The communication and marketing practice between companies and consumers has changed drastically, alongside paradigm shift from brand-centric marketing approach to customer-centric approach. Further on, the increase in social media and digital communication has also completely altered the nature of interactions between brands, outsourced inbound call center partner and customers. Brands can no longer regulate the communication process in a hierarchical order, because customers play an equivalent role in the process. Hence, the dialogues often transform to trialogues and so on. Apart from that, demands and requirements of customers are increasingly getting harder to satisfy, and as a result, customer allegiance and retention stand as a major challenge for the companies.
These are just some of the causes why organizations are trying to put together more two-way relationships with their customers, leveraging innovative strategies for customer engagement. Sometimes, these engagement strategies are derived from the psychological aspect of the consumer behavior. Below are some such strategies to engage customers in a superior way with a positive impact.
Early demonstration of expertise
The psychology that deals with Authority Bias tells that we tend to believe more in positions than persons. When an inbound call center agent starts a conversation by mentioning his position, the customer tends to give more weight to that opinion. This logic can be used to gain trust while demonstrating expertise in up-selling and cross-selling.
Here are examples to show you the difference.
. Example 1 (commonly used): “Good Evening. You are speaking to Jessica. How may I help you?”
. Example 2 (demonstrating authority): “Hello, you are through to the customer service associate, William, at XYZ company. Will you provide me your Customer Reference Number please?”
In the second example, the representative is making an authoritative impression upon the customer right away.
Engage but don’t bring too many variations on the table
Not liking change is a common human behavior and in case of customers as well, they like things to remain the same. As a result, the behavior becomes more automatic. From this behavior, it can be assumed that customers don’t mind defaults if they are led properly through calls. They want you to feel their problem first. They don’t like the disturbed flow of the process or anything that makes them feel they are not proceeding and going backwards.
So, to engage customers, inbound call center associates start with addressing the problem first and then diagnosis. The key stages of interaction should be followed.
Managing ambiguity in customer communication
Ambiguity repugnance indicates the fact that customers usually have a penchant for risks that are linked with known possibilities instead of doubts where possibilities are not known. This human predisposition signifies the magnitude of managing customer expectations. This theory is applied across the customer experience, counting how you communicate with customers.
There are a few things that could be done to manage this silence or ambiguity like:
Talk to customers about what your opinion would be
Utilize the silence to update customer about special offers and promotions
Improve information systems to decrease periods of silence
End the conversation with a commitment
Getting the customer to entrust to doing something at the end of the call can be a potent method for cheering further engagement. But one needs to be watchful in how to do this. Typically a call in an inbound call center is completed by saying: “Is there anything else I can do to help you with?”
So, the conversation typically ends with – “No, thank you”.
However, this conversation could have ended with an affirmative sentence from the customer if you have asked: “Have I covered everything you have asked?”
If you can put your question in a way that encourages engagement in future, you can get many other customers to commit to re-engage.
