Feeling overwhelmed by frustrated callers and endless queues 😩? – Providing exceptional customer service through a call center requires more than just a smile and a phone ☎️.
Managing multiple calls, digging through knowledge bases, and trying to resolve complex issues can lead to agent burnout and customer dissatisfaction.
👉 To mitigate these issues, businesses must invest in the right call center software to equip their agents with the latest features to deliver exceptional customer service 🤩.
Dive into our blog featuring the 12 Best Call Center Tools for support agents in 2024. Discover how these tools can boost your agent’s performance, streamline workflows, increase first-call resolution rates, and impress your customers with your service! 👇
🔑 KEY HIGHLIGHTS
- Call analytics and reporting allow you to identify trends, measure performance metrics, and gain insights into customer behavior.
- Seamless integration with CRM systems provides deeper insights into customers and helps to tailor personalized interactions.
- Call Recording allows supervisors to monitor agents’ performance and identify areas for improvement.
- IVR, call queuing, help desk software and predictive dialer are the tools agents use the most.
12 Best Call Center Tools for Support Agents in 2024
Equipping your support team members with appropriate call center tools is crucial for making them more productive at work and making customers happier.
Here are some of the best tools and features that are a must-have for your agents to streamline workflows, resolve issues quickly, and deliver exceptional customer service: 👇
1. Help desk software
Not every customer is comfortable interacting with a call center agent. Instead, many customers prefer the self-service option to get answers to their queries. The research found that around 60% of customers rely on email, while others rely on live chat, social media, and SMS for their queries.
Help desk software facilitates communication between support agents and customers by unifying all inquiries, tickets, and requests in one platform. With features like ticket management, knowledge base integration, and automation, help desk software enables support teams to prioritize and resolve customer issues promptly.
2. Call Queue
Support teams often lack the ability to provide immediate support, especially with a high volume of incoming calls. Having a call queueing feature is much more acceptable for the waiting process.
Call queueing has been an essential tool for managing a high volume of calls. It prioritizes incoming calls based on customer priority, agent availability, and issue complexity. By efficiently transferring calls to available agents, call queuing significantly reduces customer waiting time and ensures customers are connected with the most suitable agents for their queries.
For instance, call queuing uses automated greetings to inform customers whether they need to wait a few more minutes to speak with an agent or try calling back later.
3. Dashboards and call analytics
Data is an invaluable asset for call centers. Based on data, call centers can deliver quality customer service quickly. But what is this data, and how can you improve it?
The only way to know whether you are aligned with your call center visions and goals or not is through reporting and analytics. Don’t forget to check whether your cloud call center software provider offers real-time data. It must provide you with call metrics, including: 👇
Average call duration: Check how much time your agents spend per call. If they take more time to handle calls than expected, then it’s time to guide them in reducing call time and delivering effective solutions.
Type of inquiry: What kind of inquiry do you face? Is it just a general inquiry, product-related issues, or technical support? – You can use these insights to create a self-service portal to reduce high-volume calls significantly.
Customer emotion: Are your customers satisfied with customer support, and what are their thoughts? You can check whether your support team is meeting customers’ expectations. Then, you can collect customer feedback and continuously improve your services.
4. Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
A customer support agent does not need to handle every customer inquiry. IVR can be invaluable for companies with limited support teams when handling large calls.
Using an Interactive Voice Response system, prerecorded voice menus can answer general customer inquiries. Callers are guided through automated menus and are directed to the correct department or agent. Additionally, the IVR collects basic customer information, allowing agents to understand and solve customer inquiries quickly.
In addition, IVR prevents customers from waiting in long lines to get their answers, which is a win-win situation for both parties.
5. Predictive dialer
It’s frustrating for agents to receive unanswered or dropped calls – Which is why predictive dialers were invented. A predictive dialer uses an algorithm to automatically place calls from a list of contacts, eliminate dropped calls, and route customers’ calls to the available agent.
Moreover, predictive dialers reduce the idle time between calls and optimize agent productivity, making them the best contact center tools for outbound call campaigns and sales initiatives.
6. Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)
Automatic Call Distribution automatically receives incoming calls and distributes them to the most suitable agent based on pre-defined rules like skillset, customer history, Caller ID, and language preference. This ensures the call is connected with the right agent for customer queries.
👉 In addition, the ACD system uses advanced routing algorithms that prioritize calls based on urgency and importance, minimizing waiting times and contributing to improved customer satisfaction.
