8 Best Practices for Customer Experience Management Today

SafeAuto Insurance Company is known for its humorous ads and innovative promotions, but when it comes to customer service, there’s no joking around.

 

The company is intensely customer-focused and committed to delivering a high level of service and operational efficiencies. With no outside agents selling or servicing SafeAuto Insurance, the company relies on its multi-location contact center for sales, claims, and customer service.

 

By upgrading its Avaya Aura® Contact Center suite, SafeAuto garnered these results:

• Agent occupancy (utilization) increased by 14 percent.
• Maximum caller wait time reduced by 48 percent.
• Shorter calls, handled more efficiently.
• Cost savings of 10–15 percent.

Acquiring new customers is considerably more expensive than keeping those you already have. And satisfied customers are the ones that stick around. According to a 2011 survey by callcentres.net, 83 percent of respondents said they would buy more from a company that made it easier to do business with them.

 

But customer experience requirements are changing rapidly these days, with social media, analytics, and new devices and technologies reshaping the landscape. I’ve gathered stories from companies that consistently receive high rankings for the customer experience they provide, and identified eight best practices.

 

1. Build relationships.

 

Best-in-class companies know that it’s not just about solving problems—it’s about building a lasting relationship with your customers.

 

At its retail stores, Apple is in the business of making friends. Employees actually will try to “down-sell” you on the thing you came to buy in an effort to get you the lower-priced, least-complicated product that will do what you need.

 

Truly, we all like getting what we want for less than we expected to pay. Apple’s approach reportedly results in fewer product returns, higher sales rates on add-on services, less frequent support issues, and extremely low employee attrition.

 

Contact centers can emulate this approach by using analytics-based cross-sell marketing programs. These involve using historic and real-time data to proactively suggest to agents the products and services that individual customers might be interested in. Complete the loop by rewarding agents for selling the best-fitting solutions, rather than the most expensive.

 

2. Integrate your support channels.

 

New consumer technologies make delivering consistent customer support even more important. As you add SMS, text chat, video chat, and mobile platform channels to your quiver, it’s important to keep tabs on them all. Cross-channel integration tools can seem overwhelming—but the alternative is an inconsistent user experience, which can result in significant cost for your business.

 

Salmat, Australia’s largest provider of outsourced contact centers, is upgrading its 35 contact centers to Avaya technology to become an “omnichannel” customer service provider. Salmat, which manages more than 100 million incoming and outgoing phone calls a year, needed to engage with consumers whether they are on Twitter, Facebook, SMS, email, or phone, says Salmat CEO Grant Harrod.

 

“A consumer doesn’t select necessarily the channel you would like them to communicate with, they select the channel they would like communicate with you on,” he says. And every one of these channels “has to be absolutely consistent.”

 

3. Talk to your customers in real time.

 

According to a Frost & Sullivan 2012 report, consumers overwhelmingly end up trying to reach a live agent and are most satisfied after live interactions, either on the phone or via chat. Forcing customers into self-service channels may keep your costs down in the short term, but can cost you in retention and lost sales opportunities over the long haul when not used for the right purpose.

 

Palm Coast Data handles subscriptions and delivery for 500 magazines and 45 million subscribers. Upgrading to Avaya Aura Contact Center has empowered Palm Coast’s 200 on-site contact center agents and growing number of home-based agents with two key new features: the ability to Web chat with magazine subscribers (usually two at a time) and perform scheduled callbacks to customers when they are free.

 

That’s boosted the productivity of these “blended agents” between 86 percent and 98 percent and increased customer satisfaction, the company says.

 

4. Coach agents for performance.

 

Agent performance is the foundation of good customer service in a contact center. Coach your coaches, provide specific feedback, and invest in next-generation coaching tools to make sure you get the most from your people. Reward your best-performing agents. Help those that struggle to do better.

 

A division of HSBC bank in the U.K., first direct does not have a physical branch network. Customers access services online or by fixed or mobile app. It’s been voted number one in customer service in a national service for four years running. Agent training and support is central to the bank’s mission of “pioneering amazing support.”

 

Knowing that longtime employees provide better support in general, first direct aims to keep employees happy, and ongoing coaching is central to its approach. New recruits spend six weeks in training. 65 percent of that time is spent in a classroom environment designed to work for all learning styles, and 35 percent is spent taking calls in the call center with dedicated coaches.

 

Throughout their time with first direct, employees receive tailored coaching to help motivate them and develop them as individuals. All staff must regularly revisit training and are held accountable for their own personal service standards.

