The past decade has been characterized by a dynamic overhaul in customer support deliveries. The emergence of advanced technologies and rapid digital transformation, coupled with increasing customer expectations, has taken customer experience management to heights never scaled before. From disruptions in the supply chain systems to varying preferences of communication channels by customers, retail brands have had to deal with business-critical challenges on multiple fronts.
As a result, customer support operations have been forced to evolve rapidly on the fly, balancing customer experiences with technological integration to meet the evolving demands of the retail marketplace. Retail brands have long acknowledged the growing importance of customer experience management to business growth. However, the last few years have seen businesses transform their core operations to become more customer-centric. Gone are the days when businesses chose retail call center companies solely for the purpose of attending to customer inquiries and complaints. Today, a retail contact center can do so much more, contributing to the revenue optimization and business growth of small, medium, and large retail brands.
The role of retail call centers has evolved in the grand scheme of things.
Modern customer engagement activities have come a long way from the age-old customer support functions that only offer the best available solutions to customer queries. Today, the range of customer interactions is so vast that most retail businesses aren’t even aware of what’s possible and what’s not!
For starters, retail businesses may know that a top retail call center company today may have the capability to deliver multichannel customer interactions, where customers have the freedom of choosing the medium of communication. However, very few know that retail call centers with advanced infrastructural setups can even offer cross-channel communications, where customers can easily switch between communication mediums without any compromises in consistency. And this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what’s possible for modern retail call centers!
Hence, retail businesses must stop seeing customer support outsourcing as a means of reducing operating costs. While call centers continue to help reduce customer support operating costs by overseeing non-core business activities at competitive prices, they can do so much more. As a matter of fact, modern call centers can help retail businesses optimize revenue operations to maximize productivity and profitability.
So, how can a retail call center contribute to your revenue operations?
Let’s imagine a customer coming into a retail store to buy an item they need. When they get to the section that houses a whole range of their required product from multiple brands, they will likely have a few questions about different products and different brands. So, what do they do? They grab the store assistant and ask them for help. This also presents the store assistant with the opportunity to sell additional items that the customer may need with their chosen products to achieve better results with whatever activities they have planned. The store assistant may suggest a better product than the one chosen by the customer, or they may add a few items to go with the chosen product. Either way, the assistant has brought in additional revenue for the store without spending any additional money on marketing or other promotional activities. This is precisely what cross-selling & up-selling does for a retail brand.
Now imagine the same with an online retailer! There, too, customers can be persuaded to upgrade their purchases with better or additional products. However, what the retail business would need is a system that can quickly analyze customer requirements, preferences, and behaviors to curate a customized solution. And that is what modern retail call centers, with their advanced technology and industry-specific infrastructure, can achieve with incredible efficiency. Using multiple innovative tools, such as Artificial Intelligence, RPA, Augmented Reality, Big data sets, etc., retail call centers can analyze customer behaviors and purchase patterns to curate customized packages and deals that enhance their shopping experiences.
As a result, retail customer support partners can also become brand advocates to foster loyalty.
Through customer-centric service deliveries, a retail call center can boost customer experiences and create a sense of brand loyalty among customers. This invariably contributes to further revenue generation through subsequent purchases from existing customers. At the same time, loyal customers also contribute to new customer acquisition channels through “word-of-mouth” marketing (which, quite frankly, is the biggest and the most cost-effective advantage of customer experience excellence). As a result, retail brands can obtain incredible value through the technology and customer-centric practices of call centers to offer real-time engagement to customers.
Some key offerings of retail call centers include:
Pre-purchase Support
- Expert guidance on product/services
- Inventory management & availability
- Personalized bundles
- Product comparison & analysis
- Up-sale & cross-sale
Order Support
- Order tracking & management
- Order clarification
- Issue resolution
- Post-purchase support
Returns & Exchanges
- Return & Refund assistance
- Swift exchanges
- Multiple return options
- Real-time status updates
Additionally, retail call centers are also responsible for delivering seamless omnichannel experience, personalized services with a human touch, and proactive customer engagement. The professional services of call centers can also be utilized to build a community of loyal customers. Customer support operations can facilitate communication between customers who have purchased complementary products or offer loyalty program benefits that encourage online communities around the brand. This way, customers get to feel that they are a part of the brand as much as the brand is a part of their lives.
But technology is just one-half of what a modern retail contact center can offer!
While the technology and industry-specific infrastructure of retail call centers can enhance the quality of customer engagements, there are several other value-adds to outsourcing customer support operations. The most important among them is the ability of modern retail call centers to understand customers. And technology plays a massive part here, too!
Modern retail contact center companies utilize social listening tools and other such technologies to monitor and analyze customer behaviors across social media and other channels. This empowers customer engagement practices through accurate data-driven insights into customer preferences, enabling retail brands to modify products and services to match customer expectations.
With technology-empowered customer-centric practices, modern retail call centers build lasting customer relationships, transforming them into loyal brand advocates (who not only buy the products but also rave about their experience with their chosen brands).
