How to Handle Customers during a System Outage

Running a call center has never been easy. Handling numerous agents, managing the software you use, meeting the rising expectations of customers and ensuring that all your resources including all your Agents, your systems and the technology that you use such as the call center software solutions are all functioning optimally can be both quite challenging and daunting. Also let’s not forget, the circumstances may not always be on your side.

 For instance, some of your team members haven’t been able to turn up, or maybe you’re in the middle of a system outage. In such situations, do you give up? Or do you simply put your customer care on hold and wait for things to fix themselves? The answer would be neither of them.

In such adverse situations, you’re still expected to come up with the best solutions and answers and you would be missing a trick if you did not use the best available call center tools out there such as the best contact center software solutions. Your customers aren’t supposed to feel even the tiniest bit of inconvenience due to your administration problems. However, it must be kept in mind that, running a call center during a system outage is extremely difficult. 

When your outbound call center software is inaccessible, you’re lacking the best tools which can help you satisfy the needs of your customers. But there are a few things you can do to make sure your customer care isn’t affected or your customers do not face inconveniences. This is what you can do:

•    Reduce your holding times. Even though your cloud customer service software is not handy, you still have to ensure that you don’t make your customers hold for too long. In such situations, the number of calls per hour increases to double and with your workload increasing, you cannot put your customers on hold indefinitely. That will simply frustrate them further. You could give them an option: ask them if they would prefer to hold or get a call back.

•    Don’t ignore the concerns of your customers, instead you should validate them. When your customers call you up, it is because they have encountered a certain problem with your product or service and are unhappy or maybe they require a solution to it. When they are dissatisfied, your customers just need to be heard. Listen to you customers and pay attention to their needs.

•    Don’t beat about the bush. That only takes up unnecessary time. Once you have heard what the customer has to say, you should have a clear idea of what he or she wants. Very clearly, provide your answers. It might so happen that due to a system outage most of your customers have the same questions. You should then be prepared in advance to deal with all these questions that come your way.

•    While you acknowledge the problem, you should also be clear about your solutions. Tap into the CRM cloud contact center software at your disposal, and get your hands on valid information. During a system outage, the one thing that will frustrate customers even further is an uninformed customer care rep who doesn’t have the answers to their questions. You need to be ready to face the wrath of customers and also answer all their questions with a sense of clarity.

•    Don’t deny the issue at hand or lie to your customers. That simply worsens the situation. Your customers expect you to be honest with them and want you to maintain open lines of communication with them. If you’re lying to them or are in denial of the fact, how can you expect your customers to trust you later on? 

Admit the problem and assure them by saying that you have the best telemarketing software at your disposal to solve the matter as soon as possible. Reassuring the customers would always help. 

Even using the best call center software doesn’t protect you from a system outage. The trick is to come up with ways of working through it. So the next time you face a similar situation, you’ll know what to do.