E-commerce is presently one of the most successful and widespread business industries across the globe. The demand is huge and is still growing exponentially. One statistic that proves this is that there is an estimated 12.24 million websites for e-commerce in the world. Plus, this number has been growing at a staggering rate every day.
Yet, even after the total number of e-commerce sellers is potentially huge, the success rate is down to a low. Quite interestingly, less than one million of these websites sell anywhere more than $1,000 a year. So, the high demand is very subjective, based on your approach.
What makes this difference more prominent? Why is there such a huge and unexplained disparity in the success rate?
The simple answer to this is the presence and use of an e-commerce contact center services provider. But if you want to elaborate the answer further, keep reading. We are here to tell you everything you need to know about e-commerce call center management.
Best Practices for E-commerce Call Center Management
Take a look at some effective and best practices for effective call center management.
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Follow Onboarding
Onboarding can be a very favorable aspect of your e-commerce business. It can help to make the operations more effective and efficient. However, onboarding does not necessarily mean the hiring of the best talent.
Instead, a proper onboarding process includes everything, starting from hiring to training. The onboarding process can be proven as a great way to improve the output of your call center in Canada or any country across the world.
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Hire the Right Agents
This may sound like onboarding, but it isn’t. It is a part of the entire onboarding process but is important enough to deserve special mention.
Hiring the right agent is the very first step to ensuring a streamlined workforce. So, if you are an e-commerce contact center services provider, you should be more focused on hiring the perfect executives to deal with your agents.
You can ensure right away that you can make the job description and criteria completely transparent. With this, you can expect the most relevant applications that are apt for the position. Also, hiring those you are hiring should have good social skills, which brings out empathy while dealing with customers. Needless to say, industry experience is always a boon.
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Don’t Overlook Technology
Technology is the mother of all successful BPO companies. If you own an e-commerce brand, you should be able to adapt to the growing changes in technology. The newer technologies are capable of enhancing your business output, be it quality assurance for the clients or customer satisfaction.
Most modern call center outsourcing technology is great in terms of team building, training, analytics, monitoring, data collection, etc. However, once you streamline all of this, you will be able to generate the kind of results you are looking for.
What Tools Should an E-commerce Contact Center Services Provider Use
Certain technology-backed tools can ensure the kind of quality and results that you are looking for. These tools fall into various operations departments and help streamline every aspect of the business.
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IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
Now, a lot of people and businesses believe that IVRs are dying, especially with the growing demand for chatbots with AI integration. However, when it comes to the e-commerce industry, the voice process is still a very important part of customer satisfaction.
Customers still prefer an IVR opening when they are calling a big e-commerce brand for customer support and complaint. Though they want to reach the customer support executive at the earliest, the IVR navigation is very convenient.
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Call Barging and Monitoring
Call monitoring and barging do not fall under call recording and deserve a separate identity. Over the years, call barging by real-time quality-assurance agents has been an expert-level tactic to improve the quality of the live agents and guide them to the proper way of dealing with a situation in cases of tricky situations.
These little crash courses often work better than long hours of training sessions. So, ensuring this long-drawn traditional way of call barging and monitoring is a common trip that almost every e-commerce contact center services provider offers.
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An Impressive CRM
CRM has been the forever support system for a BPO company, and only technology has made things better than they used to be. Most modern-day CRMs are very extensive and comprehensive and store details, like past communications, relations, behavioral patterns, cart activities, searches, etc.
Moreover, CRMs have also become very simple to use, and adopting or shifting to a new tool is seamless and simple. Plus, data security is always a priority for CRMs that use modern technology.
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Real-time Analytics and Reporting
The BPO sector has become so extensive that all analytics and reporting have become real-time. This benefits the brand if you are looking to outsource your BPO services. In addition, reporting in real-time helps the managers and leaders conduct brainstorming sessions on-the-go and keep track of the agents daily.
With real-time reporting and analytics, there are absolutely no backlogs when it comes to providing feedback to the agents to help them get better with their results.
Challenges that for E-commerce BPO Companies
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Optimization of Workforce
For any call center in Canada or other locations to succeed, the workforce has to be optimized in the best possible way. However, the demand is huge when it comes to the e-commerce sector, which makes managing the workforce a little tricky.
Moreover, the high rate of hiring and attrition also makes it difficult to streamline the workforce seamlessly.
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Analytics and Reporting
Though technology has gone a long way now, we haven’t yet reached a point where it can be depended upon without any assistance. There are either lags in the results or errors in the reports when it comes to real-time analytics and reporting.
This can end up being a major hurdle towards complete reliance on the technology that is at its disposal for reporting and analytics.
The Wrap Up
E-commerce businesses have thrived well during the pandemic. Compared to any other sector (except healthcare), it was e-commerce that managed to hold on to a somewhat constant rate of growth.
The shift to the online arena from physical retail has made a difference in terms of demand. However, there were limitations too, especially in the workforce and management department. Overcoming these is a huge challenge, though following the tips that are mentioned here could help you with it.
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