Explore fresh, expert perspectives on customer engagement and innovation

If you’re a debt collection agency or a consumer-facing billing, credit, or accounts receivable department, you may be getting a little nervous right now.

The cost-of-living crisis is affecting us all. Debt has increased across the UK, up by a whopping £63 billion in a year. The average unsecured debt per UK adult as of March this year was £3,797.

That’s a significant amount of debt, and it’s likely to increase. Inflation has just hit a 40-year-high, and gas and electricity bills are forecast to rise again in the Autumn.

All of which means consumers will have less money in their pockets, and bigger bills to pay. Debt and payment collectors are having to work harder to meet targets.

How do you ensure your own communications are heard above the din? How can you meet your targets in an environment of such intense competition?

The status quo is not an option

In many cases, the answer is not to simply carry on as before. Even before the pandemic, the average debt collection rate was below 20%, the lowest in 25 years.

In addition, outbound collection strategies are often costly and inefficient, with a success rate that is usually below 5%.

So, if standard outbound practices aren’t working, and competition for customer attention is getting fiercer, what can you do?

To ensure debt collection strategies are ROI positive, you have to adapt your processes, make them more efficient, act proactively and know your customers better than ever.

We’ll discuss what that means in practice.

Smart outbound communications

The key to successful payment collection is creating smart outbound communications. That is a three-step process.

Streamline your processes

It’s not unusual to still find payment collection processes that involve manual outbound dialling with no omnichannel option.

This is hugely costly and inefficient. By contrast, an outbound dialler takes the legwork out of customer communication, deftly handling missed calls and answer machines. It ensures your agents have more time to do what they do best – talk to customers.

Linked to a CRM platform, it also automates the management of customer accounts, and presents agents with the information they need when they need it, so they better understand customer challenges.

Meanwhile, omnichannel communications (text, email, chat, WhatsApp etc) let you contact customers in the way that is most likely to get results.

Match this with a secure automated payment platform. Too often, customers contacted in an outbound campaign will fail to pay because the payment facility isn’t available when they need it, or they have to queue to speak to an agent.

Automated payment means customers can pay whenever they’re ready, and before they use the money for other reasons.

Get to know your customer

When you link communications and CRM platforms you can segment groups and contact them in the most appropriate ways.

For example, you can send a text message to customers in danger of falling into arrears, to remind them to pay before problems arise. You can target indebted customers with messages about the help on offer.

In addition, pre-collection contact strategies can ensure your organisation stays front and centre of a customer’s mind. Being proactive, getting ahead of issues before they become problems. Build profiles for segmentation, based on the financial situation, payment history, vulnerability and more. Then plan campaigns that are relevant to each segment.

You should also capture preferred customer contact methods during onboarding. A customer might be more likely to act on a call, text or email, so segment them further in this way.

Create better experiences

The easier and more pleasant your business is to deal with, the more likely customers are to prioritise you for payment.

Automated payment is part of that, as is using preferred contact methods whenever possible. Another is training staff to be patient, understanding and genuinely helpful.

Continuous performance feedback should be part of your training regime. Implement a system that lets you guide agents during calls – this is especially useful for the most challenging customers – and give instant post-call feedback.

Track performance over time so you can use resources efficiently, allocating the most challenging customers to the most experienced and skilled agents.

Create and edit scripts for every circumstance. Empower agents to use all the tools at their disposal to engage customers and create positive outcomes.

Improve debt collection ROI

If your communications are on point, your payment strategies are likely to be more successful. That will in turn reduce breakage rates and improve the ROI of debt collection.

In the current climate, it’s important that you do everything possible to create better customer interactions and nurture goodwill. Customers are likely to prioritise payments to businesses they trust and respect.

MaxContact’s powerful customer engagement software can help. It includes intelligent outbound dialling, comprehensive omnichannel options, automated payments, on-the-go script editing and a sophisticated agent monitoring and training platform. It also integrates with your CRM systems to create a seamless customer service solution.

Book your free, no-obligation demonstration and we’ll show you what MaxContact can do for you >

Those working in contact centre roles say that work-related poor mental wellbeing is making them less productive, including answering fewer calls and taking more sick days – costing the industry over £990m in lost productivity every year. That’s according to our new study, Duty of Care Gap.

