Outsourcing Your Car Dealership Customer Service Makes A Difference to Your Bottom Line

The pervasive nature of smartphones and social media allows the connection. Both potential and existing customers can reach businesses and brands – and vice versa – with ease. A business can no longer thrive solely based on high-quality products and services. Multi-platform customer service is the big key to great success. Your car dealership is not immune to the need for elevated customer service.

You are not just selling cars, you are presenting a lifestyle choice. A component of that process is providing great customer service, resulting in repeat business and good reviews. Whether those reviews are online or through word-of-mouth, they are important.

Rather than handling these duties in-house, outsource your car dealership’s customer service to a reputable multi-channel contact center. You will notice a real difference in your bottom line in many ways.

Reduce Operating Costs

Most call centers serve multiple clients in a range of industries. So, the operating costs of the facility, equipment, maintenance, and training are spread out and you don’t foot the bill alone.

These agents are wise, experienced, handle customers well, and can deal with any rising situation.

With everything already in place, you only pay for services as needed. Whether you need the call center often, during peak periods, or find yourself shorthanded for any reason,  Whether it’s regularly, during peak periods or holidays, or if you find yourself shorthanded for any reason, the bounds depend upon the unique needs of your business.

Increase Customer Satisfaction

Strict quality control is the name of the game. The agents that represent your car dealership will uphold the same high standards of professionalism and dedication to your customers that your in-house team exhibits.

Also, entrusting your inbound and outbound customer service needs to a call center means reduced hold times. Customers can contact you outside of business hours. Firms such as KPI Connect allow customers to contact your dealership at a time convenient for them.

Free Up Staff

Silver Mercedes in front of a car dealership.

Instead of tasking your skilled in-house team with answering common questions via phone, email, webchat, or social media, outsourcing these duties. Experienced customer service specialists will free up your staff to do what they do best and focus their valuable time and effort on core business activities. Not only will outsourcing allow your staff to be more productive, but potential walk-in customers will appreciate receiving prompt attention rather than waiting for someone to finish up a phone call or email.

Why Your Pharmacy Will Benefit When you Outsource Customer Service

Pharmacies handle a great deal of sensitive, personal information. Not only do they fill people’s medication, they are also privy to knowledge of people’s ailments. Also, they have all of their client’s medical, insurance, personal information, and more. Most people see pharmacies as one of the most trusted community businesses. The pharmacy is meant to help people when they are in need of minor or life saving medications. We trust our pharmacists.

‘Outsourcing customer service calls is scary for many pharmacy owners. However, it can benefit the business in many ways and remain secure and confidential.

Pharmacy Hold Times

As a customer, calling your pharmacy is frustrating. You can face long hold times or unanswered calls. In turn, your clients have a poor experience. If your customer is calling for important medication or health matters, they do not want to wait. They should not have to wait.

High call volumes or after-hour calls make businesses miss calls every day. A missed call means a missed business opportunity and missed customer interaction. A beneficial aspect of outsourcing customer service calls is that they help with answering calls during busy periods or after hours. Pharmacy employees will have less work and customers are happy knowing they can fill their prescriptions quickly.

Often, pharmacists have assistants and clerks answering phones. Customers do not interact with their pharmacists most of the time. Call center agents have training to handle customer service calls in an efficient manner. Hence, agents are able to solve customer problems and answer their questions accurately. Moreover, agents excel with customer satisfaction.

Customer Satisfaction

Agent ensure that customers feel positive after a call. Clients are far less likely to provide negative customer service feedback and reviews.

Lots of pharmacies have only a handful of employees to answer calls. However, they often have to perform other job duties, as well. Answering calls takes them away from their other work and burdens them with a heavy workload.

Stressed out employees are not able to provide the same level of service to a customer if they have multiple tasks they need to do at once. They become distracted and make mistakes, which one doesn’t want in a pharmacy. You’re likely to start seeing a higher employee turnover rate, as well. In this scenario, everyone loses.

Outsourcing your pharmacy customer service calls to a call center can ease their workload and provide your employees with a better working environment with less stress.

Cutting Costs

If your pharmacy has experienced lots of high call volume, you’ve likely started thinking about hiring more employees to answer the calls. But, when exploring this idea, it doesn’t take long to learn that there are tons of extra costs and equipment needed.

Many pharmacies don’t have room to expand and include a call-center or office in which several people can answer calls. But, outsourcing the calls to an already established call center can offset these costs. You won’t pay to install extra equipment, phones, furnishings or office supplies. Instead, the call center already has them and you’re paying for their associates’ work and training, rather than the equipment they use.

