Technology is moving fast and with today’s customers actively engaging in social media, the world of marketing and customer service has seen a dramatic change over the last ten years.
Who doesn’t check the feedback messages when buying off enterprises such as eBay or reads numerous reviews before they make that purchase? I mean it’s just common sense to see what others are saying about a seller before we risk paying out sometimes large sums of money.
The information is so readily available now and in today’s current climate – people need those guarantees that what they’re buying, is worth the money before they pay out.
Customers are in control and making it clear that the service you provide, can no longer be unsatisfactory.
“More than a quarter of customers chose to take their business elsewhere or spent less with a company last year due to bad customer service at a cost of over £37 billion, according to research.”
For many businesses, this new wave in customer services is a double-edged sword – a ‘must participate’ business activity with high customer engagement benefits, but full of risks, pitfalls and sometimes questionable ROI.
Reports show that more than 1 million people view tweets about customer service every week, and off all those tweets at least 70% of them are negative. That alone speaks volumes about why customer service should never be just an afterthought, because what is being said about your business, could be the answer to how you’ll reach your marketing and revenue objectives.
But what about when it’s not customers but other businesses trying to get your attention? Yes, we’ve all had to take those calls from someone trying to sell us something that we simply just don’t need and when you’re busy this can be frustrating. Often when these people call and ask to speak to the owner of the business, they don’t get past the front reception and in some cases, rightly so.
But do you really know who it is you’re brushing off before you block that call?
What’s to say that person on the other end of the phone won’t be the one making the decision when it comes to buying a product that you’re selling. If you were rude to them, then it’s likely they will bypass your business when deciding who to buy from.
Worse still, what if when you take that call, you fail to realise that this company is already one of your customers and they just wanted to talk to you about new product?
All these scenarios are very familiar in the world of sales and more and more businesses are losing customers because of bad customer service.
So, what can you do about it?
There are plenty of simple tools out there to help you improve and manage the quality of your services levels. Many have additional business benefits such as improving efficiency, cutting costs, increasing the productivity of your people and making their work easier!
- Screen Pop your customer database – Identifying a customer before a call gets answered and using that information to automatically find and load their contact details is one of the primary requirements of computer telephony integration. You can prioritise important calls and avoid time wasters and by greeting your customers by their names, it increases customer service and satisfaction.
- Outbound Dialling – boosts your sales, without annoying your customers or partners.
- Improve your staff service levels with a Call Recorder Call Recording can record inbound and outbound calls so you can play them back at any time. This allows you to hear exactly how your staff are taking those important calls and lets you see if any additional training is needed. You can use call recordings to train your employees and immediately improve your customer service levels.
- Use an email management system to handle customers’ messages quickly and effectively – If your company or department receives lots of emails every day, an email management system can help improve your customer satisfaction. Email Management is proven to increase the productivity by up to 70% and can exceed service levels by having messages routed, queued and automatically distributed to the right person in your team. Respond to your customers fasters and have the knowledge that no messages will go unanswered.
We can help you look at these and many more technologies to help improve your customer service levels. If you would like more information about this or any other telecoms matters, then please give us a call on 0800 50 533 53 or send us an enquiry. Alternatively you can download our telephone systems buyers guide as useful reference material or even run a quick quote to obtain a budget cost for a new telephone system in less than 60 seconds by clicking here.