The contact centre industry is a huge contributor to the UK economy, employing over 800,000 people across the country. Yet the industry is facing a mental health crisis, with 83% workers saying their work is taking a toll on their mental wellbeing, with staff reporting high stress levels (62%), anxiety (48%) and feeling overwhelmed (46%).

This poor mental wellbeing at work is costing the industry millions in lost productivity at a time when staff attrition is already high. An overwhelming majority (95%) say that work-related mental wellbeing problems are making them less productive at work, losing on average six hours of work per month, or nine working days per year to poor mental wellbeing. This is also translating into sick days – staff report taking on average 2.78 sick days due to work-related mental wellbeing problems. This lost productivity is costing the industry £990milllion per year.

Encouragingly, the research also reveals many businesses are already taking steps to help. Over half (52%) have mental health first aiders in place, but this is in stark contrast to physical health and safety, where each workplace is legally obliged to have nominated first aiders and carry out regular risk assessments.

For businesses that do prioritise the mental health of contact centre workers, the benefits are clear. The overwhelming majority (75%) of contact centre workers say they would be more likely to say in their current role if their employer made a bigger concrete commitment to improving mental wellbeing in their workplaces. Also, 46% say they would consider another role in the contact centre industry if it would be better for their mental health.

To help those using their technology, MaxContact has launched a new Employee Wellbeing feature which provides helpful, unobtrusive tips throughout the day to help staff take steps to improve their physical and mental wellbeing while at work. The reminders focus on three key areas: body position, hydration and positive mindfulness. Contact centre leaders can monitor anonymous, aggregated data on these actions to track how their staff are feeling and offer more support if needed.

Ben Booth, CEO at MaxContact, says, “Contact centre workers work unbelievably hard behind the scenes to make sure our society works. We’ve worked with contact centre leaders to understand the challenges the industry faces. What we’ve discovered shows just how difficult the job is. What’s more, the problem is only getting worse as the cost-of-living crisis gets even more serious and contact centre workers are the ones who have to deal with the angry or upsetting calls about rising costs.

“We’re calling for businesses that employ contact centre workers to make mental wellbeing just as important as physical health and safety, with properly trained mental health first aiders in every organisation. It’s not just the right thing to do, it makes total business sense.

“We know we have a part to play too in making the industry better. That’s why we’ve launched our Employee Wellbeing feature as part of our making 2022 the year of the agent, focusing on both physical and mental wellbeing. It’s not an answer to the problem but it’s a step in the right direction and we’ll keep on looking for ways to put workers at the heart of our platform.”

Dr Andres Fonseca, Consultant Psychiatrist and Co-Founder at leading mental health care organisation Thrive: Mental Wellbeing, threw his support behind the findings, saying, “Employee mental health can seem like a difficult topic to navigate but creating an environment that supports and educates staff has many advantages. It is vital that we equip all employees, but especially those in such frontline roles, with the necessary tools and techniques to effectively manage challenging conversations. With more focus on the cost of living crisis, it is also imperative that we continue to open up the conversation around mental health and raise more awareness of the connection between physical and mental wellbeing while ensuring that everyone across the workplace knows that they are valued and supported.”

Whether you’re looking to supercharge sales, streamline debt collection, or elevate customer service, the right outbound dialler can redefine how you connect and communicate. So, continue reading to learn more about automated diallers and discover the potential they hold for your contact centre’s success

So, what’s an outbound dialler?

Put simply, outbound dialling is the process of making calls to customers or contacts, typically for sales or marketing purposes.

While outbound dialling can be performed manually on a mobile or business phone, this is not practical when dealing with a high volume of calls. A range of additional features can enhance outbound calling in a contact centre setting through the use of an automated dialler.

What does an outbound dialler do?

An outbound dialler is generally a cloud or software solution that automatically dials phone numbers and makes calls on behalf of your sales, collection or customer service teams. As such, it’s an essential ingredient in any organisation where you need to make outbound calls to clients and prospects throughout the day.

What are the different types of call centre diallers?

The main options are a manual dialler and an auto dialler.

Manual Dialler

A manual dialler is like a traditional phone. A call agent manually dials numbers from a call list, one after another.