 

5. Empower and engage employees.

 

Create a culture where employees feel comfortable initiating conversations and listening to customers instead of just answering questions as fast as possible. It drives agent attrition down—and customer satisfaction up.

Shoe retailer Zappos.com is a great example. Its mission statement declares that “Customer Service isn’t just a Department! ... We’ve aligned the entire organization around one mission: to provide the best customer service possible. Internally, we call this our WOW philosophy.”

 

The call center is at company headquarters, and all employees start their tenure at the company with four weeks of training as a customer service rep. Call center employees get another three weeks after that for a total of seven weeks.

 

After all that training, Zappos.com trusts its employees to do right by the customer. They don’t read from scripts and they aren’t encouraged to keep calls short. It may seem counterintuitive, but it works. Stories of people receiving condolence bouquets, products for free, and lifetime memberships in the VlP program go viral, and make fiercely loyal customers.

6. Focus metrics on your customer.

 

What’s your measure of success? Don’t just reward your agents for speed. Reward them for resolving customer issues in one contact (first contact resolution) and for high customer satisfaction scores.

 

Nordstrom department stores have long excelled at service, and customers go on about it. For many years, the Nordstrom Employee Handbook was a 5-by-8-inch gray card that

contained just 75 words spelling out the company’s short-and-sweet philosophy:

 

Welcome to Nordstrom. We’re glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional

goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to achieve them.

 

Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1: Use best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules. Please feel free to ask your department manager, store manager, or division general manager any question at any time.

 

One goal: Outstanding customer service. One rule: Use your best judgment.

 

You may not be able to reduce your contact center handbook to 75 words, but is there room for simplification? For focusing key performance indicators on customers? For respecting employees’ judgment?

 

7. Start at the top.

 

Customer experience starts with the CEO. A best-in-class customer experience comes from a company focused on delivering one, from senior management all the way to the agents on the front line. Link every metric to company initiatives to help agents understand how they fit into the big picture.

Amazon consistently receives accolades for its best-in-class customer service. Interestingly, it’s often the customer experience—personalized experience, painless purchasing, and fast shipping—that gets mentioned rather than how the company resolves problems.

 

CEO Jeff Bezos understands that it’s all related, and has organized the company so that “service,” or the contact center team you reach if something goes wrong, is part of the “experience” group. That’s an insight that Bezos or other top brass may have come up with on one of the two days per year every company employee spends working the service desk, answering emails from customers.

 

In fact, like Amazon, Zappos.com also requires all employees to work customer service for a few days every year. Since these two are often in the top three in ratings for best customer service, it seems like there’s something to it.

 

8. Deliver actionable data to decision-makers.

 

To ensure that the entire company is on the same page, share contact center and customer satisfaction reports with the entire company. After all, customer satisfaction should be everyone’s number one goal. Yet callcentres.net found in 2011 that while 95 percent of companies collect customer feedback, only 10 percent deploy it to improve service.

 

At SafeAuto Insurance Company, customer service data spreads far beyond the contact center. The marketing group uses it to map customer demographics. The company’s investigation unit uses it for research. Senior management has its own set of dashboard reports that provide regular updates on enterprise operations at a high level, with the ability to drill down to specific details.

 

While technology changes, and new generations bring different perspectives to the market, the foundation of customer experience management stays the same. If you want to provide standout service, it must be the top priority at every level of the company. It must be the focus of every initiative. And it must be the goal of every employee.

Source: http://bit.ly/1sFA9ZN

22 Problems Only Call Centre Workers Will Understand

Anyone who works, or has worked in a call centre will know there’s no other psychological trauma quite like it; hooked up to a phone that never stops for the majority of your life, subjected to the worst kinds of humanity, and being on the receiving end of all negative repercussions from decisions made by untouchable figures at the top of the food chain. Any fudge ups, you’re in the firing line.

Time is everything: military clocking-in, monitored toilet breaks, strict call-length control… welcome to the world of the robot. Never has the nail been hit quite so precisely on the metaphorical head as when a Contact Centre Manager described them as ‘satanic mills’ to the BBC a few years back – for that they are.

Still, it can be a giggle. In darkness, there is light. In misery, there is comfort: millions of other call-centre workers around the world know your pain. For we were all once sympathetic souls, until we started working in a call centre.

Here’s 22 trials and tribulations we’ve all experienced in the land of the call centre. For the lucky among you who escaped; the bittersweet memories will come flooding back reading this. Feel free to share your own experiences in the comments below.

