The Ultimate Customer Service Audit Checklist

Do you know how well your customer service team is performing? If you’re unsure of what type of experience your leads and clients are having, you should develop a way to track your customer service team’s performance. It’s crucial to know if you are providing the best possible support and care to your customers–otherwise, you could end up in the realm of dwindling business, bad press and PR nightmares. But how are you supposed to know how your customer service center is performing when you aren’t experiencing it yourself?

This is where a comprehensive customer service audit can help. An audit will show you everything that you’re doing right in the world of customer service and highlight areas that need improvement. Plus, you can run the audit yourself so you can have more insight into how your customer service reps are performing, and understand what the “blindspots” might be.

To help you properly examine your company’s customer service skills, we’ve compiled an extensive customer service audit checklist example for your team to utilize. You can use this to determine where your customer service team is succeeding and where there’s room for growth.
Remember, if you have any questions or concerns about how your customer service center is performing, you can also contact the TeleDirect team for personalized attention. We have been helping American companies across industries optimize their customer service experience for more than 20 years. Call (800) 776-1081 to chat with one of our team members today!

Our Official Checklist

• Enough Staff
  Short-staffed? That could be a problem. When companies expect their team members to “double up” and handle customer service on top of their hired duties, things can start to fall apart. An understaffed, overstretched team cannot properly handle calls and customer inquiries. In fact, sometimes they are so busy that they don’t answer the phone at all. If you’ve ever experienced an endlessly ringing phone when you needed customer support, you know how frustrating that is for your clients. This can easily be avoided by properly staffing your contact center through a BPO contact center. Your agents will have one job to do: answering your customers’ calls. This allows your team to get back to business and gives customers the support they deserve.
• An Easily Contactable Support Center
  What good is a well-staffed customer service center if nobody can reach it? Your contact information must be easily accessible to your customers and leads. Ideally, your contact information should be clearly stated on all of your social media platforms, on every page of your website and on any maps or directory listings. Otherwise, leads might just choose another business that is easier to contact.
• Professional, Experienced Agents
  It is incredibly important to recruit experienced agents who love customer service, care about your industry, understand communication and are willing to be trained to meet your brand’s standards. A lackluster agent will not only poorly represent your company’s values, but they might behave unprofessionally and hinder your customers’ experience.
• Brand Knowledge (and Pride!)
  You’ve worked so hard to cultivate a specific brand image. Don’t let it all fall apart! Thanks to marketing campaigns and ads, in-store experiences and social media presence, your customers have a certain idea of who your company is. When they contact your customer support team, they are expecting the same experience from your agents that they have experienced with your other channels. That’s why it’s so important that your customer service representatives use your brand’s verbiage and speak confidently and knowledgeably about your company. Your BPO call center (like TeleDirect) can work with you to develop customized scripts so every interaction is on brand.
• Consistent Call Center Experience
  Your customers should have the same experience every time they contact your team. If they are experiencing longer wait times or disinterested service from some agents but helpful and professional support from others, that is a major issue. Cohesion is key—and proper training can help guarantee a more consistent customer experience.
• Tight Security
  If your company takes personal information from your clients and leads, it is your responsibility to store that information properly. A data breach is a nightmare for everybody involved—your team could face trouble and your customers may never forgive your brand. This can be avoided by investing in secure, modern data storage. Your BPO call center can help you!
• Appropriate Screening and Escalation
  Every call must end up in the right place. This is made easy by prescreening calls so they are directed to the right department for their query or needs. It’s also crucial that your agents can escalate a call to another department that can quickly find a solution to your customer’s problem when they don’t know the answer.
• The Art of Conversation
  Your agents must know how to properly communicate with your callers. This means certain interpersonal skills like active listening. Rather than speaking over a caller or offering a solution while they are still speaking, active listeners will show they hear and understand customers by saying affirmative words (such as “sure” or “absolutely”) when interacting with callers. When the caller has finished speaking, agents can then properly respond to everything.
• A Well-Functioning Database