There is a stigma that surrounds outsourcing. Many people believe that it takes jobs from other employees. The reality instead is that outsourcing creates jobs and will improve both employee and customer satisfaction. So, if you’ve ever considered outsourcing your pharmacy’s customer service calls, contact KPI Connect to see how they can help your pharmacy run more smoothly and help more people with their needs.

Extra Tips to Reduce Your Hold Times

Lengthy hold times are a cardinal sin for any business. Once a customer has been banished to the dark void of the hold queue, there is a one-in-three chance that they give up after waiting less than two minutes. What’s more, they may never try calling back again. Rather than losing both existing and potential customers, cut back the amount of time a caller has to wait and allow the calls to flow more efficiently. If our first list of ways to reduce hold times was not enough, here are:

Six Ways to Increase Call Efficiency

  1. More Efficient Call Routing

When a customer contacts a business with a question or concern, they want to speak to a qualified agent in the right department promptly. With the right system, a customer can get in touch with the correct agent and have their issues resolved with minimal hold time. An automated self-service queue may get rid of the need to speak to a live agent altogether. That way, a customer can pay bills, reset passwords, and track packages on their own.

  1. Trust Your Team

Rather than wasting valuable time-escalating calls to management, entrust a well-trained team of agents. They can make important decisions that are both fair and consistent. Figure out the most common reasons for call escalation and the solutions that first-level agents can implement. Not only does this reduce hold times, but also keeps customers happy. Also, you show your staff that you trust their judgement, knowledge, and problem-solving skills.

  1. Conference Call

Few things are more tedious for a customer than sitting on hold repeatedly and explaining their situation repeatedly to different staff members. Cut down on hold times and customer frustration with the use of conference calls. They allow a more qualified staff member to join the conversation, hear what is going on, and help resolve the issue without the caller needing to repeat themselves.

  1. Update Customer Information

Having up-to-date customer information available at an agent’s fingertips reduces both handling and hold times. You should ensure that your software is fully integrated. Then, all updates are saved on every system and instruct agents to ask customers if any changes are needed.

  1. Schedule Shifts Smartly

By analyzing call volume data, you can find the peak periods when agents are busier and hold times increase. Instead of hiring extra agents, schedule more shifts for times when agents are needed. You can schedule fewer shifts during the low-volume periods.

  1. Build a Better Hold Message

Putting customers on hold is inevitable, so make sure you have an upgraded hold message designed to keep them on the line. Music plays a big rolethe average caller sticks around for up to one minute longer if they hear music. The type of music should be geared toward your target demographic for maximum effectiveness. Some newer systems even allow the caller to choose from a list of musical genres, or you can use your hold message to promote your products and services. Alternatively, give your customers the ultimate freedom by offering a callback option rather than waiting on hold.

Great Ways to Reduce Hold Times

Hold times can be a call center’s worst enemy.

When a customer contacts a business, the last thing they want is to sit on hold. Making them wait even longer than expected is sometimes unforgivable. The average caller generally hangs up after less than two minutes on hold. Also, more than one-third of clients never call back. That is a sizable loss of business and a brief window of opportunity. Hence, the importance to reduce hold times and keep customers satisfied.

Six Ways to Reduce Hold Times

  1. Have a Sense of Urgency

When a caller contacts a business, they often have pressing needs that they would like addressed promptly and efficiently. We all have better things to do with our day than sit on hold! Treating each interaction urgently does not mean that agents or managers should rush clients through calls. Instead, strive toward reaching a satisfying conclusion as soon as possible with respect for the customer’s time.

  1. Be Responsive

Along the same lines as the first tip, make sure your entire team is always at the ready. A surefire way to reduce hold times is to dissuade agents from engaging in an excessive amount of chatter among one another between calls. A responsive attitude should extend to internal departments and managers. In turn, the amount of time that agents and customers have to spend waiting for an answer to a question or to escalate a call cuts down.

  1. Grow a Knowledge Database

Providing easy access to a database of company knowledge with relevant information and helpful answers to common questions is helpful. That way, agents can effortlessly respond to customer queries without placing them on hold. In case of faulty or slow network connection, make the indexes available both online and offline.

  1. Dig into the Data

Reputable contact centers, such as KPI Connect, have access to a suite of cutting-edge, advanced analytics. These allow them to pinpoint the areas in which they can improve. Take advantage of the data and manage call queues according to the patience level of your customers. You can find information about the callers who hang up, when they called, and how long they waited before jumping ship.

  1. Keep Tabs on Your Team

Determine inefficiencies and reduce hold times by listening in on live calls, providing feedback that only the agent can hear, and conferencing in as the situation warrants. If you are unavailable, listen to recorded calls to get a gauge on how your team is performing and use these examples to train new agents. Do not only spend time with the slower agents either. Check in on your top performers, and try to figure out their tricks and strategies to keep things moving along. You could discover some real gems that you can then pass on to the rest of the department.