22. Spending A Little Longer Than Necessary Listening To Another Departments Hold Music

Never before has Classic FM been so seductively enchanting. Unless you’re unfortunate enough to have that call picked up in your weekly monitoring, no one is going to know you’ve spent an added 40 seconds enjoying M People’s “Search For A Hero”. Just look busy.

21. When Your Manager Announces An Early Finish

“But only two of you can go.”

Oh, this is awkward. Especially when the entire team want to do a Tasmanian Devil whirlwind out of the place right that second. It’s a battle of morals and selfishness as you weigh it out with the others. Some have children to pick up from school; you just want to be released from Hell.

20. ‘The Systems Are All Back Up And Running Now’

Could you just, not? We were all thoroughly enjoying that wonderfully unheralded tea break whilst the systems went down. Now its back to a queue of further-disgruntled customers because they couldn’t get through before. Yippee.

19. The Never-Ending Amazement At Customer’s Phonetic Alphabet Skills

“Is that Q for Quebec?” “No, Q for cube.”

Give. Us. Strength.

Fair enough, not everyone needs to know the military-like phonetics that form a call-centre worker’s language: but, c’mon, ‘N’ for envelope?! I fear for your children.

18. The Comfort Of Knowing Your Work Mate is Just As Hungover As You

Mouthing “I’m dying” from across the room and seeing their despairing reply of “Me too” is the closest thing to your bed and a fried breakfast you’re gonna get.

Knowing someone else is suffering the same fate as you makes getting through the next eight hours a lot less daunting. If we die, we die together.

Zero in the queue? Perfect, I’ll use this opportunity to tell a really funny story to the person sitting next to me. 1, 2, 3 aaaaaand *beep*.

Even worse, the moment of peace you finally find to hastily tuck into that chocolate bar you’ve been saving is forever ruined by damn inconsiderate phone-owners. But the snack must be finished. Dislocate your jaw if you have to. If that snake could swallow that crocodile whole last week, you can devour that Snickers bar in 0.3 seconds.

16. Needing A Manager’s Help, And Realising You’ve Got A Better Chance Of Speaking To Jesus

As soon as you raise your butt from that seat, ready to head to the Manager’s general direction, suddenly – WHOOSH – they’re off. It’s like they have an inbuilt sensor when you’re about to ask them a tricky question, leaving you to lurk awkwardly in front of the rest of the call centre.

15. How You Feel The Night Before A 10 Hour Shift

If anyone tells you to cheer up, you have full permission to get them in the headlock and only let go when it starts to get murderous. I’m a good person, right? A good person! What did I do to deserve this? *wails*

14. Seeing Your Team Mate Getting Taken To A Disciplinary

We’ll be here when you get back, soldier. Stay strong. The worst thing that can happen is you get sacked. Then you can start making meth, and let’s face it, the Breaking Bad life is better than this. In fact, why am I here and not making meth?

13. The Awkward Small Talk Waiting For Your System To Load

Ah, that excruciating moment your screen freezes and you’re forced to engage in the dullest small talk imaginable.

“What’s the weather like where you are?”

“I don’t know, I’m in an industrial cube of calls drowning in artificial life and the glare of computers. Tell me more about this alien world of ‘outside’ you speak of”

12. Calling A Customer A [Swearword Of Your Choice] As Your Work Mate Nods To Your Mute Button

“Oh what a tw*t this guy is!” you declare. Ensue mini-panic attack when the irrational thought you may not have slipped the mute button stems into your consciousness. It’s like the inbuilt paranoia freak-out when you think you forgot to lock your front door, only ten times worse.

11. When An Older Colleague Tells You They’ve Been Working There For 23547597 Years

Oh god. Am I too, going to die here? Scary thing is, the colleague telling you such a thing is fully committed to the fact they’re there until they rot. What’s more, they’re happy about it.

God it makes you nauseous, doesn’t it?

10. When Your Manager Announces You Have An Hour Off The Phone For Training

Oh, the sweet, sweet euphoria as the boss tells you to wrap up and clock into ‘Meeting’.

In all sincerity: perhaps 60 minutes isn’t long enough? We have about five pages of questions we still need to ask, and we’re pretty sure the company will go under if we don’t read PowerPoint presentations until the clock strikes five.

9. Your Sincerity As You Say “I’m Very Sorry You Feel This Way”

The added hilarity when you squeeze in a “Of course we value you as a customer” and “I understand” between their monotonous ranting.

I am trying to help you solve your first problem, Mr. Douchebag, but please, keep showering me with additional rants and extraneous unrelated personal feelings. If you know everything, then why are you calling us?

