Historically, the success of contact centers was measured in terms of efficiency: average handle time, calls per hour etc. But according to ContactBabel’s 2017 U.S. Contact Center Decision Makers’ Guide, customer experience is the number one indicator of success, consistently voted more important than increasing revenues, decreasing costs or hitting target performance metrics. And this shift from call volume to call value makes sense. Satisfied account holders are loyal. They help build your reputation – and grow your business.

Good Customer Experience = Healthy Business

It’s easy to see why customer experience is now the #1 priority. Not only do happy customers remain customers, a good experience creates its own word-of-mouth advertising. According to the 2014 Global Customer Service Barometer, 93 percent of customers talk about their good customer experiences at least some of the time, with nearly half (46 percent) saying they talk about their positive experience all of the time.

In contrast, nearly all customers (95 percent) who have a poor customer service experience say they talk about it all of the time. Even worse, more than half (58 percent) of people say they would never use a company again after just one negative experience. Account holders who feel they aren’t getting the service they need and desire will simply take their accounts somewhere else.

The Need to Get Contact Center Service “Right”

The contact center has become more than just a place for your account holders to call when they have issues or questions. It has become a critical element of your financial institution’s success. Managed properly, with a strong focus on customer satisfaction and even customer delight, the contact center experience becomes your differentiator, helping you to stand out from the competition like a shining star, which can bring in new accounts and increase wallet share.

At Vericast, we approach your financial institution’s contact center strategy with a service focus in mind. With more consumers using digital self-service channels, the average phone call is increasing in complexity. More than a short-term staffing fix, outsourced contact center suppliers today are expected to not only strategically enhance the customer journey, but also add value to the overall customer experience.

How to Turn Your Contact Center into Customer Satisfaction Center

If you’re like most contact centers, you measure against a stack of pre-determined metrics.  But do these metrics really answer the right questions? Not really. So how do you make sure account holders are happy when they hang up? It starts with retooling your strategy.

Shifting your mindset from call volume to call value—ensuring account holders solve problems and reach their goals—will help to increase customer satisfaction levels dramatically. Account holders want to feel like their questions are being answered accurately and thoroughly. And if the contact center representative can proactively understand what the account holder needs to know, and can bring insight and understanding about how to make the experience better, then the account holder will feel that their financial institution knows and understands their needs.

The more you know about creating and increasing account holder satisfaction and call value, the better chance you’ll have of standing out from the crowd and seeing positive results.

> Download Vericast’s “Ultimate Guide for Successful Contact Center Outsourcing”.