Auto Dialler

As the name suggests, an auto dialler automates much of the dialling process. It digitally dials numbers, and can also dial multiple numbers at once, passing answered calls to available agents.

Manual vs Auto Dialler

Why would you choose one over another? Most call centres now opt for auto dialling, because it significantly boosts productivity. Agents spend more time talking to customers and less time dialling unresponsive numbers.

Manual dialling can still be useful, but only for campaigns involving a small number of high value customers who demand a more personal approach.

The different outbound dialler modes

If you’re using an auto-dialler, there are likely three dialler modes that you’ll frequently use, depending on the type of outbound calling you are doing. These are predictive diallers, progressive diallers and preview diallers.

Predictive dialling

What is it? When most people think of outbound dialling software, they tend to think of predictive dialling. Predictive dialling places calls based on the software’s predictions of agent availability. It dials multiple numbers simultaneously, so that when agents finish one call they can be instantly connected to the next.

What are the benefits? The best predictive diallers minimise abandoned calls (and the amount of time customers spend on hold) and maximise the time your agents spend having conversations. When should I use it? Predictive dialling is the standard for straightforward, high volume sales campaigns (like commodity sales) or debt collection activity.

Progressive dialler

What is it? Progressive diallers are predictive diallers that slow the pace down by only dialling a number when an agent is available to take the call. Dialling is instant and automatic, so the system still allows for a relatively high number of calls.

What are the benefits? Progressive dialling eliminates the risk of customers abandoning calls or waiting a frustratingly long time before being connected to an agent. Because an agent is always available, the customers you have painstakingly nurtured over a period of time feel valued and importan

When should I use it? It is often used in campaigns that target current customers. It’s a low risk option that can improve customer experience and effectively help agents upsell additional products and services.

Preview dialler

What is it? A preview dialler takes the pace down another notch. When an agent indicates availability, information about the next call is sent to the agent for preview.

After a set amount of time – say, one minute – the number is automatically dialled. This delay lets the agent prepare for the call, using information typically taken from the company CRM system – which are often integrated into the dialler.

What are the benefits? Agents can have more in-depth, focused conversations, based on a customer’s real experiences and challenges. It can improve customer experience and increase the number of positive outcomes.

When should I use it? Preview diallers are particularly helpful when the reason for the call is complex or sensitive. For example, following up with web leads or dealing with customer complaint calls.  

Explore the three dialler modes in more detail >

How are automated diallers used?

Outbound diallers can be integrated into many industries. Any company with an outbound contact centre who are cold calling or making high volume phone calls can benefit from outbound dialler software.

Power up your sales teams

Sales campaigns are often high volume and low touch. Predictive dialling is the gold standard for straightforward, high volume outbound campaigns (like commodity sales). It can quickly and efficiently work through large datasets, making sure leads are contacted while they’re still warm.

The best predictive diallers minimise abandoned calls (and the amount of time customers spend on hold) and maximise the time your agents spend having conversations. They can be set to play messages if they meet an answerphone, and will recycle numbers (placing unanswered calls back into the call queue) in a way that ensures your customers or leads are contacted, but never pestered.

The right outbound dialler can make selling straightforward by helping to connect your sales people to the right customers at the right time. Combined with the contact centre-specific features mentioned earlier, it can offer powerful tools for contacting customers, winning business and exceeding customer expectations.

Increase debt collection rates

Your credit and debt resolution teams can use effective targeting to reach priority customers at times that suit them. Maximise collection rates using advanced data segmentation and encourage self-serve with automated communications. Automate payments with self-serve options providing customers choice and improving satisfaction.

Preview diallers are particularly helpful when the reason for the call is complex or sensitive. For example, debt collection calls are more likely to end positively if agents have the time to gather all the information they need beforehand.

Elevate your customer service teams

Customer service teams often use progressive dialling to target current customers with after sales information or courtesy communications. It’s a low risk option that can improve customer experience, help nurture loyalty and effectively help agents upsell additional products and services. Because an agent is always available to have a conversation, the customers you have painstakingly nurtured over a period of time feel valued.

5 must-have outbound dialler features

Answer Machine Detection (AMD)

Answer Machine Detection (AMD) lets your auto-dialler software identify answering machines before connecting calls to agents. This means agents only spend time on live conversations, saving them valuable time and boosting productivity.