8. The Eye-Rolling Moment Your Customer Asks For A Manager

I’ll be happy to let you speak to my Manager… just give me a second to explain how much of a pest you are to them.

This can however, be a blessing; like when you’re real tired of a customers cr*p and the M word is mentioned even just once.

Your manager will try and get out of it, but you must not give in. The customer INSISTED and wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Ah, put them through.” Shazam!

7. Starting As A ‘Temporary Thing’ And Still Working There 3 Years Later

How much of those 3 years have you spent threatening to walk out every hour of every day? Or fantasising about your epic resignation with the work mate who equally despises existence in that place.

Again, there’s always the meth business.

6. Pensioners Messing Up Your Entire Call Time

The internal battle between politeness to elders and your monthly stats.

When that dear old lady on the other end starts telling you about her boiler, next door’s granddaughter’s dog and how hard all these passwords are nowadays: she is NOT hanging up soon. Please excuse me while I find my Give A Damn button…..oh I’m sorry, there are none left to give!

The call time is already 36 minutes, will this agony ever end?

5. The Glory Of Terminating A Call With An Abusive Customer

“If you swear at me one more time Mr Wilson, I will have to terminate this call.” “This is f**king ridi-”

Ciao! Farewell! Seeee ya, sucker!

There’s nothing more satisfying than releasing a call to that customer who has been on for the last half hour, personally calling you every swearword under the sun and questioning your ability at the job. Unless you’re the person that gets their call back. No fun, no fun at all.

4. The Joy As That Douche Of A Customer Fails DPA

What’s that? You left you date of birth written down at home? Oh what a silly mistake to make, we all do it!

The best line in the book: “Yes I understand you need to do these checks, but it’s my DAUGHTER.” Of course, please hold on while we spill all that confidential information to a third party. The best are the ones that “Go to get their wife”, only to return to the phone with a dreadfully suspicious squeaky lady-voice. Facepalm.

3. When A Call Comes Through 20 Seconds Before Wrap

Your heart just dropped into your stomach, didn’t it? Happy to help, Mr Customer… in the most rushed, desperate and minimalist way possible. Please hang up and get on with your life so I can be released from this prison.

Oh, and guess what? They don’t know their account number and must plough through every room of their house to find it. Or they’re a first time sale that needs to hear the ENTIRE terms and conditions when you’ve got a train to catch, a meal to eat with your family and a couch to sprawl upon, damn it.

Just wave slowly and open mouth cry at your colleagues as they discard their headsets and skip from the office now. Life is a cruel game.

2. Being Offered Overtime At The Weekend

Anyone who does this makes us feel physically ill and needs seriously counselling. There’s not even a second thought. Even if you’re so skint you’re surviving from sucking the nutrients from your jacket sleeves.

Thank you for the ever-so-generous offer but I shall have to ferociously decline this one.

1. Financial Ombudsman: The ULTIMATE Threat

Oh, you know they’re mad when they bring up the big O.

“As soon as I hang up I’m cancelling my account with you, and then I’m going straight to the Ombudsman.”

Then they’re going to Watchdog, and writing to the government: in reality they’re probably going storm the house spitting blood for half an hour before settling back into that episode of Storage Wars.

Excuse us while we give a damn.

Source: http://bit.ly/1yXrlEv

3 Reasons to Consider a Call Center for Your Next Job

Have you ever considered working in a call center? It’s probably different than you think. Call centers have changed quite a bit in recent years. Here we’ll look at three compelling reasons to consider call center employment.

Demand for Call Center Professionals On the Rise

The US call center industry outsourced many of its positions overseas during the 1990s. However, beginning in the mid-2000s, that offshoring trend began to reverse. Since then, thousands of call center jobs have been onshored back to the US.

This new onshoring trend shows no signs of letting up. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects call-center employment to grow 38% between 2012 and 2022: a rate nearly twice that of other support occupations.

While new centers continue to open and expand—often in employment-challenged states like Tennessee and Maine—the demand for both entry- and management-level employees is growing.

And though it may be true that few would describe a call center position as their “dream job,” much of the reasoning behind that occupational stigma is outdated. The truth is, for the right candidates, jobs in modern call centers have a great deal to offer.

Reason 1: Future Earnings Potential Higher Than Other, Similar Roles

One of the first questions most job seekers ask is, “How much will this job pay?” Searching on Glassdoor.com, we found entry-level call center positions averaging between $11 and $15 an hour nationally.

