For a lot of businesses, call centers are their primary form of contact and customer service. Agents are expected to answer each call cheerfully and courteously, whether an order is being placed, a complaint is being made or a general question is being asked. A call center is the backbone of almost every business and can have a huge impact on your bottom line.
At Endicott, we understand that the culture we create has an impact on the businesses that we service. Culture influences every aspect of a call center, including leadership, management, potential employees, and the work environment. In short, the environment we create heavily impacts the customer service our agents provide.
We are a People Business First
Our strong emphasis on creating a positive culture makes our agents more committed to achieving your company’s goals. Our environment better engages them with their work, makes them more committed to the goals you set for your business, and improves the service they provide to your customers. Because of this improved performance on an individual level, our call center agents perform better overall.
People are our number one priority. We’ve created a culture in which everyone feels as if they are part of the team and are always having fun in the office. We always have contests and looking for ways to recognize people. Our goal is to walk through our call centers and find a reason to acknowledge someone, which always makes someone feel good. We always encourage our employees to exude acts of kindness internally and externally. We make sure that we’ve created a space of teamwork.
One of our main goals is for continuous improvement and making sure that we’re giving employees a career path that they can see, that they can work for us for the next 10 years and have a path to do something new.
We Ensure That Our Agents are Well Trained
Training is a big part of what we do. All of our training is done onsite. We also have subject matter experts that continuously help and support our agents. If we don’t have someone at a particular site that’s an expert at one particular thing, we can bring in resources from others. At the end of the day, if our customer service representatives don’t feel that they’re trained and don’t feel competent to take the call, every phone call they take is only going to diminish their confidence level, thus having a negative effect on your business.
We’re Always Looking to Improve
We’re very open to suggestions from our employees. Our philosophy is if you come in and you work for us, you can always suggest more efficient ways of doing things. If you think it could be done better, we are open ears and if it makes sense, we implement it fairly quickly. One of the biggest challenges is getting qualified people, being competitive in the marketplace, and creating and making sure our culture is top-notch because, at the end of the day, people stay at work for more than just the money. They stay at work because they like the people they work for. They get a sense of validation from that and we try to make sure that we embody that.
We’re Able to Pick the Best
Prospective employees normally look closely at an organization’s culture when they’re deciding where they want to work. The last thing a potential employee wants to do is take a job that isn’t the right fit and taking away an opportunity to find long-term employment elsewhere. With a clearly defined, well-communicated call center culture, we’re able to attract the right applicants, the ones who will fit in with our call center. We believe that maintaining a robust workplace culture can improve the quality of our job applicants. It also increases the number of people who want to work for us, since word has spread about our great culture.
We Always Strive for Customer Loyalty
We always make an effort to forge relationships with each customer that calls, which leads to loyalty. When customers are satisfied with the experiences they have, they are far more likely to continue to do business with your company. In turn, they are willing to share their experiences with their friends and family, leading to an increase in referrals and new business.
When your call center culture motivates your agents to provide better customer service, it will make your business stand apart from its competitors. Consumers will take note of your company’s reputation for providing excellent service, and it will increase the likelihood that they will give your products or services a try or return to make additional purchases in the future.
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Endicott’s expertise in the contact center industry can help you identify the communication strategies that will boost client satisfaction and retention rates. To learn more visit www.endicottcomm.com.