AMD is particularly helpful for high-volume sales campaigns where every minute counts. MaxContact’s AMD boasts a 90% success rate in detecting answering machines, freeing up agents to focus on reaching real people.

Speech analytics

Forget manually reviewing call recordings! Speech analytics uses AI to analyse every conversation, automatically identifying customer sentiment, call quality, and agent performance. This lets you:

• Spot frustrated or vulnerable customers who need extra care.
• Ensure agents follow compliance guidelines.
• Understand what customers are saying about your products and competitors.

Speech analytics gives you valuable insights from all calls, not just a select few. It saves time and helps you improve the overall performance of your contact centre.

A secure payment manager

A secure payment IVR gives customers the payment options they want, while giving teams the time they need to deal with more complex or sensitive cases.

Payment automation helps you speed up debt collection and improve cash flow. When you give customers more convenient ways to pay, they’re more likely to stick to payment schedules.  

MaxContact’s payment IVR is fully PCI compliant, protecting customer information at all times. We offer both assisted payments, in which staff safely guide customers through the payment process, and automated payments, which are fully self-serve and available 24/7.  

Analytics and reporting

You can only improve contact centre performance when you can measure it. When you’ve done that, you need to present the data in a way that is easy to understand and act on. That’s where analytics and reporting come in.

MaxContact’s pre-configured reporting gives you complete visibility around productivity, issue resolution rates, revenue and customer satisfaction, to name just a few. You can set targets for campaigns, channels, teams and agents and track performance over time.  

All teams – sales, service and debt resolution – benefit from better information. Pre-configured reports give you the data you need in the quickest and most hassle-free way.

Easy integration

A powerful dialler is even better when it works hand in hand with your existing systems. Imagine a sales agent having instant access to customer history, preferred contact methods, and past feedback – all within the dialler interface (thanks to CRM integration).

This allows for personalised conversations that address specific needs, leading to happier customers and improved outcomes. Easy integration applies to after-sales and debt resolution teams too. By connecting your dialler with other systems, you can put all relevant information at agents’ fingertips, reducing hold times and boosting overall efficiency.

The benefits of auto-dialler software you can’t ignore

Improve contact centre metrics like AHT

Average Handling Time (AHT) is a calculation based on the time agents spend talking to a customer, the amount of time callers are on hold and the time taken on follow up tasks, divided by the number of calls handled. The lower your AHT, the better. It means you can handle more calls, improve efficiency and reduce costs. A good dialler can improve AHT and a host of other contact centre metrics, by allowing agents to handle more calls, more efficiently.

Excel at sales and debt collection

Whether it’s sales or debt collection, the best results happen when good agents talk to customers. Whether it’s a high volume, low touch sales campaign, or more sensitive debt resolution calls, the right dialler means your agents spend more time in conversation with customers, and less time processing unanswered calls or connecting to answering machines.

Keep your contact centre compliant

A powerful predictive dialling algorithm speeds up and slows down depending on the conditions in your contact centre. If fewer agents are available, the dialling slows down, helping to ensure you stay within compliant boundaries for abandoned and dropped calls. Or you can switch to progressive or preview modes for more personal contacts. The dialler can also ensure that the frequency of calls to a contact never exceeds official limits.

Seamlessly integrate with your CMS

A dialler that integrates with your CMS system is a huge advantage. It means that the systems feed information to each other, so your agents always have the details of previous contacts at their fingertips. That reduces the risk of customers becoming annoyed by having to repeat information they’ve already previously given. It can also provide insights into customer satisfaction rates, preferred times and methods of communication and so on.

These companies boosted performance with auto diallers

We worked with these companies to replace ageing systems with modern cloud-based diallers – and the results are impressive.

Compare My Insurance

Compare My Insurance is one of the largest independent insurance and protection specialists in the UK. But dialler downtime, data issues and missed opportunities were hampering the business.

MaxContact’s dialler solution integrated seamlessly with the company back office systems. It has significantly increased contact rates while providing complete transparency around performance and progress.

APJ Solicitors

APJ Solicitors, a leading financial mis-selling specialist, needed to increase call volumes and boost efficiency, but its basic VOIP phone system was no longer up to the task.

