If you own a business then there are certain things that you want to make sure that you invest in, in order to ensure top customer service quality. When you are in the start up phases, your product may not be perfect, your shipping service slow or your employees under-trained. But, if you can get your customer service in line, then you will still be able to keep customers coming back. One of the best ways to ensure customer service is to be reachable 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Your store doesn’t have to be open that entire time, only available to be spoken with. Having after hours telephone answering services is a great way to make sure that your customers are attended to whenever they need something. However, having a telephone answering service in and of itself is not good customer service. Here are a few tips for giving customer service 100% in the telephone answering service industry.
No Voicemail
Most customers will just hang up if they ring through to a voicemail. In a recent study, most people said they would hang up because they assume a business is not going to check their voicemail soon enough. That is a terrible reputation for a company to have. Your answering service needs to be manned at all times. You should focus on avoiding voicemail all together and making sure that each and every call gets answered. Who it gets answered by is yet another way that you can keep customers happy.
Real People
Having the phone answered by a real live person is becoming far to occasional. When you call a business and have an actual person answer the phone, it’s almost shocking. Most people prepare for the recorded robot voice to answer. Make sure that the people you have answering the phone are not to scripted. Naturally, you will have to have some sort of script that people follow in order to be able to judge quality, etc but allow your phone workers to emit their own personalities during the phone call. This will let them be able to assist the customers better as well as show more empathy and emotion during the call. It helps the customers to feel more appreciated and assisted when they know the person on the other end is listening effectively and not just waiting for them to stop talking so they can continue their script.
Minimal Automated Talking
We’ve all heard it: “If you need this, press one. If you want this, press two. For such and such a department, press three, five and then two.” The more you make customers press buttons to get to the right department, the more frustrated they are going to be. If you do need to separate the calls out into departments, allow the customers to be dialed directly into an operator who can transfer them to the correct department. The more personal interaction with people, the higher the level of customer service you will have.
Call Back Options
It’s understandable that a lucrative company is going to have longer wait times. However, people still have plans where their minutes are counted or maybe they don’t want to sit with the phone to their ear while they wait. It would be a good idea to offer a call back option. This way, their place in line will be saved but they won’t have to waste minutes or time, sitting there listening to your ‘on hold’ music.
The truth is, people want to know that they are appreciated. If they do not think that your company or telephone answering service employees are seeing their value, they will simply go else where. The service and retails and product industries are extremely competitive and there is bound to be somewhere else that offers a very similar product or service that you do. Make sure that you are keeping all the customers that you get by offering them the highest level of customer service. That is something that they won’t be able to get everywhere and will be appreciated and seen as a step above any other company.