A comparable industry job seekers may be considering is retail sales; however, another Glassdoor.com search found retail sales starting positions in the $8 to $14 range. Right off the bat, you could be making more money in a call center than in retail sales (albeit not by much).

Mo Bellio, President of Call Center Training Solutions, has been consulting call centers and their staff for over twenty years. He explains that there’s a “totem pole” of call centers, based on their primary role.

“At the very bottom would be the agents in outbound telemarketing centers,” he says. “These are the ones calling on prospective—not existing—clients. That is where you very often will get the highest compensation, because it’s recognized that it’s the hardest job.”

In other words: those at the bottom of the totem pole typically have more challenging customer service interactions, but they are compensated for this with higher starting pay.

As you move up the totem pole, the customer interactions become generally smoother—but these roles also tend to have experience requirements.

What really sets a call center career apart, however, is the future earnings potential. For comparison: call center supervisor and retail store manager are similar mid-career positions.

And while the average starting salary for retail store managers is $42,641, the average starting salary for call center supervisors is $50,131 (based on averages derived from Glassdoor.com).

Moreover, on Salary.com, the median salary for an inbound call center manager is $77,762. That’s a significant difference. And it’s one that shouldn’t be overlooked when comparing prospective jobs: consider your earnings potential, not just your entry-level pay.

Reason 2: You’ll Develop Valuable Skills and Experience

Call center agents might have over a hundred conversations per day. For each, they’ll have a checklist of specific tasks they must perform, such as starting with the correct greeting, asking the required questions and entering relevant data from the call.

Each call is an opportunity for agents to either improve their efficiency, or learn from their mistakes. Call center agents have more such opportunities per hour than those in most other occupations have in a week.

Call center jobs use a set of skills which, to many people, come naturally: for example, being a “people person,” solving problems and communicating well.

Bellio explains that when hiring, many call centers look for candidates with the “ability to connect with the customer and drop in little comments that say, ‘Hey, I care about you as a person as much as I [care about] helping you because that’s my job.’”

Of course, there’s more to the job than just communicating well with people. These days, customers can complete tasks such as checking balances and changing passwords online, without the help of customer service agents.

Justin Robbins, who develops training and professional certification courses for agents, supervisors and executives at the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI.com), explains why this matters.

“Because the customers can do so much with self-service methods, when they’re calling in to the call centers it’s often for more complicated issues,” Robbins says. “We need agents who aren’t just handling a simple ‘order-taker’ role, but people who know how to problem-solve; people who can think outside of the box.”

Call center supervisors also get the opportunity to hone their problem-solving abilities. Specifically, they learn the key management skill of negotiating compromise. We spoke with Dan Goodwin, director of customer interactive solutions at Dimension Data, an IT solutions and services company that manages over 500 global call centers, to learn more.

“Often, supervisors find themselves in a bit of a quandary,” Goodwin says. “They’ve got an operational goal to, for example, keep client interaction under four minutes. But they also have a company objective of satisfying every client to the best of their ability.

“Occasionally, those two things come into conflict, [e.g.] taking longer than four minutes to satisfy a particular client. So that’s part of their responsibility, as well: to decipher when is it sufficient to spend more time and satisfy a caller’s needs, [and when] to manage it quickly.”

Reason 3: Reliable Career Advancement

We won’t hide the fact that call centers have a high rate of employee turnover. They are fast-paced environments, and new agents who find they aren’t cut out for the job usually do so very quickly. But people who do well in this type of environment can really thrive—and so can their careers.

Andrea Ayers is one great example of the career potential the call center industry holds. Call center positions, she says, are “not a bunch of entry-level jobs that require no skill and don’t lead anywhere. That’s a common misperception. I started 24 years ago as a call center trainer.” She’s now CEO of Convergys, the largest call center management company in the world.

One of the keys to being a good call center agent is staying focused and motivated. Bellio advises new agents to get used to the monotonous aspects of the job, and focus their energy on helping each customer the best they can.

Maintaining a clear focus allows agents to help each caller individually, and the feeling of satisfaction when the agent has helped every caller at the end of the day keeps them motivated.

And the agents who are able to stay focused and motivated typically get promoted: first, to the position of “lead agent,” then to supervisor (and, potentially, beyond). Lead agents usually have at least one year of experience, and are expected to assist their team of a dozen or so agents when they have questions.

All of the experts we spoke with indicated that call centers prefer to promote from within. Justin Robbins of ICMI is himself a great example. He began as an agent cold-calling to sell newspaper subscriptions, then moved up to lead agent—and then to supervisor.

