their service levels and what their true capabilities are. This way he can focus on the proper target market for the contact center he is representing. All services are not created equal… here is to Joe finding the right clients with the right needs for his new adventure.

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall. GuateCall is a Near-shore contact center provider of multi-channel bilingual services located In Guatemala, Central America. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222 Ext 116 or by e-mail.

GuateCall – A NearShore BPO with Happy Customers

GuateCall – A NearShore BPO with Happy Customers

by Guatecall News

We believe that every point of contact, from our employees, to our clients and their customers, is an opportunity to make a positive impact on people’s lives. We do this by working as a seamless extension of your team. We integrate our services and management to work hand-in-hand with yours, at every point of contact.

Our employees become your brand advocates.
Our management team looks for ways to benefit our clients and their customers.
Our environment is conducive to happy and lateral-thinking employees.

In short, GuateCall creates positive customer interactions.

Our team understands the value of a happy customer and the efforts needed to maintain this relationship. In every point of contact we strive to deliver a service that exceeds your expectations, thus elevating your brand and identity.

Some of our Services Include:

Inbound and Outbound Live Agent Support
Customer Service
Up-Sell and Cross-Sell
Retention Programs
E-mail and Chat Solutions
Business to Business Programs (including Demand Generation & Appointment Setting)
Spanish Language Support
Win-Back Programs
Satisfaction Surveys
Market Research
Lead Generation and Qualification
Dispatch Services

We are conveniently located in Guatemala City in Central America – a short flight from multiple cities in the USA. We are Central Standard Time half the year and Mountain Time for Daylight Saving time.

Guatemala Offers:

Robust Telecommunications Infrastructure
Proximity and quick response to demands
Availability of high quality/lower cost employees.
Ability to service the Spanish-speaking American market!
World class facilities
Cultural affinity to the United States and Canada

We look forward to speaking with you about your specific needs and encourage you to try our company for yourself.

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall. GuateCall is a Near-shore contact center provider of multi-channel bilingual services located In Guatemala, Central America. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222 Ext 116 or by e-mail perry@guatecall.com.

Latin America- Fastest Growing Outsourcing Destination

Latin America- Fastest Growing Outsourcing Destination

by Guatecall Inspiration News

With demand for a better customer service experience at an all time high, companies are finding the need to outsource more of their multi channel customer services to contact centers that have the experience necessary to handle the heightened demand of today’s customers.

The global market for outsourcing is rapidly expanding and near shore locations such as Latin America and specifically Central America have become a go-to area for outsourcing services such as Voice, Email and Chat.

Guatemala and specifically Guatemala City, with its advanced technology and highly skilled and educated workforce, has become a go-to destination for some of the top companies in the United States and Canada.

Major outsources are servicing the American as well as Canadian markets and now are expanding to the European markets.  Telus, EGS, Allied Global, Xerox, Genpact, Capgemini, 247 Customer &  Intouch are some of the bigger players in the Guatemalan market today.

GuateCall, a boutique contact center also located in Guatemala City, is uniquely situated in this Central American market and offers companies looking for a higher end customer service experience at an affordable price an opportunity to outsource services to a nearshore location.

There are some major overall benefits when outsourcing to Latin America and specifically Guatemala, Central America.

  • Guatemalan people are known for their customer service skills and that mentality is a major benefit when the needs for quality customer service experiences is at an all time high.
  • Guatemala has a very neutral accent so customer service representatives are much easier to understand and speak with than Indian or other call Centers in the industry.
  • Guatemala not only has a clearer accent in English but is known to have the most neutral accent Spanish in Central America as well. This allows bilingual conversation to flow smoothly no matter which region a Hispanic customer is calling from.
  • The Geographic proximity to the United States and Canada is a great benefit for Latin American outsourcing. Guatemala is Central time zone located and just a short flight for multiple cities in the U.S.

If your customer service experience is in need of some extra help and are looking to increase customer loyalty, referral business and retention of clients in this highly competitive marketplace, feel free to reach out to us to learn how customer service from GuateCall can differentiate your company from its competitors at an affordable price!

 

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall.  GuateCall is a contact center in nearshore Latin American/ Central America. Our call center is a provider of multi-channel bilingual English and Spanish services located In Guatemala. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall and its services in voice, chat or email in both English and Spanish, pleas reach out to me at 713-474-2222 Ext 116 or by e-mail.