  1. Appreciate Your Agents

Reduce hold times: three people at their keyboards.As a high-stress job, call centers can experience a high volume of turnover. In turn, you spend more time and money on hiring and training new agents, managers, and supervisors. Avoid the hassle and build loyalty among your staff. Reward positive and efficient performance, encourage suggestions and feedback and foster a dynamic and inclusive atmosphere in the workplace.

Is Outsourcing To A Contact Center Right For My Business?

The days of outdated call centers are long gone, and outsourcing is becoming a great option for businesses. No more does customer service come last, or are calls per hour the most important performance metric. We are now in the era of the modern contact center, and customer service is the number one priority.

Modern contact centers show a new way to approach customer service. Also, they offer large and small businesses a number of benefits. We have come up with a list about why you should outsource your customer service to an experienced contact center.

Six Reasons for Outsourcing

Tools

Modern contact centers use several formats to reach your customers. Experienced centers leverage social media, email, live chats and mail in addition to traditional phone calls. Having the ability to communicate with your customers in the method they prefer will improve their experience.

Cost Savings

Cost savings is one of the biggest benefits of using a contact center to manage your customer service . Contact centers spread the equipment, facility, training, and other costs among their clients. In turn, businesses save on overhead costs. Moreover, contact centers can save you money as they are adept at planning for peaks and valleys of customer inquiries. Therefore, they can staff accordingly. Also, clients are able to pool their resources with other clients and share agents. Another way to reduce costs! High-quality contact centers have the skills, equipment, and staff needed to deliver affordable, top-notch customer service. 

Quality Control

Contact centers thrive when their clients and customers are happy. All excellent contact centers have rigorous quality control processes in place to make sure you and your customers receive top-notch service.

Latest Technology and Systems

Reputable contact centers ensure that their employees and clients have access to the latest technology and systems used to reach customers. It is in your contact centers’ best interest to keep up-to-date on the latest trends and technologies. That way, you can ensure they remain competitive.

Availability

When you outsource your customer service to a contact center, you can choose your availability based on your customers’ needs. Whether you need to handle customer questions 24/7 or for a few hours each day, a dedicated contact center can help you meet those needs.

Language Skills

Many experienced contact centers employ associates that speak more than one language, like English and French. By outsourcing your customer service to a bilingual contact center, you can ensure that you meet even more of your customers’ needs.

No matter if you are a Fortune 500 company or a small business, hiring an experienced contact center to manage your customer service is great for business. Whether you are interested in saving money, need to provide customer service for extended hours, need bilingual staff, or are looking for new and creative ways to communicate with your customers, look into utilizing a modern contact center for all your customer service needs.

What Are Appointment Setting Services?

In the competitive modern marketplace, staying connected with clients is more vital than ever. Business growth depends greatly on our customers. With the rise of the internet, consumers now have more choices available to them. As with any relationship, steadfast communication is the key to fostering a positive and long-lasting bond with clients. One method of keeping in touch with clientele is through Appointment Setting Services such as those offered by KPI Connect.

About Appointment Setting Services

For all businesses, scheduling and confirming appointments are vital daily tasks that can eat up lots of time. From multinational corporations to small businesses, many hours of productivity are lost each week due to the schedule process. Often, these duties are handled in-house by existing staff members. However, they could use their time by hiring or training additional staff. Rather than dealing with the hassle themselves, many companies have chosen to outsource appointment setting services.

A Friendly Voice

When you use a professional appointment setting service, you know that customers and potential clients will receive a pleasant greeting. Also, they will talk with helpful agents who can answer any questions and fulfill needs. As an extension of your office, appointment setting specialists do extensive training in order to represent your business in the best way. Customized scripts and services help employees know the perfect thing to say.

In addition to setting up, confirming, and rescheduling appointments with existing clients, specialists can help generate sales leads through cold calling. Also, they can resolve customer service problems, issue automated reminders, and provide information about the products and services your company offers.

Experience the Freedom

By outsourcing your appointment setting services, your talented in-house staff can focus their efforts on crucial aspects of the daily operation of your business. Without the added responsibilities of scheduling appointments, your office can run more efficiently on a day-to-day basis. KPI Connect offers extended hours. Therefore, clients can enjoy communicating with a representative of your company outside of traditional office hours.

Who Uses Appointment Setting Services?

Virtually any business can benefit from appointment setting services. However, they are particularly valuable to smaller companies and independent start-ups that do not have the budget or space to devote an in-house department. The services offered are adaptable, and almost any industry can use them. This is perfect for a company who relies on appointment setting as a core element of their business model (financial firms, health care clinics, etcetera).

Regardless of industry, clients appreciate the ease and convenience afforded by these services. Customers receive complete satisfaction and your company gets long-term client retention.