The call center industry has seen many changes in the past 20 years. An early offshoring trend has largely been reversed, with centers returning to the US at a significant rate. As customers now have more self-service options, call centers are handling more advanced services. Given all these changes and the career opportunities that come with them, there are many good reasons to consider working in a call center.

Source: http://bit.ly/1O4LsWY

Call Center Jobs Have Their Pros and Cons

The call center business is an interesting one, especially in the year 2015. While there are a ton of positives for a community that is looking to have more of its citizens get jobs, there are also a couple of negatives that come along with those specific jobs. When a new call center opens, those negatives are usually overlooked in the short term but can come back to bite the community in the long run.

The first big drawback of a large number of call center jobs is they simply don’t pay that well. As the Register Guard points out, Eugene, Oregon and Lane county are going through the kind of seesaw reaction that comes from getting a new call center. On the one hand, Firstsource is opening a new call center that will bring around 350 new jobs to Eugene. On the other hand, call center jobs in Lane county have not been lucrative endeavors. According to the paper, the average salary of call center operators in the county was just $29,100 a year. The average salary in all other industries was $37,000.

While there are some call centers that pay good wages that are competitive with other industries, it seems those centers are few and far between. The second problem is that callcenter jobs tend to have a high level of volatility. One just need to read one story after another popping up all over the country talking about one call center company moving into a building another call center company left empty years earlier.

Worst of all is that call centers, more than other businesses can shut down rather abruptly. When you team the fact that the jobs aren’t that highly paid and they can be lost rather quickly, the bloom comes off the call center rose rather abruptly in its own right. Communities around the country are having to weigh the pros and cons when they talk about offering incentives for call centers to move to their towns.

Source: http://bit.ly/1WR9I4f

14 Most Common Call Center Interview Questions and Answers

In this blog post, I will be discussing the most common and hardest to answer call center interview questions. I also would be equipping you (our dear readers) with valuable tips on how to answer these call center interview questions.
While call center interview questions will mostly resemble interview questions found in job interviews in other  industries, the content of your answers will have to be tailor-made for the needs of the call center industry. Job interviewers in the call center industry will primarily be on the lookout for skills such as flexibility, customer service, multitasking, good communication, and critical thinking.

This blog post featuring call center interview questions and answers will be presented in a question and answer format. The answers will be given in a script format. This will be followed by a short explanation on each call center interview question and answer.

Call Center Interview Question 1: Tell me something about yourself.

Call Center Interview Answer 1: Well, I can say that I am a person with varied interests. During my spare time, I like to sketch anything that I see on the street such as a dog passing by or a little girl buying candy from the neighborhood store. These things fascinate me. I guess I like to observe people. On Sundays, I do volunteer work at an orphanage. My volunteer work consists of encouraging wealthy people to donate money to the orphanage. What we do is we go to the upscale neighborhoods in the city and tell them about the orphanage. When I have the time, I also like to read novels, and play basketball.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 1:

This call center interview question is probably one of the most neglected and least prepared for by interviewees. The question seems very simple and direct to the point. Your answer though to this question will set the course of the interview. From this very simple question, interviewers can likely guess at whether you are a good candidate or not so please do not take this question for granted.

Most applicants will answer this call center interview question with information that is already found on their resume like their name, address, and school information. Do not make this mistake. When being asked this question, you are supposed to answer with information that is not found in your resume. Why would the interviewer want to know about your name, age, and address when this information is already on your resume?

A very good answer to the call center interview question would be to talk about your hobbies. When you do talk about hobbies, remember that by doing this, you are also providing the interviewer with information about your skills. For example, if you say that you play sports like basketball or baseball, this tells the interviewer that you are competitive. If you say that you like to play chess, this means you’re analytical. If you tell the interviewer that you are involved with various organizations, this spells leadership and people skills. So do not take this call center interview question for granted. Make sure to answer this question by giving the interviewer an idea that you are who they are looking for. If you do not have any “good hobbies” (like all you can say is watch HBO, eating, and sleeping), another approach you can take is talking about your family. Describe your relationship with your family. Talk about your brother, the pilot, or your mom, the actress. Say that you are very close to your family, that you guys go to church every Sunday and watch a movie afterwards. If you like to watch TV, amuse your employer by saying something like I’m addicted to Lost. I watch all Lost episodes on DVD every day. If all you have in your arsenal is reading, then make it sound better and more interesting by saying that you are a voracious book reader. Rack your brain. Make sure that when you tell something about yourself, it sounds interesting and will make you shine.

