4 Essential Tips For Your Contact Center Agent Scripts

While companies utilize chatbots, email, and instant messaging through all their digital channels, voice still remains the most popular channel for engagement.Call center agents could be facing hundreds to thousands of calls each day, with a high volume of these callers being highly frustrated.

It can be devastating for your company and a flawed type of management to place your agents under strain, by leaving them in the dark and not know what to say to their customers. The usage of call center scripts is a helpful method to prevent confusion from all sides and to ensure that the agents are looked after.
These scripts can be a useful guide for your agents should a call ever go awry or begin to take a bad turn, helping you avoid customer churn and keep every member of the call center team unified, accurate, and effective.

Given that call center scripts often allow quicker, more effective handling of the call, it is easy to see why most call centers have committed to the idea with enthusiasm.
Below are four effective tips you should follow to help you develop effective call center scripts.


1. Ensure the Scripts are genuine

Customers are often already frustrated and nervous by the time they reach a call center agent. They want their concerns validated and resolved as soon as possible.
Therefore, it is important that call center agents demonstrate to the client that they understand the issue as it is described.

Scripts should provide the agents with a way to respectfully clarify any relevant information that the caller shares with them and help confirm the problem at hand.  


2. Allow flexibility but, where necessary, include Scripts to ensure compliance and promote productivity

Many call centers try to plan whole conversations, but this is generally impossible. Instead of trying to create a script for every scenario, prepare the agents so that they are able to handle unexpected problems properly when they occur.

Keep the scripts flexible and avoid excessive emphasis on implementing scripts to the point where the dialogue cannot be disrupted or diverted by customers.  


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3. Turn your Scripts into knowledge resources that are easy for Reps to quickly access

A script is not meant to be just a list of lines to say. If you have call center scripts in that format, you should repurpose them to platforms and networks that will make your customer service representatives more open to the most important information.

Use your scripts to construct your internal knowledge base and make it searchable so that reps can find the relevant answer to any question they encounter more easily.
In order to get to the information they need, your reps shouldn’t have to read 500 words in script form, all while the client is waiting on the line.  


4. Train Reps to keep the communication two way

Part of the scripting dilemma is that you risk talking at the customer rather than talking about them.
The distinction has a lot to do with whether or not you have time to really listen to the client or you are trying to jump in with an answer and whether or not you understand the question.

Agents should be prepared to stop periodically to check in with the customer to make sure they have the right details and see if there is anything the customer has to add. This can also help agents from droning to the point where a question was answered in the past. Shorter replies and short delays give customers the ability to let you know when the problem is solved and get off the line more quickly.  


Conclusion

It is also vital to remember that the agent and customer need to be able to hear one another by having excellent audio quality. The agent could be reading off their script, unaware that the customer is unsuccessfully trying to converse, or is unable to actually hear the agent, disrupting the call and leaving a negative impact on the customers’ experience. If customers fail to connect or have to constantly repeat their issues to an agent, they will easily become frustrated and abandon the call. Just as callers suffer from the effects of poor quality audio, so too do the agents. 

Call centers should use these above-mentioned approaches to improve both first touch response and consumer loyalty rates, as well as decrease call handling time and turnover of employees. By having effective scripts and excellent audio quality, you will render your contact center successful and benefit your both your agents and customers.  


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About Us

Spearline is a technology company that proactively tests toll and toll-free numbers for connectivity and audio quality globally. It enables organizations to provide uninterrupted services to customers around the world. For further information, or if you have any further questions please get in touch with us.

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