Communication is a pillar of success in business. If you cannot communicate effectively, you will lose essential customers and never acquire new customers who can change your business. Poor communication fosters negative customer experiences, misinformed decision-making, unorganized processes for your team, and always frustrates customers. Protect your brand and prioritize communication with your customers and team.
Protocols built on communication help grow your business’ referral network, encourage repeat sales and build/strengthen a loyal customer base. But, the big question for every business owner is how to improve communication?
Here are some initial questions you should be asking yourself:
- First and foremost, do you understand your customer journey?
- What is the first experience a customer has with your organization?
- What about the other steps of the journey?
- How can I make this scalable and not have to hire 100 people?
To learn more about the customer journey and customer experience, head to this blog.
With nearly 40 years of experience working with customers, we can advocate that if the customer’s experience prioritizes clear communication with follow-through, your business will thrive. By understanding and optimizing the customer experience with customer-centric interactions, especially on phone calls and support requests, you’re taking the first step to first-class customer communication. In this tech-savvy world, you can easily find advanced tools to help you manage and understand conversations with your opportunities and customers.
In this blog post, we have listed four different ways to help you understand your customers and strengthen communication channels:
1. Understand your first impression and make it great with contact center support.
We all know that the first impression matters. Whether you are an individual or a business, it is essential to understand how leads and customers contact you and what they experience in each stage. Are there concerns heard and addressed? Are they responded to promptly? The best way to satisfy your customers is by ensuring a great experience on every call with an experienced contact center partner.
But how can an experienced contact center partner help?
Businesses that receive a higher number of calls every day prefer to set up automated phone lines and greetings to direct callers to the answers they need quickly. Once a customer has moved through the automation, transferring to a live agent provides the opportunity for one-on-one support with a trained customer service expert. This support allows customers to have real experiences and find immediate solutions for their problems by talking to a human who can empathize and support them. At Call Experts, we prioritize training to ensure knowledgeable agents who can provide real help and represent your brand on every call.
To read about our training standards at Call Experts, head to this blog by our Director of Training!
2. Answer the call quickly and reduce hold times using AI-Powered tools and call center phone lines.
When a customer calls, they expect an answer quickly. According to an article from PlumVoice,
“in a survey of more than 2,500 consumers, nearly 60% of respondents believe that one minute is too long to be on hold. Also, 32.3% of consumers believe that customer service departments should be answering immediately—with no hold time. When asked how long they were willing to be put on hold, about a third of respondents said they’re willing to wait at all, 27.6% said 1 minute and only 4.1% said they’d as long it took.”
AI-powered tools are here to help your business. And, it doesn’t replace your human agents. According to Zendesk,
“For the best support teams, AI is already driving great customer experiences. AI can help agents with automated actions, predictive analytics, chatbots, and virtual assistants. It can tackle repeat requests, freeing up human agents to handle more complicated inquiries.”
By utilizing AI-tools to support your customer experience, you can free up your technical support to assist with extended customer needs and requests (without alienating one call or customer). Email us now to learn more today!
3. Prioritize customer calls with trained call center representatives.
Good customer service builds reliable connections. And, just as quickly, lousy customer service creates poor connections. When a customer has a poor experience with your business, it can be very personal. As a result, this personal experience will keep them from purchasing from your company.
In fact, according to Help Scout,
“U.S. companies lose more than $62 billion annually due to poor customer service. Americans tell an average of 15 people about a poor service experience, versus the 11 people they’ll tell about a good experience.’
In other words, prioritize your customers by hearing them and supporting your team. It’s in the data; their experience matters if you want to access their network to grow your business.
4. Honesty and authenticity matter when you are helping a customer over the phone.
Customers expect to have realistic conversations with your team if they have called in for support. They hope to be sent to the correct agent who can support their needs the moment they call. And, they don’t expect to sit on hold. The customers are always right! At Call Experts, our team utilizes award-winning contact center scripts and protocols to support your customers and increase your bottom line.
Summary.
Now you have gone through four critical points to ensure healthy, productive conversations with customers. These tips and tricks can help you build a solid brand reputation online, offer top-tier customer support, and ensure that your team focuses on tasks building revenue for your company. Don’t waste your time answering phones and sending messages, partner with an experienced contact center to grow your business. To learn how Call Experts can support your business now, contact us!