The Life of the Customer

The Life of the Customer

by Guatecall Inspiration News

Companies are realizing that customer satisfaction is a key to growing their business. With the cost of gaining a new customer on the rise and with the many options customers have of where to spend their hard earned money, emphasis is being placed on increasing the customer experience at every touch point. Multi channel service is growing rapidly via phone, email, chat, social media and face to face interactions.

Within these channels, many companies have formed teams of specialists to service the customer to the best of their abilities. Even specialized teams within teams are created, ie sales teams, retention teams, escalation teams, dispatch teams, follow up and survey teams and the list goes on. The purpose of each is to create and maintain a happy customer who will continue to do business with the brand and create future referrals.

Company management will often be the first to tell you that they are all about customer satisfaction. In the quest to increase customer satisfaction many have been measuring the quality of each interaction with the customer by implementing internal and external quality assurance teams, CSAT surveys etc.

So why do so many companies lose business even though their customer satisfaction scores show positive results?   I’m reminded of the lecture I saw on Ted Talk when Simon Sinek said “Customers don’t buy your products or services, they buy how you make them feel.”

The thing with feelings is that they change over time. With all the different departments and the way customers have to interact with a company, management needs to create a “feeling” that is consistent among all channels through all customer interactions. More than that, when a person from a sales department speaks to a prospective customer, the feeling that the customer gets should be the same as when the next sales person receives a call from the same customer and more than that, if that same prospect sends an email or a web chat, that same feeling should resonate.  Easier said than done, yes, but  companies willing to invest in the total customer experience will reap the rewards of more business from existing clients as well as a boost in referral business.

Two examples come to mind.  I was having lunch with a few friends yesterday and one said that he’s looking to replace the windows in his home.   He remembered one of the guys at the table had just put in new windows less than a year ago, so his questions to him went something like this: “So I’m looking to replace my windows and I spoke to a couple different companies and I’m getting quotes and stories that are all over the place.  You just replaced your windows, didn’t you?  Who did you use?  Do you trust them?  Would you recommend I use them or in hind sight use someone else?  Did you have any leaks later and how quickly did they fix it?  I was also told that lifetime warranties are just a sales gimmick so I don’t think that really matters.”

Now being that I’m in the contact and call center industry and part of a company that is nearshore in Latin America and since we have an account that deals in residential services (not windows) and we handle their phone sales and customer service and also dispatch their contractors, handle their social media, respond to the emails, chat services as well as follow up survey for after job satisfaction, I was very interested in where this conversation was going!

The response was that he wouldn’t go out on a limb and recommend anyone.  He got quotes from three different companies and went with one of them. They were pretty good.  The salesperson gave him a good deal and at least he didn’t have to watch the installers while they were working because it seemed like they were doing a thorough and clean job.  As far as leaks, he had a window that leaked a few months in and after a couple of calls they came out and fixed it free of charge.  He said “You know how these things go.  To go out and install new windows they’re quick, but on warranties you need to hound them a bit to get what you need done.  It’s just how it works in these types of industries”.

It’s just how it works in these types of industries. Really?  “Why should it be like that in these types of industries?” I interjected.
“Because they already made their money on the sale” he responds, “now everything else takes away from the bottom line. So when I call sales I get an answer right away, but to get a person to service me after the job is done, I tend to call a couple of times, stay on hold for a while… but it doesn’t matter, I’m persistent.  They get it done eventually.”

It would have been great for the window company to be in on this lunch.  A person just asked his friend for a referral on a 20-30k job and since the follow up was ok, he didn’t get a rave review.  The feeling the company has left an existing customer was OK.  It wasn’t that he was dissatisfied.  It wasn’t that he wasn’t going to do business with them in the future, but he clearly was not a raving fan.  He was not an advocate for the business and did not refer them business.

Today’s challenge for companies is to see and measure the customer satisfaction through the life of the customer.  Every point of contact matters.  Teams must communicate the same message to their customers through all points of contact during all stages of the customer interaction. They must identify what that customer cycle is and truly understand how they are perceived in that cycle today. Then they should measure their performance in that cycle and build cross-functional teams to support those functions that need improvement as well as build open channels of communication between teams.

As best-selling marketing author Seth Godin wrote:
“Don’t touch it, you might break it.” This is, of course, the opposite of, “Touch it, you can make it better.” What’s the default where you work?

So go out there and create a process to support and enhance those customer life cycles and create a culture of constant improvement.

 

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall.  Our contact center is a Latin American Nearshore call center provider of multi-channel bilingual English and Spanish services located In Guatemala,Central America. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall and its services in voice, chat and email in both English and Spanish, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222 or by e-mail.