Much has been said about the importance of customer experience. We, here at Altaqnya, have written about its meaning and its position as one of the pillars of success as a modern business, but you may be wondering why having set standards specific to Customer Experience is important or what those standards should even be.

Having set standards is an essential part of our lives. They define a wireframe within which to build our customer experience systems. These standards can be used to ease the confusion associated with change. They speed up adoption and collaboration making the entire process smoother.

Are standards constricting?

The limitations of freedom

Before we get into the details of the potential standards and rules that you can set for your staff, it’s important to say a thing or two about the importance of freedom. Standards are essential but they cannot supplant your employees’ free will and you shouldn’t want them to. Standards should act like guidelines that help your staff rather than hinder them. They should help direct their energy rather than stifle their creativity.

But on the other hand, excessive freedom can also be an issue. By abandoning your staff to make their own decisions based on the sometimes vague goal of “Customer Experience”, you are asking for trouble. 

For example, your staff shouldn’t be told what to say exactly. Instead, they should be directed to push the customer in a certain direction in their own way, to get points across in their own words, this allows them to balance creativity and precision within the confines of the standards.

Discovering your standards

How to go about building your own system

Standards differ from industry to industry and so, no predefined checklist can cover your specific case. Because of that, it’s in your best interest to study your organization and draw up your own list of standards based on its requirements. Here are some steps you can take immediately:

• What are your organization’s goals? Your goals should be understood well by you and your employees. The Hilton, for example, wants to provide the best hospitality experience that money can buy.

• What are your clients’ goals? A gas station’s clients aren’t as interested in the aesthetics of the station as they are in the speed at which the service that can be provided.

• How do you expect the service to be provided? At this stage it’s best to focus on generalized goals rather than specific employee actions towards these goals. If the employees understand the first two points, they should autonomously arrive at the best solution most of the time.

Something to get you started

These goals are good to keep in mind regardless of industry

While there may not be such a thing as a “catch all” set of standards, there are a few goals that the Altaqnya team recommends you to focus energy towards achieving. These goals will help start you down the path of generating and customizing your own set of standards for the perfect customer experience.

• Be available and responsive: This seemingly simple point is an important double-sided coin. Not only must you be available to the customer as often as possible, but your availability must also be tangible, responding to customer needs and requests as quickly as possible.

• Be courteous and obliging: This not only means treating the customer with deference and respect, but also designing the whole experience so that it leaves the customer feeling amazing. It extends from person-to-person interactions all the way to the environments that the customer is expected to be.

• Be consistent and accurate: there is nothing customers appreciate more than predictability when interacting with a business. They want to be able to fit their interaction with you into their schedules neatly.  

The last point seems to conflict with our push to provide staff with autonomy, but it’s all about striking a balance between giving the staff the freedom to handle issues in unique ways, while also giving the customer the fantastic experience that they expect, when they expect it.

We, here at Altaqnia, want you to reach the pinnacle of customer experience greatness. Contact us today to find out how our systems and standards can help you achieve these goals. Together, we can discover the perfect set of standards for you and implement them in a way that’s sure to succeed!

Contact us at Info@Altaqnya.com.ly to discover the ideal solution for you.

It’s often the face of the company

A call center is simply a location, often an office, that is used by organizations and businesses to interact with customers and clients over the phone. These offices are staffed by teams of trained personnel that make and take these calls.  There are two main types of call center, though many modern call centers combine features of both:

1. Inbound call centers: These locations specialize in taking calls from customers. These locations usually provide customer care and tech support operations as well as respond to enquiries.
2. Outbound call centers: These locations specialize in making calls to clients, often performing what is referred to as “telemarketing”; a form of direct marketing in which a potential customer is contacted directly.

While this may come as a surprise to some, call centers are still extremely popular and growing as customers continue to prefer the instant gratification of talking to a representative on the phone, rather than via Email or through live chat. 

These call centers are not always operated by the business or organization that uses them. Instead, they are often run by specialized companies like Altaqnya that offer top of the line call center services to these organizations.

Call Center Staff

How should staff operate?

Call center staff are a group of motivated employees, trained to provide the highest quality customer experience over the phone. The staff member operates as part of a team. They must work together to make sure that the customer’s requirements are met.

A call center employee must have great communication skills. They must be able to listen to a customer and understand their issue without forcing them to repeat themselves. They must be able to speak clearly and articulate the solution in a way that the customer can understand. They should also be able to find a solution for the customer or connect them with the department or specialist that can help them.

Another important characteristic that the employee must possess, especially if they work in a tech support capacity, is the ability to defuse the customer’s frustration and anger, and not allow themselves to also grow frustrated.

