5 Steps for a Successful Call Center
When a company is setting up their healthcare call center, there are many factors to take into consideration depending on what aspects of the healthcare industry they deal with on a daily basis. However, no matter what aspect of the industry you’re in, there are universal factors to follow for success for each call center environment. The following is an overview of how to create an effective call center to properly service customers.
5 Step to Creating a Successful Call Center
- Response Standards: one of the first calculations you should make when setting up a call center is response time. For example, many call centers want calls answered within 20 seconds, but some companies prefer shorter or longer response times. This extends not only to phone calls but to other forms of communication a call center may handle, such as emails or faxes (which tend to have a longer turnaround time). No matter what content your call center deals with, establish rules on how to handle customer traffic.
- Customer Traffic: this varies widely between industries and also in the same industry depending on the type of work. Some companies deal with a lot of traffic but relatively short calls, others deal with far fewer calls but a much longer call time per customer, and others deal with low volume but the calls they do receive are highly important. Understanding how your customer traffic operates is an important part of call center success but it relates to other areas such as company hours, response time, staffing, and so on.
- Staffing: without staff, you do not succeed. Desired response time and customer traffic should help guide the hiring process. Being fully staffed (i.e. having enough people to respond to calls) is only one part of the process. Aside from having enough people with successful attributes in education, work expense, licensing, and personality type, you also have to consider that the healthcare industry may require second shift coverage, overnight, or weekend staff.
- Scheduling: it’s not enough to simply know your hours and have a large enough staff to accommodate customer traffic, you also need to know how to schedule your staff. Every employee is different and so are their needs. Some employees can only work morning shifts, others may prefer working late. You also have to consider weekends, as many employees won’t work weekends, especially those with children. Take into account experience as well; experienced team members always need to be on the schedule so newer hires have full support.
- Office, IT, And Technology Needs: equipment is not to be overlooked. How many computers do you need, what about Internet speed or phone queue software? How is phone service handled, how much office space is needed, is teleworking an option, and so on. This is only a small assortment of various office management policies and needs. Lack of proper equipment can hold you back from hiring more staff members simply because a computer needs to be repaired or replaced.
Do You Want to Outsource?
Managing a call center is hard work and is by no means an easy process. It requires a lot of time, effort, and money to do it right. Simply put, not every company is cut out for the job, as they may lack in HR staff, time, space, or resources to properly set up the system. By outsourcing to experts, you gain access to tools you otherwise would not have and save yourself a lot of work.
“Enjoy the article? Find another great promoted business piece here.”