Call Center Interview Question 2: What is your idea of a call center?

Call Center Interview Answer 2: My idea of a call center is that it is a place where people take calls from customers and deliver superb customer service experience. I know that the people who work for call centers are extremely flexible people who adapt to different cultures, different people, and different schedules all at the same time.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 2:

This call center interview question aims to gauge how correct your expectations of a call center job are. Answer this question by giving out your general expectations of a call center job. Describe the work (selling if it’s a sales account, instructing callers if it’s a technical support account, etc) or the people working in call centers. This call center interview question would only be asked if you don’t have any call center experience yet.

Call Center Interview Question 3: Why do you want to work in a call center?

Call Center Interview Answer 3: I’d like to work in a call center because I have the skills to match the ones needed for this job. I graduated as a nursing student and during our on-the-job training, I learned a lot about communication skills and how to deal with people. As a nursing graduate, I became skillful in dealing with difficult people and patient in working with irate clients. In my course, we were also taught how to be good listeners which I know is a very valuable skill in this industry. Another reason why I want to work for a call center is because I know that the benefits and pay in the call center industry is better compared to those in other industries. I also know from my friends that the chances of career growth in this industry are high. In the past, I have heard of people getting promoted overnight.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 3:

This is another question which would only be directed to applicants without any call center experience. Please do not answer this call center interview question by saying that you need money to help your parents. The interviewer wouldn't want to hear that you are in this just for the money. For Filipinos, please do not answer this call center interview question by saying that you want to improve your English. By applying for a call center position, you should already be confident with your communication skills in English. The above response by the way, is a good example on how you can relate your college degree to a job in a call center. I purposely chose to give a response that a nursing graduate could give to this call center interview question because of the many nursing graduates in the Philippines trying to look for a job in the call center industry.

Call Center Interview Question 4: What are your strengths and weaknesses?

Call Center Interview Answer 4: I am a very patient person capable of dealing with irate and demanding customers. I can think out of the box so I have exceptional problem solving skills. I have good communications skills and I can learn how to operate new computer programs very fast. I am a team player and I get along with people very well. Those are my strengths. As for my weaknesses, I guess my biggest weakness is working too much and not knowing when to stop. I would say that this is a weakness because at times I would render too much overtime that it becomes detrimental to my health.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 4:

The call center interview answer 4 is pretty much self explanatory. With this call center interview question, you would want to enumerate skills that would be needed as a call center agent. These includes (but are not limited to): flexibility, adaptability, good communication skills, good listening skills, patience, proficiency in Microsoft Office programs, good typing speed, and excellent multi tasking skills. Of course when it comes to your weaknesses, you don’t want to say that you don’t have any as this will make you look egotistic. So make sure to be prepared to come up with at least one weakness which isn’t too negative. Examples of weaknesses which aren’t very negative are: being workaholic and being too friendly. Answer this call center interview question with a lot of confidence.

Call Center Interview Question 5: What makes you qualified to work in a call center?

Call Center Interview Answer 5: I am qualified to work in a call center because I possess qualities which makes one a good call center agent. I am very flexible; I don’t have complaints with shift work or working at nights and with split days off. I am willing to learn and I am not intimidated with learning new things. I am very patient and I know how to deal with stress. I believe that these qualities make me qualified to work in a call center.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 5:

Answer this call center interview question by just reinforcing your answers to the previous call center interview question presented. You can also answer this question by expounding on your strengths and good qualities.

Call Center Interview Question 6: Why do you want to work for our company?

Call Center Interview Answer 6: I have heard nothing but good things about this company from people who have worked here. People say that the accounts here are very stable, the management is kind to its employees, and everyone is friendly.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 6:

In answering this call center interview, simply cite the company’s positive attributes.

Call Center Interview Question 7: What has been your most significant achievement?

Call Center Interview Answer 7: My most significant achievement would have to be graduating from college. I say this because for four years, I have labored so much to get good grades and recognition and it all culminated into my achievement of a college diploma.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 7:

This call center interview question aims to look at how you see yourself as a person. Most of us would apply for a job at the age of twenty and at that age, it is presumed that you already have some sort of achievement even if it is only to your own right such as motherhood, marriage, and etc. Rack your brain. You’ll think of something.

Call Center Interview Question 8: Give me one quality that you have which will not make me hire you.