MaxContact’s solution increased call volumes by 110% in the first year, and improved average agent call efficiency by 36%. Productivity has risen five fold over the company’s previous solution.

Improve your call centre performance with MaxContact

MaxContact offers the most sophisticated outbound dialler currently available. This continually improving cloud-based dialling solution gives you the flexibility to run your contact centre your way, letting you choose the right blend of productivity and compliance for your business needs. With over a 1,000 unique features, MaxContact’s outbound dialler helps meet your contact centre challenges in new and powerful ways.

Learn about how MaxContact’s auto dialler can improve your contact centre operations. Book a demo today to find out more.

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One of the simplest and most effective tools in your contact centre armoury is your call centre script. A call centre script is a set of predefined questions, responses and conversation pathways for agents to follow when communicating with customers over the phone.

This helps agents communicate confidently and effectively with customers, no matter how little experience they have. Meanwhile, quick and efficient conversations with positive outcomes for customers lead to more sales and a better brand reputation for your business.

This means it’s crucial to write a call script that demonstrates efficiency, understanding and a real desire to help customers. Not only does this make average handling time (AHT) more efficient and valuable, but also improves customer experience (CX) and makes life considerably easier for stretched employees.

Wondering how to write a call script that gets results? Writing your own call centre script can feel daunting, but in most cases, it’s just about following a few simple rules. Here are six steps to writing an effective call centre script:

1. Keep your call centre script simple

Call centre scripts are all about focus. Only ever try to sell one product or service. Have one goal in mind for the conversation, whether it’s a further call or scheduling a demo.

It’s the same with support and debt collection scripts. Keep the focus on one thing (problem A or payment B). Don’t encourage a wider conversation about customer support or the cost of your product.

Be polite and – if relevant – sympathetic, but get to the core point of the script as quickly as possible. Don’t waste words, and use simple language at all times.

A well-focused script will contain questions and responses directly relevant to the point of the call, with examples of ways to redirect the conversation in case you start to veer off-topic. A cluttered script will include irrelevant offers or unnecessary questions.

For example, with a cold call, you want to cut straight to the chase with a concise opening to introduce yourself and explain your offer.

You could start with something like this: “Good morning, Mr Smith. I’m Dan from ABC. We’ve got an offer on right now that we think you’d be interested in. Is this a good time to talk?”

Be prepared that the likely answer is no and have a response ready that encourages the client to agree to a callback. For example: “No problem at all. When’s a better time to call? It should only take five minutes or so and I’m happy to fit into your schedule.”

2. Introduce yourself

Start every sales call centre script by introducing yourself. It’s important that you build rapport, so use your first name and personalise the conversation by using first-person phrases – “I can”, “I understand”, “I will make sure” and so on.

If you know anything about the customer – do your research beforehand – bring it into the conversation. Be sure to know how to pronounce their name before calling, and use it throughout the conversation in a natural way.

If relevant, mention the company’s latest product, or an earlier conversation a customer had with your company.

If the customer is calling with a problem or complaint, acknowledge their problem, offer an apology and be proactive in taking steps towards a solution, like so: “I’m really sorry that you’ve had this problem. Let me see what I can do to make it right.”

3. Write professionally

That means making sure you don’t make obvious spelling and grammar mistakes. This is important for both phone, webchat and email communications. You should use professional language at all times – “Good morning, Mr Smith” is better than “Hi, Mr Smith” or “Hello, Mr Smith.” On no account say “Yo, Mr Smith”!

If you can’t be bothered getting the details write* in an email, a customer might wonder if you’ll bother to get them right in other areas of your business. A difficult customer may see it as more evidence of a lax attitude to customer service.

Use online tools like Grammarly and Google’s plug-in spell checker to help, but always get someone else to read your scripts for a second opinion.

When you make mistakes in a call centre script, the agent might accidentally say them out loud, or stumble over their words while they self-correct your mistakes.

*You see what we did there, and doesn’t it make the sentence feel unprofessional?

4. Give customers opportunities to talk

A difficult customer may want an opportunity to vent. It’s important that you let them. In general, getting customers talking is good, because it engages them with the conversation. If it’s appropriate, include questions in your call centre script to encourage conversational flow. You can also mark in the script where the agent may want to pause to allow the customer to speak.