Call center process

How the magic happens

1, Initiate Communication

The first step in every call center operation is to begin speaking to the customer. This comes either in the form of the customer contacting the call center directly, as is the case in most tech support centers, or by staff contacting the customer. This is most commonly done in call centers that specialize in telemarketing.

2. Handle the Issue 

The next step is to attempt to retrieve as much information from the customer about their issue as possible. This is where the representative’s communication skills have their chance to shine as they attempt to guide the customer through the process as clearly and non-abrasively as possible, trying their best to navigate the treacherous waters of human interaction.

3. Forward the Issue

If the representative is unable to resolve the issue. The next step is to end the call with the customer and forward the issue to the specialist or the department that can. This can cause friction with the customer as they may feel let down. The representative must try to clarify that the issue is simply being transferred, not dropped, and that the customer will be contacted again as soon as possible.

4. Following up

After the issue is passed on to the appropriate specialist/department, they attempt to resolve the issue and reinitiate communication with the customer, either over the phone or more commonly, via email.

How to create a great call center

Three essential qualities to get you on the path to success

1. Language skills

Whether the call center operates in english, arabic or any other language. The proficiency of staff in the chosen language is essential. With lack of language skills, misunderstanding will abound and frustrations will rise very quickly. This is a recipe for disaster.

2. Happy Employees

Repetivity is the bane of motivation. That’s why the most successful call centers are those that can provide a variety of challenging tasks for their employees. This aspect alongside a positive work environment can work wonders on the motivation, energy and creativity of employees. 

3. Utilize technology efficiently

The modern call center utilizes advanced technologies to provide the best services possible, whether it’s by utilizing cloud based solutions that integrate well with the customer’s systems, or by employing AI to analyze incoming data and interact with customers.

We here at Altaqnya believe that every call center needs, and can achieve a perfect balance between these qualities. That’s why our call centers are some of the best in the region. If you are in the market for a great customer experience, you’ve come to the right place. Call us today and speak to our team of experts to find the perfect call center solution for your business.

Contact us at Info@Altaqnya.com.ly to discover the ideal solution for you.

Employing software to boost productivity

A CRM or Customer Relationship Management System is a piece of software that allows businesses and organizations to manage and track their relationship with customers and potential customers. It helps them to keep track of all customer data, including contact information, purchase history, and previous communications.

The system should cover all interactions with the customer, whether it’s to help the team keep track of potential leads, send offers to those leads, create invoices for services that have been provided, or handle potential issues that customers may have, using an often built-in ticketing system.

These systems can be extremely useful for all sections of your business, and are often utilized by departments such as marketing, customer-care, finance, human-resources and business-development. Each department has its own set of tools in the system to ease their workload and increase their productivity.

Why do you need a CRM?

Boost productivity and crush time wastage

A modern business or organization has many information streams feeding data into its internal mechanisms. Whether it’s marketing department staff meeting with potential clients and gathering important information about future projects or the human resources department collecting employee personal information. 

Without a CRM, this data tends to pile up very quickly in emails, excel spreadsheets, and meeting notes. The haphazardly stored data becomes very hard to analyze or even to remember after a while, leading to lost time, and more importantly, lost revenue.

What is a ticketing system?

Keep track of customer issues and solve them on the go

Ticketing systems are tools that allow you to track cases such as customer technical support or business enquiries from when they are first started, through to their eventual resolution by the appropriate party. These systems are an essential part of any modern CRM system, and are irreplaceable for any business or organization that wants to insure the most efficient operation and the best customer experience.

How does a ticketing system work?

These systems are simple to learn and easy to use

A ticketing system will allow authorized users to add, edit, and view cases. The cases are divided into categories depending on which department they belong to, the team they’re assigned to, and what type of issues they’re trying to solve. Each case contains all the interactions that have been made with the customer, from emails to phone call transcripts and chat logs. 
The system will also contain all the comments that the user might have on this specific case; such as details regarding the issue itself or comments on the customer’s temperament and preferences.

Benefits of using a ticketing system

Speed, efficiency and quality of service

Employing a ticketing system has many tangible benefits to your organization. These include:

1. A more satisfied customer: Your customers will instantly notice the increase in responsiveness and accuracy added to your team by the system.

2. A deeper understanding of your own process: As the amount of tickets you handle increases, so does the data you gather on your own work. The system will help you to track your performance and improve it.

3. Increase employee happiness: Staff don’t like dealing with messy paper trails and confusing communication any more than the customer, by providing them with the tools they need, you not only increase their satisfaction with their job, but also the quality of their work. 

4. Increase employee happiness: Staff don’t like dealing with messy paper trails and confusing communication any more than the customer, by providing them with the tools they need, you not only increase their satisfaction with their job, but also the quality of their work.