  Let’s say a customer is calling your team for the fourth time to address an ongoing issue. If they have to restate all of their personal details and case information, they are going to feel frustrated. You can avoid this by ensuring that your database is functioning properly and storing all the important information about your clients. Every time that client dials your call center, your agents can pull their file up and see everything they need to know so nobody has to repeat anything.
• Multilingual Agents
  One of the most beautiful things about the United States is how many cultures and communities call it home. In a society where so many languages are spoken, it does not make a lot of sense for agents to only be English speaking. Today, successful companies employ customer service representatives who speak Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic and other languages commonly used in the U.S. It allows for easier and more specific communication with your customer base.
• After-Hours Availability
  Thanks to modern technology, business hours have completely changed. Today, your customers can access your digital services at all hours—and they may even be using your product from another time zone. This makes your business more accessible to more people. However, you must have the customer service infrastructure to keep up. When your customers need to reach you, they don’t want to wait until it’s 9 a.m. in your city for support. By offering 24/7 or after-hours agent support, you will be offering a better overall customer service experience that is in line with current demand.
• Follow-Up Etiquette
  Don’t let your leads fall through the cracks! With the help of your BPO contact center, your team can seamlessly follow up with leads, check in with customers on how they are doing after a support case and get in touch with accidentally dropped calls.
• Other Customer Support Options
  Not everybody loves talking on the phone. It’s ideal to have other communication options for folks who would prefer not to speak with an agent. This might include a texting or web-chat service, email support or an automated hotline for straightforward questions.
• Responsive Social Media Platform
  It’s no longer 1997! We are living in the age of social media and DMs. Keep this in mind to provide your customers with the best possible communication and support. Gone are the days when customers can only contact brands on the phone during specific hours. By actively monitoring your business’s social media pages and promptly responding to DMs and posts, you are offering better customer support and your clients will notice that difference.
• Friendly, Welcoming Service
  Rudeness? Not on our watch. Nobody wants to feel like a nuisance for asking a company a question or having an issue. To avoid this problem and provide the best possible customer support system, recruit personable and friendly agents. You can then train them to be welcoming and accommodating—exactly as you’d want to be treated when contacting a business. It will make a world of difference to your customers.
• Metrics and KPI Monitoring
  Pay close attention to your KPIs! Metrics are a crucial way to understand how your call center is performing. You can track everything from wait time to average call length. That way if things start to go off course, you can catch the problem quickly and correct it.
• An Answer to Every Question
  Your agents aren’t omniscient, and you can’t expect them to be. A successful call center will staff agents who have a professional and reassuring response to every question, even if they do not know the answer. In cases like these, they can escalate the call or provide as much relevant information as they can about the query. It shows customers that your team cares about their issue and are striving to find answers.
• Listening to Customer Feedback
  If you aren’t offering customer feedback survey options, you might be missing huge problems. If your customers are constantly having their calls dropped and don’t hear back from your agent, that’s a massive issue that reflects poorly on your business. But if you don’t ask your customers about their experience, you might never know it’s even happening. Your BPO call center service will be able to go right to the source and conduct customer feedback sessions so you’re always informed about issues like these and can intervene accordingly.
• Less Waiting, More Conversation
  Are your callers spending a long time listening to hold music or a ringing phone? This can be disheartening—but it can be avoided! When you run a well-staffed contact center with amenities like callback services, your customers never have to wait around long for a conversation.
• A “Personal Touch”
  Your customers don’t want to feel like a number on a list. When your agents speak to callers in a personable way, it can make a world of difference. Ask your agents to refer to customers by their names. It’s a small personal touch that makes a customer service call feel like an actual conversation rather than a soulless transaction. This can lead to better understanding and make issues easier to resolve.
• Happy Team With a Good Work/Life Balance
  Disgruntled workers do not provide good customer service. The best way to guarantee that your agents are genuinely helpful, treat your callers well and perform as the best brand ambassadors possible, they need to care about their job. By checking in with your team and offering them the benefits and respect they deserve, you’re not only doing the right thing—you’ll enhance your bottom line.

Improve Your Customer Service With TeleDirect

At TeleDirect, we help companies check every box on their customer service audit checklist. We provide everything businesses need to offer first-class customer support. Get in touch with the TeleDirect team today by calling (800) 776-1081!