If the customer has a problem or complaint, you should direct the agent to repeat the customer’s concern back to them to ensure they understand it correctly, before moving on to a solution. This helps the customer feel heard and validated.

Agents also need to be able to escalate the issue if there’s nothing they can do to calm the customer down or the conversation is becoming confrontational.

In this instance, you should include an escalation prompt such as “I’m sorry that you’re not happy with this conversation. Would you like to speak to my superior?”

5. Ensure your call centre script is compliant

Always write a call centre script with compliance in mind. Check your industry’s compliance rules before you put pen to paper or finger to keyboard. This includes rules on collecting data from customers, recording calls for training and monitoring purposes, or the inclusion of specific legal statements and disclosures.

If your customer is signing a contract or agreeing to a sale, you may need your agents to read out specific rights or terms and conditions, so don’t forget to include these in your call script.

Double-checking everything from a regulatory standpoint paves the way for a watertight call centre script that ensures your agents stay compliant.

6. Consider every call centre script a work in progress

A call centre script isn’t a one-off, it’s a work in progress. Refine it over time using feedback from advisors and evidence from call recordings.

What works, and what doesn’t? Are customers ever confused? Do conversations feel too rushed? Tweak your scripts accordingly. The best way to do this is with a call centre script editor that includes reporting and analytics with simple tools to help you make the tweaks efficiently.

The MaxContact call centre scripting tool lets you add questions, create branching paths, and integrate third-party data, in real-time and in just a couple of clicks. It also lets you present your teams with useful in-the-moment information on one screen, so they don’t have to jump between multiple windows.

This helps your agents stay adaptable to your client’s needs as the conversation progresses.

Why writing call centre scripts can be a challenge

There are lots of reasons why you might struggle to write a call centre script. Some of the common challenges include:

• Sounding natural and not robotic: It can be hard to write pre-defined prompts and responses in a way that feels light and conversational.
• Adapting to different personalities: A traditional call centre script is often too static, making it difficult for agents to adapt to different types of customers and unexpected situations.
• Keeping information concise: Staying on topic can be tough when you can’t control what the customer will say. A clever call centre script is one that includes subtle ways to redirect the conversation as needed.
• Creating scripts that react to emotional responses: There’s no way of knowing exactly how your customers might react in any given situation. This means you need an emotionally sympathetic call centre script paired with effective training to help agents deal with heightened situations.

How to write a script with call centre scripting tools

If you struggle with any of the above challenges when writing your call centre script, you could benefit from the MaxContact call centre scripting tool. It helps you:

• Create easy-to-digest conversations that flow: With top tips for writing call centre scripts, templates, and a drag-and-drop editor, you can make and edit conversations that agents can see at a glance, helping them adapt and respond rapidly in the moment.
• Demonstrate empathy and understanding: Our call centre scripting tool can be edited on the fly, and features a straightforward presentation of multiple pathways to help agents respond to a range of emotional responses.
• Quickly get to the heart of customer challenges: Data validation and customer checks can be built into scripts to streamline conversations and save time and resources.
• Helps you deal with difficult customers: Our latest ebook is filled with scripting templates to help you deal with difficult customers.

Put simply, good scripts work. They lead to higher sales, better service and easier debt collection. They also create trust and build rapport.

MaxContact’s powerful call centre scripting tool helps you write, edit and refine great scripts, as part of our wider customer engagement solution. It means your teams always have the right messaging to hand, can counter objections naturally and have the information they need to double down on your best features and benefits.

Find out more here, or download our free call centre scripting e-book, filled with helpful tips and templates.

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They used to be called call centres, and now they’re called contact centres. There’s a good reason for the change. Today, customers want to contact you in the way that best suits them at any particular time.  

Or to put it another way, they want the option of calling your customer service line to be one among many.

More customers want the option to email your support teams, send a quick text message (SMS), or use online chat. They also want to self-serve where possible. Providing these alternatives is one of the best ways to improve customer satisfaction.  

Customers love a consistent, simple and connected experience on any channel, and so do your teams do too. It helps them improve customer service by giving advisors instant access to all correspondence between a client and your company. A good omnichannel solution should centralise all interactions, giving a complete view of customer engagement.  

