Take advantage of missed call reports. This is a quick and effective way to go the extra mile. Imagine your customer calls at a peak time when everyone’s busy, after 30 seconds or so they’ll probably hang up. They may try again later but they could just call a competitor instead.
So wouldn’t it be great if every time you missed a call you could automatically receive an email reporting it together with the caller’s number? This would give your team the opportunity to call the customer back, and apologise for missing the call before asking how they can assist. You never need to miss a potential sale again and you’re providing the sort of high-level service clients talk about.- Use overflow groups to answer incoming telephone calls. It’s one of the most simple and effective ways to quickly reduce the number of missed calls. If you have a bottleneck of incoming telephone calls during busy times of the day at the main telephone reception then you can ‘cascade’ them to ring through to other administration telephones. It’s possible to set up your telephone system to start to include secondary groups of phones after 15 to 30 seconds and to even forward to mobile staff if necessary.
- Use direct dial telephone numbers & free up your receptionist. Approximately 80% of your incoming callers (regular customers, suppliers or external staff) will be asking for the same 20% of staff. By allowing their calls to flow directly past reception, you can free up your receptionist to answer calls from other people. Blocks of sequential numbers can be provided and configured easily using either ISDN or Voice Over IP telephone lines.
Start tracking your incoming call answer times and take away the crystal ball. You can set up a report to highlight key information such as average answer times, the number of calls processed and details on peak telephone periods. It’s a very effective and fast way to make sure you are delivering the high level of service you want.- Use wallboards to feedback better performance information to your teams. Wallboards provide real-time reporting on the number of calls processed and average answer times for the day. They give instant visibility to help your team see if performance levels are being achieved. The system is very flexible and allows you to set new targets so you can track improvements to customer service response levels quickly and easily.
- Use alarms to respond quickly when your service levels start to slip. Simply decide on the maximum number of seconds a customer can be left waiting for their call to be answered and set up an alarm to instantly alert you if this happens. You can then make sure the call is picked up in time and that additional staff resources are available to deal with higher call volumes.
- Use call recording to create a copy of every call. It can be really useful for training purposes and help staff improve their sales technique if they can review real conversations, both the good and the bad. It also allows you to review call histories should any problems or disputes arise, and the recordings of many systems can be used in UK courts.
Have your client’s record on-screen whenever they call. Gone are the days of answering a customer’s call and then asking them to hold while you look up their details. You can simply connect your desktop PC to your phone so that when a customer rings their information automatically pops up on the screen – ensuring you’re always prepared and always able to provide a professional service.
To find out more about how you can use telecoms to improve your customer service call 0800 50 533 50 today or contact us and we’ll get in touch with you to discuss.
Find out more on… call reporting and recording services
