The Best Call Center Software: Ask your agents these 2 questions

Your company is in the market for a new call center software solution. Before replacing what you have today, ask your agents these 2 questions.

In this video, I explain the importance of asking your call center agents questions, first, before you speak with anyone else.

Want my recommendations on the best call center software vendors? Click the button below and ask me today.

About Me

Mike Smith has been helping companies select the best telecom, WAN, security, and cloud services since 1999. He founded AeroCom in 2003, and has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in tech-heavy Orange County, CA. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

So let me guess. Your company is in the market for a new call center solution. And you’re thinking, well, should we just replace what we already have? Well, as you probably seen in my some of my other videos, that’s not something I recommend. Instead, try to really do a thorough job with this. Chances are you haven’t looked at it in a long time and the technology’s changed quite a bit and this could be a really big impact for your company. The call center is usually a big area of revenue or support for your customers, so it’s a big deal. So what I recommend is really taking your time and asking a lot of questions, starting with your contact center or your call center agents.

Intro

So this video is going to be about what two questions you need to ask your call center agents. And from there, you can start asking questions from supervisors and from other departments and then from executive management and upward. But I always recommend starting with the agent, start with the folks on the front lines, the folks who are talking to customers all the time who are using the call center software technology. Right. So start with them and you’re going to want to ask these two questions. I’m also going to throw in as an extra bonus the questions you should definitely not ask them.

Quick Plug: Website Plug

But before I get into it, too deep, I wanted to tell you about our company’s website. So if you are looking at a call center solution once you start to know what requirements you have, like after you ask these questions and things like that, if you go to our website, you can actually browse vendors by the actual features that they offer. So if you go to our website in the search bar, you enter in call center software. Then from there you can actually filter on the left hand column by features and compliance requirements, things like that. So the cool thing is you can really narrow down your search to a certain amount of vendors and you could start researching those vendors a little bit, watching videos on them, reading about them a little bit, and knowing, what they’re all about.

Quick Plug: My recommendations

 And then at some point you’re going to need pricing, you’re going to need a little bit more. And that’s where I come in. So if you contact me, send me an email, or give me a call (714.593.0011) and tell me about your company’s requirements. What I’ll do is I’ll tell you the best to three vendors that your company should be coding for call center software. I’m a broker for all of the major service providers and I’ve been doing this for over 20 years. So this is my job. This is the reason why I make the videos so if you’d like to do some research on your own ahead of time, go ahead and use the website. It’s really cool. You’ll never see anything like it. It’s pretty cool. We’ve invested thousands of dollars into the website and a lot of time, but if you just want to cut the corner and contact me and get some quick recommendations or also recommend you to the best reps to work with at the vendors or oversee the coding process for you to make sure you get the best pricing available. And it’s just a lot easier. It’ll save you a lot of time. I’ll let you know which vendors have the best reputation in our industry. Help you avoid signing up with the wrong vendor, so you’re going to end up getting a better vendor at the end of the day with a lot less time invested. Okay. Also, don’t forget, do me a favor. Hit the like button, subscribe to the channel and ring the bell. I’d really appreciate it.

Questions to ask Agents

All right. So the first question you want to ask your call center agents, you can either do this over email or have a sit down. It’s up to you. But the first question is, what is your call center doing? Well, right now when it comes to number one technology. Number two, staffing. And number three, process.The second question you want to ask is what might your company be able to do a little bit better when it comes to the call center with those three things, with technology, with staffing and with process. I know it sounds pretty basic, but those are nice open ended questions to get some conversations flowing. And as an added bonus, what I I’m do right now is I’m going to tell you some things not to ask

Questions NOT to ask Agents

your call Center agents. Okay. Number one, do not ask them any questions starting with the word. Why the word why? If you look it up and you do some research on the stuff in terms of management techniques and things like that, the word why evokes some defensiveness from the person you’re talking to. So the last thing you want to do is get them defensive. Like, why is it that you guys do this or why is it that you guys do that? You’re going to get a defensive response so you don’t want to ask anything that begins with the first word. Why? The second thing you don’t want to ask them is you don’t want to ask the question leading ahead of time with goals of the company, like, Hey, our company’s goal is to do this. What do you suggest we can do in order to meet those goals? Those are your ideas you’re putting in their head, which you don’t want to do.

