The Business Benefits of Better Sound

STRATEGIC SOLUTIONS SERIES

The Business Benefits of Better Sound

By TMCnet Special Guest
VXi
  |  December 11, 2014

Running a successful contact center is challenging, to say the least. What can you do to keep customers satisfied? How do you hold on to your best agents? And of course, what can be done to increase revenue?

These aren’t new questions. Contact center managers have been asking them – and trying to answer them – for years. Recent studies show that the solution may be simpler than you think. Not surprisingly, it hinges on clarity of communication.

What’s the problem?

Customer satisfaction is critical, and hinges on a number of factors – starting with how long a customer has to wait to talk to someone. From there, it’s all about the agent interaction. Does the agent understand the customer’s need, and does he or she meet that need as quickly and effectively as possible? What about the agents? Are they engaged, locked in, and focused on the customer? Or are they distracted by the constant commotion around them, frustrated, and struggling to understand the customer?

Unhappy customers are any business’s worst nightmare. The erosion of goodwill erodes your profits, too, both immediately – when they hang up the phone right then and there without maximizing the revenue potential, and long term – when that customer will either choose to return to your company or to one of your competitors. Ultimately, it can do significant damage to your brand value. When you add the potential attrition costs of unhappy agents ($10,000 per agent on average), you’ve got an expensive problem on your hands.

The solution? Get ‘set.

So far, we haven’t told you anything you probably don’t already know. But here comes the good part. You can see major improvements in all these areas just by changing headsets. Here’s the proof:

A noted contact center consultant conducted a study at a well-known retailer’s inbound contact center to identify the effect of superior noise-canceling headsets on contact center performance, by tracking certain key performance indicators. The consultant defined “superior” as able to eliminate at least 90 percent of background noise and selected VXi headsets because they lead the industry in that technology.

A total of 80 agents took part in the study, 40 in the control group, which used the same headsets throughout the study, and 40 in the sample set, which was given VXi headsets after the first four weeks. Half the sample set (20 agents) used VXi binaural headsets, and the other used VXi Desktop Wireless Office headsets.

After three weeks using VXi headsets, there was a marked improvement in both the agent and the customer experience. There was increased focus and engagement on the agents’ part and higher satisfaction for the customer. Overall average hold time fell 17 percent (those using the V150 wireless headset showed a hold time decrease of 23.4 percent), while revenue per call showed a net increase of 21 percent compared to the control group. Here’s how the contact center’s management summarized the results:

Better Agent/Customer Engagement = Happier Customers = More Sales

We told you it was simple. And two other studies conducted by this consultant, one at a leading security company and another at a large health care provider, also confirm these results.

What’s the difference?

So what’s so special about VXi headsets that they can make such a dramatic difference – such a marked difference that agents said they would be willing to pitch in out of their own pockets to help pay to keep the headsets after the study? 

The difference is, VXi has always set a higher standard for sound quality –because we understand the business benefits it brings. We’ve pioneered the use of higher quality, higher performance noise-canceling microphones, unique microphone housing designs and proprietary software to offer both wired and wireless headsets that deliver clear, natural-sounding voice transmission, even in high-noise environments like contact centers.

Clear, natural-sounding voice transmission

VXi headsets are designed and engineered to deliver the best possible clarity and intelligibility, so every word on both sides of the conversation is both heard and understood. (That’s more unusual than you might think. The truth is, while many of our competitors’ headsets advertise noise canceling, it can actually strip away more than just background noise, leaving an unnatural voice remnant that’s actually harder to understand.) And the study results are just as clear and easy to understand: VXi headsets improve the contact center experience for all parties, reducing agent turnover while boosting both customer satisfaction and contact center revenue.

To learn more about the VXi difference and the many benefits it can bring to your business, visit vxicorp.com.  




Edited by Maurice Nagle
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