7. Call scripting
Call scripting acts as a structure and focuses on the essential speaking points. Sometimes, scripts can even be exact; more often, they are result-oriented.
Call scripts give agents a structure for directing customer conversations. They guarantee that information is consistently delivered, problems are fixed quickly, and standard procedures are followed.
Although good call scripts should be designed to be flexible enough to allow for some customization based on the individual customer’s needs, this will make the conversation feel more natural.
8. CRM software
It’s common for customers to get frustrated when explaining their queries to several people in several departments just to get answers to their queries. That’s why CRM software is crucial for businesses.
CRM software is a must for better collaboration and communication between teams and for delivering effective customer support. Your call center software must integrate with your CRM software.
Integrating CRM software with a contact center solution allows agents to access valuable customer information, including awareness, past interactions, purchase history, and support tickets. With this 360-degree view, your agents can deliver a personalized customer experience and foster stronger customer relationships.
9. Desktop softphone and mobile app
With remote working being the new trend, call center software must-have tools and functions that allow agents to manage their interactions from anywhere.
It is important to use a cloud-based call center software that has VoIP softphones and mobile apps instead of traditional desk phones. This offers more freedom to agents and ensures that interactions are not broken, thus helping agents to continue assisting customers even when they are not seated.
Furthermore, the support team will have their own virtual business phone number instead of using their personal phone numbers to answer business calls. Moreover, the usage is simple. All your team needs is an internet connection and a computer or a smartphone to make and receive calls.
10. Call recording
Call recording is an essential contact center tool for any business. It serves two purposes: on the one hand, it is a great tool for managers to evaluate agents’ performance and recognize the need for training and development. Furthermore, call recordings help agents confirm information or solve customer disputes.
Through recordings of the conversations, the agents clearly understand the customer’s pain points and provide personalized customer interactions. This will also help retain customers and build up trust. In addition, the recordings of calls offer a lot of information about customer behavior and help to identify trends.
11. Wallboards
Wallboards are similar to dashboards and call analytics. However, wallboards display real-time call center metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in a visually appealing format.
Moreover, wallboards inform agents about call volume, wait times, and overall performance goals. This can help agents to stay motivated and focused on providing excellent customer service.
Additionally, wallboards encourage teamwork and healthy competition among agents, motivating them to improve continuously.
12. Customer satisfaction surveys
Collecting customer feedback is one of the best ways to improve your call center’s efficiency. This will help you gain valuable insights and identify areas for improvement.
These surveys capture customer sentiments, experience interacting with agents, and pain points. With that information, you can ensure your call center meets customers’ expectations.
Around 86% of the buyers are expected to pay more for exceptional customer service. So, consider call center software with built-in customer satisfaction surveys. This ensures that a feedback message is automatically sent after every call is made, where customers will be asked to rate agents based on support, product knowledge, and communication.
Proactively Address Your Agents’ Needs
Your agents need the right call center tools to master their jobs. Make sure they have the right tools and support to make them succeed. Also, when assessing these tools, consider the following desired results:
- Minimized post-call tasks: Ensure the tools you provide to agents streamline post-call tasks. The best way to do that is by implementing automated systems for time-consuming tasks like data entry, call logging, and follow-ups.
- Foster Personal Connection: Scripted conversation may lack an element of personal touch for both clients and agents. CRM integration can facilitate agents with real-time customer background information and enable them to customize the conversation.
- Gain deeper customer insights: Make it possible for your agents to access customer data and history to understand customer needs and preferences. Integrate CRM systems to get more in-depth customer insight and tailor the communication.
- Improved decision-making skills: Provide guidelines, decision-making frameworks, and relevant resources to agents to enable them to make confident decisions.
Conclusion: Choose a Call Center With the Advanced Tools & Features
Using the right call center tools is key to providing superb service and staying competitive. However, because of the numerous options, it may be difficult to decide on the call center software that best suits your needs. Therefore, identify your business needs and choose the one with the most sophisticated tools and features.
Certainly, KrispCall is the call center solution you need. Its innovative features like Unified Callbox, Call Routing, IVR, Call Coaching, DND modes for agents, Call Monitoring, and Power Dialer features ensure your agents are always equipped with the latest technology to provide the best customer service.
Furthermore, KrispCall’s advanced analytics and reporting feature enables you to monitor call center performance and create results-producing plans.
👉 Unleash the power of KrispCall Call Center Today – Schedule a Free Demo Now! 🤩