Bringing your voice and digital communications together in one place means you can serve customers faster and more satisfactorily. It helps your teams prioritise the most urgent enquiries.

If your current customer engagement software doesn’t offer these options, or does so only as an afterthought, you might be looking for something better.

Similarly, if your current engagement software is coming to the end of its contract, it’s time to explore the market. There may be a more efficient and cost-effective option out there than your current solution.

With that in mind, here are five things you must look out for when considering a new omnichannel contact centre solution.

Security and integration

It goes without saying that your next omnichannel engagement software needs to be super secure, but what does that mean in practice?

It certainly needs to give you the tools to ensure that you’re  GDPR and Ofcom compliant, and you should check that it comes with the latest data security certifications. Think ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials. If it’s a cloud-based system – and that comes with many benefits – make sure the infrastructure and data is housed in secure, compliant data centres.  

If you take payments, you need to be even more picky. Look for a secure payments manager that ensures customer information is always protected, encrypted and anonymised with PCI certifications

Finally, contact centre software works best when it integrates seamlessly with other core applications, like your CRM or data management solutions, and uses the information to make your service better. Make sure that it allows for these integrations.

Flexibility and scalability

Your needs change over time, but you don’t want to be upgrading your omnichannel engagement software every year. So can it scale as you do? Can it add new features and integrations when you need them?  

In addition, the solution you choose needs to fit your requirements exactly. If you’re a debt collection agency, it’s not just about contacting customers, it’s about doing so compliantly. Sales teams need an overall view of performance, plus insight at the individual level. Customer service departments have to be able to expand rapidly as the need arises, while at the same time ensuring quality levels remain high.

Your engagement software can help, if it has the relevant features. Ask any potential provider to demonstrate what it can offer in each area.

Flexibility is also about offering customers the communication channels they want. MaxContact currently offers SMS, email, WhatsApp, Messenger and web chat, alongside voice. Can your solution say the same?

Insights and reporting

Knowledge is the key to effective contact centres, and your omnichannel engagement software needs to provide it.

That means effortless reporting using easy-to-create custom dashboards, giving you the information you need and nothing you don’t. You should be able to define key targets and visualise key data.  

Ideally, you should be able to collect and view information in real time, whether that’s team performance or customer satisfaction, and really stay on top of your SLAs.

AI-driven speech analytics is another powerful tool for delivering customer insight, with automatic analysis of conversations, sentiment and emotion. Ask your provider if they have it, or if it is on their development roadmap.

Ease of use

The easier the software is to operate, the more likely it is that your teams will make full use of all its tools and features and the quicker they’re productive.  

So, is your chosen solution easy to navigate and intuitive to use? Or is it cluttered and confusing? If it’s the latter, it will undermine the efficiency of your teams, and make it far more costly to expand team numbers because of increased training requirements.  

It’s also true that good software makes your users life easier. It allows employees to meet their targets more easily, deal with difficult customers in the best way, and continually improve their knowledge and performance. That’s good for your business, and also helps guard against employee burnout, something we’ve talked about at length.  

Compliance

On top of everything, your contact software should help ensure that you’re always acting compliantly. ICO and Ofcom enforce strict regulations around the frequency and timing of calls and dealing with vulnerable customers, among other things.  

Good omnichannel engagement software provides the tools to help you meet those requirements. That includes scripting solutions that let you create compelling and compliant scripts for every circumstance and edit them in seconds. It should certainly include intelligent outbound dialling that blends dialling types to reduce dropped calls, and that automatically checks and integrates “no call” lists.

Other things to consider when choosing an omnichannel engagement software

Those are five key factors when considering a new engagement software solution, but they’re not the only things to think about…

• Hidden costs: Are you paying a flat fee per user or do you get charged for additional features? For that matter, are you being charged for a demo, trial or proof of concept? At MaxContact, demos are always free (of both cost and obligation).
  
• Support: How easy is it to raise support tickets, and how long do they take to resolve?
  
• Expertise: Get to know your providers before you make a decision. Are they contact centre experts or just resellers? Do they have an inhouse team of developers?
  
• Accreditations: It’s great to be given the tools to operate compliantly, but are your providers acting compliantly themselves? Always check their accreditations.
  