Call Center Interview Answer 8: A lot of my friends say that I am a perfectionist. I never consider something done as long as I don’t find it perfect. In my previous job, I sometimes would go on overtime just to make sure that I complete all my tasks and they are done to perfection. I show up for work every day and I am never late. I remember that when I was still in school, I never missed an assignment or a project. I also remember that whenever we were tasked to come up with a play, I would always be the one who would be insisting that we practice three times a week and all my classmates would complain and get mad at me saying that they only want to practice once a week. Being a perfectionist can be bad especially when the people around you are lazy but I believe that in certain situations, it can be a valuable trait.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 8:

This call center interview question is tricky and will stump a lot of people. In effect, this question is asking you for your weakness. Do not say that you don’t have any qualities which are negative. If you do this, you would look proud and conceited to the interviewer. The best approach to answering this call center interview question is to present a trait of yours which is not that negative. Examples of traits which are bordering positive and negative are being perfectionist, overly friendly, too loyal, and workaholic. Of course, reinforce your answer by explaining this trait of yours to the interviewer. Make sure as well that you know how to turn your negative attitude into a positive one (just like the interviewee did in the response provided above). Remember to answer this question with a lot of conviction and confidence.

Call Center Interview Question 9: How do you see yourself five years from now?

Call Center Interview Answer 9: I see myself working for this same company but with a higher position.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 9:

In this question, the interviewer wants to know if your goals in life are in line with the company’s objectives.  It is good to be honest with the interviewer on this question so that expectations will be properly set.

Call Center Interview Question 10: What are your goals in life?

Call Center Interview Answer 10:  My short term goal is to have a stable job with this company. After working for a couple of years with this company, I would like to see myself take on more responsibilities like maybe become a supervisor or a trainer. Meanwhile my long term goal is to have an upper management level position with this company.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 10:

This call center interview question is almost the same with the previous one presented.

Call Center Interview Question 11: What do you know about this company?

Call Center Interview Answer 11: I know that this company is one of the leading companies in the call center industry. You have several sites in the world, one in Atlanta, and four in Dallas. You have several accounts but most of them are medical and financial accounts. I also happen to know that most of the accounts in this call center company are very stable because this is what my friends who work here tell me.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 11:

This call center interview question is simply for the interviewer to know if you know anything about the company. It isn't necessary to know when the company was established or how much they made in the last quarter. You can answer this call center interview question by just giving out general and insignificant information about the company. Of course if you know tidbits like the name of the company president or a recent merger between the company and another call center, then by all means, do impress the interviewer with this information. So as not to be caught empty handed, it is advisable to do some research about the company before the interview. Obviously, please avoid telling anything negative about the company.

Call Center Interview Question 12: What is your idea of quality customer service?

Call Center Interview Answer 12: My idea of quality customer service is going out of your way or going the extra mile to provide customer service or to help customers. It is not simply providing assistance according to what you are expected of.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 12:

This call center interview question is simply for the interviewer to know how you view good customer service. The idea when answering this question is to say that good customer service is going out of your way to help the customer.

Call Center Interview Question 13: What is your expected salary?

Call Center Interview Answer 13: Whatever amount you give to people with my qualifications would be fine.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 13:

As much as possible, do not answer this question with a figure. The best way to answer this call center interview question is by saying that you are okay with whatever the company decides to give you. If the interviewer asks you to give a figure, then that is the only time that you should give a figure. Of course, make sure that you can defend your answer. Do not give a figure that is very small. The interviewer might think that you don’t value yourself and you have a low self esteem. A good practice is to come up with a figure that is a few thousands higher than the industry average or what you were given previously by your old company. When the interviewer asks why, then you can simply say that this is the average salary in the industry or that you want to have a job that pays more than your previous one.

Of course if you are in the position to dictate the salary you want the company to give you (meaning you have a lengthy experience in the call center industry already) then by all means, give them a figure right away when answering this question.
Call Center Interview Question 14: Why should we hire you?

Call Center Interview Answer 14: I have all the qualities that a good call center agent should possess. I am punctual, disciplined, patient, and flexible, and organized. You won’t have any problems with me when it comes to attendance, and my behavior. I have good communication skills, multi tasking skills, and I am a fast learner. I can guarantee you that I will be able to deliver what is being asked of me and I will give my one hundred percent to this company. I know that I have what it takes to become a good customer service representative.

Explanation to Call Center Interview Question and Answer 14:

This call center interview question isn't intimidating as it sounds. To answer this question, simply reinforce your position by enumerating your strengths and how these strengths can relate to being a good call center agent. Answer this call center interview question with a lot of confidence and conviction.

Source: http://bit.ly/1VGKxPg