Customer satisfaction is paramount to your business success, and because of that contact center managers are constantly looking for ways to improve interactions. Whether your contact center is multi-channel, inbound, outbound, or some combination of such, you know that when you resolve issues within its operation, you should always prioritize the customer experience.

But without knowledge of contact center best practices, solutions can remain just out of reach. Use the best practices in this article to get your contact center to the next level by giving your customers the experience they're really looking for.

Four contact center best practices you must leverage for customer satisfaction

1. Define your channels

Imagine your customer demographic is 65-year-old males. If you only offered a web portal for your customers to communicate with your service agents, you may be missing out on all of their important feedback and on resolving their concerns. Same could be said for if your demographic is 25-year-old females who mainly text – if you only offer a voice solution, you may be missing out on valuable feedback to promote customer satisfaction. But you might never know it. That's why the first best practice is centered in knowledge: knowledge of your customers. Develop a strong understanding of who your customers are and how they want to communicate with you. Then you can enter the appropriate channels ready to interact.

2. Determine customer-focused key performance indicators

Spend some time mapping out your end user's experience to see what KPIs might actually reveal successes or room for improvement.

If your motivation is to minimize the amount of people in the queue or to shorten the length of each phone call, you're not focused enough on prioritizing the customer. Instead, use metrics like first contact resolution, the number of times in a given period the customer's first contact with your agent resolves the issue. If you have the analytics capability, you can also focus on quality score, a point value for the interaction determined by defined quality parameters and a quality assurance solution.

Getting your customer to their resolution is the most important function of your contact center, so spin your KPIs to focus on that process, measure against those KPIs, and adjust accordingly.

3. Allocate your resources (avoid hiring new people as you grow, free up time to be strategic)

One incredible benefit of defining your KPIs and inspecting analytics is that it allows you to better allocate your resources. The best way to increase customer satisfaction, decrease wasted HR costs and maximize the amount of traffic your center handles is to measure and then use the analytics to improve staffing. It's important to consider what your metrics mean in order to close the loop and find the right staffing solution.

If you know that 40 percent of all of your web chat initiations occur between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Monday, and only 5 percent of initiations occur in the same period on Friday, you may want to examine this and transfer some resources to better serve your customers. Proper resource allocation frees your agents' hands and minds so your entire team can be more strategic.

4. Maintain communications consistency

If you have chosen an omni-channel contact center, maintaining a consistent experience across all channels can present a challenge, but an important one to tackle for improved interaction. So, how can you deliver a uniform experience even if your agents are using a variety of mediums?

First, it's critical to establish your brand voice and a customer service experience protocol that transcends channels. To allow that protocol to function well, opt for an integrated solution that allows seamless flow between your systems, such that those agents answering inbound phone calls are the same agents responding to Web chat questions.

What You Shouldn't Do

If your goal is to improve customer interaction, you need to avoid a painful IVR. Though Interactive Voice Response can certainly cut costs, it doesn't provide long-term gains due to customer satisfaction. Simply put: don’t put your callers into an elaborate front end, forcing them to answer questions your agent may have to ask again later. If you need to implement an IVR to route calls, make it as simple as possible and be sure to utilize each piece of information you gain from the customer, so they never feel they've wasted their time.

Use these best practices to guide you as you tackle contact center management and you'll be well on your way to cutting costs and saving time — all while you improve customer interaction.

Learn more about contact center best practices by speaking with a Twinstate expert.