Don’t use leading questions

You also don’t want to ask them leading questions, so you don’t want to ask them things like If we were to add customer sentiment analysis to our contact center solution, do you think it would be a benefit to our company? So again, you’re putting ideas into their head and a lot of times you’re going to get an answer with, Yeah, sure, why not? because they could obviously tell this is an idea that you have. So they may just want to be agreeable with you. Also, you’re not really going to get the things that are top of mind with your call center agents, and that’s the information you really want. You want to get that top of mind information. The thing that they’re dealing with every single day that’s in the back of their mind, that man, I wish we could do this better or I really like the way we do this or, you know, that’s the type of information you really want. So you don’t want to put any ideas in their head beforehand. You want just a nice, open ended question targeted specifically a little bit, like we said, with technology, with staffing and with process and just see what they have to say. They may not have a lot of answers and that’s okay too. So you’ve got to be okay with that.

Last question not to ask

And finally, you don’t want to skip the positivity QUESTION. You know, the first question I said to ask is, what are we doing? Well, you don’t want to skip that question. It sounds kind of cheesy, but it’s actually really important because it sets the mentality of the conversation. You, you know, you’re sitting in the IT department. You definitely don’t want to be the person who’s evoking a sense of griping. You don’t want to light a fire with the call center agents and have them only thinking of negative things and things like that. So you definitely want to set the tone ahead of time and get some positivity going. What are you guys doing? Well, so that not only the agent, you know, walks away with, with a reminder of things that you’re doing well and things you might be able to improve, but it also reminds you of things that you probably don’t want to change that the agents are very happy with. Okay, so those are some things you definitely don’t want to say.

Website Plug

Okay. Like I said earlier, if you’d like information on which vendors your company should quote, you can actually search it on our website. Go check it out. I guarantee you’ve never seen a website as cool as this when it comes to shopping vendors for cloud contact center or phone system or things like that, you can actually go on our website and in the search bar you can type in call center software software. And once you’re in and you see all the vendors on the left hand column, you could actually filter the vendors by features and functionality and network architecture, things like that. So you can narrow down your choices to the vendors that you need to quote. And then from there you can explore the vendors, you can click on them, you can see reviews. If customers have left any reviews on those vendors. And hey, by the way, if you have any experience with any vendors, go ahead and you leave reviews on the site. So you’re leaving something for your next i.t brethren to come on the site. You want to check out something, leave something for them. So if you’ve got experience, they can benefit from it too. So leave reviews, browse reviews, all that cool stuff. It’s a great website. I definitely want you to check it out. Also, once you get a nice group of vendors that you’re looking at on the website, you’re definitely going to want pricing and you’re going to want some additional information like, Hey, which one of these vendors has a really good reputation?

My Recommendations

And which do you think is the best fit for our company? And that’s where I come into play. I’m a broker for all of the major cloud call center software vendors, and I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, so I know the landscape really well. And if you tell me a little bit about your company, I can tell you which vendors your company should be quoting and why. I can tell you which ones have a great reputation, which ones you probably want to avoid. I can also introduce you to the right salespeople at each of those vendors and oversee the quoting process to make sure your company gets the best pricing possible from each vendor. I can also give you a couple of tips on things like terms and conditions and all kinds of cool stuff. So then the nice thing is, at the end of the day, you don’t have to pay me a dime. Your company doesn’t have to pay me for my service. The vendors actually pay me my broker fee so you don’t have to pay me anything. So there’s absolutely no excuse not to at least reach out by email or by phone (714.593.0011) and see what I have to say. So give me a call. Shoot me an email. I’d love to help you. That’s the reason why I do these videos too, to let you know what I do and to give you a little bit of information and kind of share. It’s kind of a win win and hopefully you’ll call me from them. Again, thank you for watching another video of mine and I’ll catch you on the next one.