How a Fair Trade Call Center Provides Financial Services Support Efficiently
The benefits that outsourcing brings to financial companies have become integral to the banking and finance industry. While technology has advanced by leaps and bounds in this millennium, customer service provided by empathetic support staff is still irreplaceable. Humans will always seek comfort from other humans, and not from machines.
Because customer service – and by association, the quality of customer experience – remains integral to financial services, successfully outsourcing this business process is a priority for many companies in banking and finance, including the fintech niche. If you’ve been outsourcing or just starting to, here are several tips on making your outsourcing initiatives work that you may find interesting.
#1 One of the key drivers of effective service delivery is the quality of one’s employees.
Your customers interact with your service workers first and more frequently compared to your managers and top executives. Every instance of interacting with your customer service reps influences their perceptions of the overall quality of your organization. And that’s why you must have top-notch customer-facing employees in your company.
Whether they work behind a counter or receive calls on behalf of your company, your customer support staff will have to be carefully screened using several recruitment tools. They also have to be trained well in resolving issues as quickly as possible and without antagonizing your less-than-happy customers.
A fair trade call center, like any other outsourcing company, adheres to quality standards when recruiting potential workers. Job seekers are given tests to measure their intelligence and aptitude towards a career in customer service. Those who pass these tests move on to improve their chances of being hired through one-on-one interviews with the hiring manager, the COO (when necessary), and finally, the client or a representative thereof.
A fair trade call center won’t have problems providing the requisite training on various aspects of the job. One of the principles of fair trade focuses on capacity building of workers. This kind of training not only covers accent reduction and elocution, cultural awareness, and product knowledge but also empathy training.
#2 A fair trade call center always strives to improve the governance of their business processes and workflows.
Streamlining one’s business workflows isn’t the sole responsibility of your organization. A partnership with an outsourcing company means that systems and processes will have to be integrated into the way both you and your provider operate until they synchronize and become effective.
Because of its focus on continuous improvement, a fair trade call center not only functions as an outsourcing partner to a financial company like yours but also takes the initiative to perform periodic evaluations of their governance practices and find ways to enhance their workflows. This is what streamlining means when you outsource.
Continuous improvement, on your part, means taking an active role in managing and monitoring the business activities of your organization in relation to your outsourcing strategy. You’re expected to assign a senior manager to oversee the work of your outsourced team, which comprises of call center agents and their team leader. Aside from progress reports submitted to your inbox regularly, you’re also expected to visit your team once in a while to strengthen your bond with them.
#3 A fair trade call center invests in the best I.T. tools available and makes sure they’re upgraded and patched for greater security.
The new millennia has brought on a myriad of improvements in the way the banking and finance sector operates. There are fewer bank tellers now because of the widespread use of ATMs. Because of online banking technology, people can now directly manage their finances through mobile apps. And, the rise of cryptocurrencies has widened the range and quality of services that finance companies can provide to their clients worldwide.
These technological advancements also brought on new threats. Hackers can easily clone one’s ATM card or fool unsuspecting folks into sharing their credit card information to steal thousands, if not millions, from them.
All these developments underline the need for top-notch talent in data security as well as in customer service to maintain the trust of your customer base on your organization and to keep your company’s brand integrity intact. This is where a fair trade call center makes a difference.
As a fair trade organization, a call center with a more nuanced awareness of financial tech, ranging from the technological advancements to the many issues hounding the sector, will serve you well. Their orientation towards continuous improvement tends to spill over the quality of technology they utilize. The maturity by which they utilize technology makes all other aspects of their operations faster, more flexible, and effective.
