Call center industry is constantly evolving and changing, which means there are plenty of new contact center challenges to handle – they appear from year to year. The overall success of your business depends only on your ability to handle these contact center challenges.
Some challenges in call center can be considered common for the call center industry, as some call centers have struggled to deal with them for years, while others have appeared recently. Providing positive customer experience, high quality customer service and increased customer engagement are one of these, but there are also others – and we are going to tell you how you can handle them.
So, what are main challenges in call center and how to overcome them?
8 Significant Call Center Challenges For 2024:
1. Poor Customer Satisfaction
Poor customer satisfaction is the biggest problem, and also one of the most common, which means that many call centers suffer from high customer churn and inability to use sales opportunities due to this issue. Customer satisfaction isn’t constant, it changes from customer interactions to customer interactions, and thus it has to be managed regularly.
Ways To Overcome Call Center Challenges:
There are many factors that affect customer satisfaction – self-service options, agent qualification and skills, call routing settings, long wait times, issue resolution times, and so on. Nevertheless, you have to start from measuring customer satisfaction at different stages of customer journey to identify problem areas and only afterward you can find resolution ways.
2. Long Call Wait Times
Long wait times is one of the biggest problems any call center can experience – nonetheless, there are call centers that have tackled this trouble once and forever. There are numerous root causes for long waiting times:
- Seasonal peak hours or increased call volumes
- Inadequate agent scheduling
- Lack of contact center agents
- Absence of call routing system or its inappropriate configuration
Ways To Overcome Call Center Challenges:
First of all, you have to focus on establishing intelligent call routing system that will automatically optimize workload on agents and manage call queue. Secondly, you have to offer IVR callback feature for customers in the queue.
You can also set up a few self-service channels which will reduce workload and inbound calls volume, and also free agents from resolving basic customer queries.
3. Lack Of Performance
Lack of performance means that your customer service agents (or sales agents) are underperforming. This can take place in different ways: call avoidance, poor quality of service, inability to resolve certain issues, long average response time and poor service level, etc. All these issues often point to the need in additional agent training or to the fact that some agents just can’t do their job properly.
Ways To Overcome Call Center Challenges:
You have to use all call monitoring tools and analytical instruments to measure agent performance and identify improvement opportunities and problems before they will cause much harm. Your goal is to provide agents with proper guidance and training opportunities.
You can also try to measure agent satisfaction and identify issues which affect it, like absence of reward system, career growth opportunities, and so on. Providing agents with constructive feedback and an opportunity to communicate with higher management will have positive effects on their performance and their ability to meet customer expectations – the biggest challenge for contact center employees.
4. Low Budget
This issue is universal for any business, because there are too few cases when a business can say that its budget is big enough. Nevertheless, there are cases when budget is just too low to adopt even must-have tools or hire required number of qualified specialists, which often leads to nothing but problems.
Ways To Overcome Call Center Challenges:
When it comes to low budget, there are only two solutions: either to increase budget which is often impossible, either to find cost optimization solutions.
If you use on-premise call center solutions, you can switch to cloud-based solutions. Moreover, it’s even a better option when it comes to the set up stage – cloud solutions can help you save thousands of dollars on hardware and maintenance costs.
5. Keeping Up With The Technology & Training
As we have already mentioned, the call center industry is constantly changing and evolving, and thus there are numerous new technologies and solutions designed that often become game changers. Nevertheless, either because of low budget or inappropriate business management, some call centers don’t adopt such solutions timely – with all negative consequences.
Ways To Overcome Call Center Challenges:
Before selecting call center software, research the market, especially when it comes to key features of such solutions, as you have to make a huge investment and this investment has to be successful. Always look at integration capabilities and try to find solutions that use AI-powered tools for customer self-service.
6. Technical Hiccups:
Frequently, call centers encounter technical glitches, disrupting operations and causing frustration among employees and customers. During peak periods, phone lines may become congested, and integrating new tools into existing systems can pose challenges, leading to decreased productivity.
Ways To Overcome Call Center Challenges:
To mitigate these issues, it’s crucial to select a reliable and user-friendly call center platform with robust customer support. Opting for customer service software that seamlessly integrates multiple tools into existing systems can help minimize technical issues. Utilizing communication platforms like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom, along with CRM software such as Zoho CRM and Freshdesk, can streamline organizational workflows and enhance efficiency.
7. High Agent Turnover:
Call center operations often experience high rates of agent attrition due to stressful work environments and demanding targets. This turnover places additional strain on remaining team members, who must shoulder increased workloads and expend resources on recruiting, hiring, and training new employees.
Ways To Overcome Call Center Challenges:
Implementing AI-based call center management platforms can alleviate inbound traffic and support agent performance across channels. Workforce optimization (WFO) software enables agents to enhance their skills and efficiency, mitigating the impact of high turnover rates.
8. Time Constraints:
Agents frequently face time constraints when handling high call volumes, resulting in incomplete issue resolution and dissatisfied customers.
Ways To Overcome Call Center Challenges:
To address this issue, supervisors must adequately plan for sufficient phone lines and staffing levels. Forecasting call volumes, implementing employee shift rotations, and increasing staffing can enhance operational efficiency within call centers.