Is your phone service driving customers to make purchase decisions or hang up? If your team does not have the proper phone etiquette, you could be losing business every day no matter how awesome your marketing is working online.
With most phone systems, you can collect information from your customer before connecting to a person in order to make the call shorter and more helpful for your customer.
So how can you ensure that your customer service is on-brand and following your company’s dedication to customers?
You can start by having a roundtable with your team to discuss issues and policies regarding etiquette with customers over the phone. There are also some quick lessons to learn that will help your employees answer the phone correctly and connect to the customer quickly. You may also learn about VoIP phone issues that cause customer service complaints as well.
1. A Friendly Introduction when Answering the Call
Every employee should identify who they are upon answering the call. That means stating their name and asking a friendly question while also making sure to address that the customer has an issue they are calling about. Many times your customer has been through an automatic phone process up to this point, so it’s very important that the customer service representative answers on a positive note.
2. Customer Service Response Libraries
While you do not want any response to sound canned, you should have a list of possible objections, complaints, suggestions, and questions that can be instantly referenced while the customer service representative is talking to a customer, particularly if you have a promotion. You want to show customers that your brand is customer-focused and provides quick answers. This is also important for new members. You can also have some of these responses built into your VoIP phone system.
3. Vocabulary Selection
As you build any scripts or responses, you should consider the vocabulary related to your brand and industry. If you run a financial company, then you should know all of the vocabularies that an accountant might use on a call. There may be technical terms that you need to explain to the customer for technical support, so you have to be able to talk to them without being intimidating. You should have some of your employees who have a great script to talk to other employees for tips and tricks in dealing with customers.
4. Putting A Customer on Hold
First, you should always ask the customer if they can be put on hold, regardless of whether or not you have to do so in order to answer the question. This is a polite way of letting the customer know what’s going on, while also signaling that you are advocating for something on their behalf. When you place a customer on hold, you should explain why the hold is happening and how long it will be so that the customer doesn’t feel panicked. Modern phone features should also offer ways to promote or play calming music as a customer is on hold to keep them engaged.
5. Background Noise Levels Management
No one wants to call customer support and hear loud noises in the background that makes the phone communication difficult. Customer service areas should be clean, quiet, and focused. This allows your team to focus on the customer at all times.
While noise-canceling headphones can take care of most background noise, it’s not the best headphone that you can purchase. You may want to create an office where your call centre folks can answer and make calls, but if you plan to hire virtual customer service workers, you may want to create a contract that stipulates no noise or non-business activity while working.
6. Protecting Company Reputation
Let’s face it, every business has to deal with unhappy clients from time to time. Your job is to keep calm and make sure you provide the best customer service possible while handling the complaints about the phone. Breathe, try to relax and make sure you distance yourself from the anger of the customer calls. Remember, it is not about you, so under no circumstances start arguing with the person or making inappropriate comments.
Letting your client end the call while she is still angry may be fatal for the business. Company ratings and reviews on online forums, social media sites, and Google local service are crucial for business success these days. If you do not help resolve the issue, be sure the unhappy caller will go online and tell the entire world about the bad experience.
If you notice you are not being able to calm down a hostile caller, just let a manager or sales lead speak to the customer. This will show to the client that the problem is taken seriously by the company.
7. Offering Incentives to Collect Marketing Data
A lot of companies still try to offer an incentive over the phone, starting with new users who are just getting used to the service. This is an easy way to get subscribers by collecting their email address and phone information to support other marketing effects. Your incentives may be a percentage off or free shipping. Modern phone features may have a way to automatically offer an incentive for taking a survey after the call.
8. Promotions
Just like having the vocabulary or script next to your customer service team, make sure that the promotions are published and accessible to your team who may have to answer the calls. In addition, your team should have access to the customer directory or help support.
9. Take a Survey at the End
Want to find out what customers think about your service reps while also promoting your reps to do a better job? Phone systems have built-in survey features that allow you to set up questions to ask your customers right after they have completed a service call over the phone.
Customer service representatives may receive incentives from positive reviews, so you can also talk to your reps about directing customers to the survey at the end of the call. This lets the customer know that you are monitoring phone calls and want feedback to ensure that you are properly answering questions. Ultimately, it’s up to the customer whether or not you provided high-quality service or not.
Your customers deserve high-quality customer service that answers their questions while also being able to promote transactions. Your representatives will have to know the products and promotions as well in order to sell your best products when your customer calls in. In addition, your VoIP phone system needs to be set up so that it is easy to access the menu or reach a representative in the case that they can’t get the answer right away within the automated system.