It sometimes feels like we live in an angry age. It certainly feels that way to customer-facing staff, who have been subject to a growing torrent of abuse since the start of the pandemic.

In fact, according to the Institute of Customer Service, 60% of customer-facing staff have experienced hostility from customers since early 2020, ranging from shouting and swearing to racial abuse, death threats, spitting and physical attacks. The Institute is running a campaign to highlight the issue.

But it’s not just abuse. Contact centre staff in many sectors are also fielding a growing number of calls from distressed customers who may be struggling to pay bills or meet other commitments.

Research from Forrester in 2021 found that nearly 67% of contact centres were dealing with more complex customer enquiries than a year earlier, and that 70% were facing more calls from “emotionally charged” customers.

Much of this research was carried out during the heat of the pandemic, but with the cost of living crisis in full swing, the situation is unlikely to ease.

With that in mind, we’ve put together six tips to help contact centre staff deal with angry or emotional customers.

6 ways to deal with difficult customers:

1) Have clear processes in place

In most cases, angry customers can be calmed by an advisor who takes their issue seriously and, if the matter can’t be dealt with there and then, describes a clear path to resolution.

Have guidelines in place for every eventuality and a consistent series of next steps. Make sure your team know them (intelligent scripting can help) and can talk them through with customers. Customers often get frustrated when they can’t see an end to the issue or worry they’ll spend long periods of time in call queues or being passed between departments.

When advisors take ownership of their issue, many customers quickly become calmer.

2) Give customers obvious ways to complain

It sounds counterintuitive, but making it easy for customers to complain is one way to keep them happy.

Most customers accept that mistakes sometimes happen. Frustrations arise when there’s no obvious way to draw an organisation’s attention to an error or oversight. Advertise a complaints line and email, and ensure they’re monitored. Customers will appreciate easy ways to report issues, as long as organisations respond promptly and appropriately.

3) Remain calm and constructive

However irate a customer gets, team members should stay calm, focusing on what they can do to help. It’s easy to get infuriated with customers who appear to be taking their own frustrations out on a blameless employee, but it’s also counterproductive. It will probably prolong the call, inflame emotions further and could lead to unnecessary escalation. Unless the customer becomes abusive, stay personable, and emphasise the steps you are taking – or will take – to resolve the problem. Empathy is crucial here. If the organisation is in error, agents should acknowledge that the customer has a right to be unhappy.

At the same time, advisors shouldn’t have to suffer insults and abuse. Have guidelines in place for them to follow in the event that an emotional caller becomes an insulting or threatening one. For example, some contact centres transfer rude and abusive customers to a recorded message.

4) Differentiate between angry customers and abusive ones

We should also reiterate again that customers have a right to complain about poor service or an error that costs them time and energy to resolve. An angry customer venting about the faulty processes of the organisation is not the same as an abusive one directing anger at an individual agent. Organisations should be able to accept honest criticism and act on it.

5) Offer callbacks

If a team member can’t resolve an issue during a call, the next best way to diffuse a difficult situation is to offer a callback. Advisors may need to involve another department in a customer complaint, or escalate it to a senior manager. Putting a customer on hold during this process can lead to growing frustration, especially if the wait is longer than a couple of minutes. Offer a callback so the customer can get on with their day while their complaint is dealt with. But if you do offer a callback you have to honour it, and at the time agreed.

6) Train your advisors

It’s a good idea to train your team to deal specifically with difficult calls, but training more generally is even more essential. In a nutshell, the more knowledgeable your team is, the more faith customers will have that they can and will resolve complex issues.

In fact, the kind of good contact centre management practices that help drive efficiency can also help to reduce the number of difficult calls agents have to deal with. For example, fast call answering can take the edge off a customer’s anger. Answering an email complaint within the advertised time shows you take complaints seriously. Intelligent call routing that gets them to the right person first time cuts out one cause of customer frustration.

In other words, having the tools in place to manage your contact centre effectively also helps to pacify difficult customers. Those tools should include intelligent scripting. Giving agents scripted guidance helps them lead difficult conversations to a satisfactory outcome. Download our ebook for more information on smart scripting and templates you can use in your own contact centres for dealing with difficult customers.  

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