If you’re like most modern business owners, your digital strategy has probably taken a bit of a hit these days. From your call center trying to navigate record numbers of inbound calls to attempting to develop a stronger remote work community, maintaining an effective digital strategy takes time and energy.
From rethinking your social media to addressing common customer care pitfalls, there are plenty of ways to improve all of your customer interactions and give your startup the digital overhaul it needs. Here’s what you need to know.
You need to set better goals.
Using a goal-setting framework is integral to your overall success. That’s why sites like Workboard.com have invested so much into their OKR platforms. Workboard makes it easy to set company-wide goals as well as smaller, tailored goals for individual departments. Whether your customer service department would benefit from your call center agents setting some smarter goals or you want to keep an office located outside the U.S. in alignment with your strategic priorities, setting smarter goals can help you out greatly. It doesn’t matter if you’re simply looking to boost agent productivity for those working at a home office or if you’re trying to improve overall goal relevance for your business as a whole. Using a goal-setting methodology is the right way to do it.
Approach customer support from multiple channels.
If you’ve ever worked a call center job, you’ve probably either been in an inbound call center or an outbound call center. While these still exist in many industries, especially in the practice of social work, you can’t relegate your customer service to a single location. This is where virtual call center services are rapidly overtaking traditional call centers in terms of customer experience and overall customer satisfaction. Instead of making outbound calls as though you’re telemarketing, a virtual call center solution allows you to leverage an omnichannel approach.
A virtual call center agent can handle a phone call with the help of IVR, integrate the call center services with your CRM, route callers to the right agent with the help of AI, and even use social media to answer inquiries depending on schedules and time zones. And since many a virtual call center representative is part of a team of remote workers, this can help keep your contact center in alignment without compromising your digital presence.
Keep up-to-date with evolving best practices.
While you’ve heard about hiring the best agents, call center software, and OKRs, there’s additional information that can help you reconnect with your digital strategy in a smooth, effective way. One best practice that doesn’t look like it’ll change any time soon is the concept of networking. Not only can networking help you build your professional connections but it can help you recruit new contacts, connect with prospective jobseekers, and query where your competition is succeeding over yours.
However, while some best practices stay the same, others are rapidly evolving thanks to the advent of technology. As customers refine their use of search terms and seeing as you’ve probably said goodbye to your fax machine quite along time ago, you need to ensure that you maintain a commitment to evolving technology principles. This doesn’t mean that you need to invest in every single high-tech application that is released, but you should at least keep an eye on the applications that most align with your developing business goals.
Reconnecting your digital strategy requires a good deal of effort, both online and off. You need to keep an eye on developing trends while still ensuring that already-successful business practices aren’t neglected. It’s a tough balancing act to be sure but it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
