What is Call Center Concierge Service?

Call center concierge service leads to greater customer satisfaction, reduces the number of callbacks to resolve issues and lowers operational costs.

Concierge service, which has long been a mainstay at luxury and other hotels, has now moved into other industries. For example, a health insurance company may offer concierge service to the insured where they can order fee-based, ala carte services from providers.

Many consumers also now expect concierge service at their health insurance providers, insurance companies and other industries. In a nutshell, call center concierge service allows customers to resolve issues and get answers without being transferred to other departments.

How does call center concierge service work?

“Today’s contact centers need to go far beyond stand-alone problem resolution and focus on providing personalized interactions along the customer journey,” says insurance and financial services technology provider Appian. “This requires a concierge mindset.”

Generally, with call center concierge service, the call center rep stays on the line with the customer while the agent calls the necessary department or company on the customer’s behalf to get a required authorization, reference code or other information.

“In most cases, when using concierge service, an agent calls another department or organization while the customer is on the phone and a three-way conversation occurs,” according to hospitality software provider SQM.

“Providing concierge service is an excellent opportunity for call center agents to resolve customer calls on the first call that otherwise might go unresolved.”

Call center concierge best practices include the following, according to SQM:

• Develop a set of call center concierge service standards
• Place greater focus on resolving calls than on average handling time (AHT)
• Create clear call handling standards that require the call center rep to obtain the required code, authorization or other information on behalf of (or for) the customer
• Utilize a quality assurance program and post-call customer surveys to ensure that agents are providing call center concierge service
• Recognize agents who provide concierge service
• Train call center reps on each fulfillment department’s needs such as claims, orders and requests
• Hire agents that have a customer advocacy attitude and training call center reps to use that attitude to resolve customer calls

How your brand can benefit from call center concierge service

Your company can lower operating costs by focusing on call center concierge services and eliminating repeat call-backs from customers whose problems weren’t resolved with one call.

“It is more efficient to have one longer call than to have two or more calls dealing with the same inquiry or problem,” says SQM. “Customer satisfaction is substantially higher when a customer only has to make one longer call versus making repeat calls to resolve the same inquiry or problem.”

With a focus on agents on doing “whatever it takes” to resolve a customer’s call, call center service and customer satisfaction greatly improve, says SQM:

“Agents become conditioned to go the extra mile and be an advocate to help customers resolve their inquiries or problems on any type of call.

“Having agents routinely go the extra mile leads to significant improvements in the performance of the call center’s [first call resolution], [customer satisfaction], and cost per call resolution.”