Now that you have a deeper understanding of exactly what this technology entails, it’s time for you to obtain a system for your own business or organization. The options on the market are many, but few reach the standards of quality you deserve. You may find yourself spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on subpar services.

Here at Altaqnya, we provide you with the highest quality CRM and Ticketing System at an affordable price. We utilize cutting edge systems and technologies to help you bring your services to the next level. Our systems are modular, tried and tested, and are currently in use by many local and international clients from a variety of fields.

Contact us at Info@Altaqnya.com.ly to discover the ideal solution for you.

By 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human

– Gartner

The modern consumer lives in an algorithm dominated world where their entertainment is served to them by algorithms on Youtube and Netflix, their music by algorithms on Spotify and Anghami, their products by algorithms on Amazon and even the ads they see are served by specialized algorithms developed by the advertising service provider. 

It shouldn’t be surprising that machine learning and algorithms are finding their way into the world of customer experience as well!

The basis behind the assumption that AI will find a good home in the world of CX is the reality that CX is extremely data-heavy. Data is gathered about users, representatives, projects, and issues. Data is the driving force behind AI and using it. Algorithms are trained to interact with new inputs – including human behaviour and emotions – in accurate and meaningful ways.

AI is the future of CX

How to apply AI to transform your business

When it comes to implementing AI in your business to improve your customers’ experience. There are certain goals that we, here at Altaqnia, recommend you have. Your business’s AI solution should: 

1. Utilize chatbots and virtual assistants

Chatbots are AI-powered conversational programs. Their goal is to simulate a human and reply to customers in realistic and accurate ways. They are now extremely common in the field of customer service and have helped solve one of the greatest issues in the path of great CX: delays when replying to customer queries. Now the Chatbot is there 24/7 to instantly analyze the message and reply appropriately based on its training.

This approach is not quite perfect yet and is not capable of handling every situation thrown at it. However, it pairs extremely well with a dedicated team of customer service representatives. The bot screens incoming messages and takes care of many of the simpler issues, lowering the amount of pressure on the human, and increasing the reply time from variable based on the time and availability of representatives, to instant.

2. Use analytics to clear the haze

All organizations collect data, some of it from customers, some of it from internal operations, but this data can become too large to handle very quickly. That’s where AI can be extremely useful. It can be used to process and analyze this data to provide high impact insights into the inner workings of your organization, as well as give you a game=changing look into the minds of your customers.

While data analysis can be performed without AI, it is a slow and tedious process. The application of specialized algorithms can increase the speed and precision of the operation by orders of magnitude!

This data can be used in many different ways. You can use it to track underperforming services and modify them to be better, you can see the areas where customers are having the most issues and clear them up, and you can even preemptively handle potential issues that the data points to as being likely to happen such as scalability problems.

3.Use AI to predict your customer’s actions

AI can generate detailed insights into how your customers interact with your organization. This data can then be used to provide specialized services to your customers using  “predictive personalization”. Here, the AI analyses the actions and history of each user and recommends specific services that it thinks are suitable for them.

This predictive model can also be used to customize your services in new and exciting ways that fit each customer’s use case and helps them feel like the services are tailor-made just for them.

What now?

You have your goals, now comes the implementation

Now that you have your goals, you need to start work on transforming your business into an AI powered machine. The Altaqnia team recommend that you follow these steps to get the best possible outcome:

1. Analyze your current CX systems: The goal here is to find locations where a transition to AI can have the biggest impact.
2. Research AI solutions that fit your requirements: The market has many parties claiming to have the perfect solution for you. Use the results of step 1 to see if they are a match or not.
3. Purchase an AI solution or build your own: Now that you know what you need and who can provide it, either purchase a solution off the market or build your own using in-house expertise.
4. Keep track of the new system’s metrics: Now that you have a system implemented and operational, you need to keep track of its performance to make sure it’s performing according to the specifications you set out to have.

Now it’s time for action

Now you have all the tools you need to make change happen!

AI is clearly here to stay. In many ways its position in the industry has been cemented. Businesses that have implemented AI/CX solutions are delivering high-impact customer experience because of it. Now it’s your turn to get on board! 

However, while the value added by these systems is undeniable, they’re far from easy to drop into an existing organization’s CX apparatus. It takes a lot of research, analysis and work to find the most impactful way to implement AI in your system and do it. 

We, here at Altaqnia, provide robust AI/CX solutions that can guide you through these steps and help you achieve the ideal results for your organization rapidly and at the lowest possible cost. Contact us today to find out how AI can boost your CX performance and push your business to the next level.

Contact us at Info@Altaqnya.com.ly to discover the ideal solution for you.