Businesses of all sizes appreciate flexibility when it comes to their call handling. A company’s telephone answering service speaks volumes about them. It is one of the first opportunities a company has to present a professional image to the outside world.
A quality telephone answering service needs to be prompt, answering all calls within a few rings, even when the reception is busy; it needs to be professional, answering with the name of the company; and it needs to be friendly and helpful, with the receptionist asking how they may direct the call and quickly and effectively putting the caller through. Should the requested person at the company not be available, an accurate message taking service should be in place so that the caller receives a call-back.
All this may seem obvious, many of us have been put on hold for too long or have been put through to the wrong person or have never had a call back. Unfortunately this is a basic customer service that many companies still get wrong.
By employing a company such as Zoom to run a virtual reception service and act as your first point of contact, answering promptly with your company name, you will not have these problems ever again. Zoom can also transfer messages via email, SMS or fax instantly to the relevant person.
Friday 11 November 2011
How to keep customer service on the agenda
Customer service is very important to your business, this may sound obvious, but it is often forgotten.
A company may recruit a telephone answering service or hire a call centre, then expect customer service to run itself. And the fact is, it doesn’t. Without consistent review, interest and attention, the customer service experience will degrade until management action is required.
The key to good customer service is to carry out the following activities consistently, by making them ongoing priorities and habit forming.
Keep talking about customer service so that it becomes central to your company culture. The simplest way is to keep it on your meeting agendas, and then the mindset will spread through the ranks and lead to decisions that will make a difference.
As a company, you need to stay hands-on and monitor customer service activities personally; you may like to hire a manager to oversee customer satisfaction and service. Yet you, as a company leader, should stay hands-on too. A good idea would be to visit call centres to talk with reps, answer the phones yourself for an hour a week, or visit clients personally to discuss their satisfaction.
Distribute customer service surveys and develop measurable benchmarks that you can follow. If 90% of your customers said that they were "extremely satisfied" with your customer service two months ago and that number fell to 75% this month, that tells you that you need to act. If you weren’t measuring, you would never know.
Have processes in place to assure that customer service remains an outgoing process, not just an incoming one. Your company representatives should talk to customers who recently bought from you, not wait to hear from them when something goes wrong. That makes the process proactive, not reactive, and dramatically increases overall customer satisfaction.
All your employees should be aware that they are in the customer service business and they play a critical role in pleasing customers. Talk to them about it often, enthusiastically, and personally.
A company may recruit a telephone answering service or hire a call centre, then expect customer service to run itself. And the fact is, it doesn’t. Without consistent review, interest and attention, the customer service experience will degrade until management action is required.
The key to good customer service is to carry out the following activities consistently, by making them ongoing priorities and habit forming.
Keep talking about customer service so that it becomes central to your company culture. The simplest way is to keep it on your meeting agendas, and then the mindset will spread through the ranks and lead to decisions that will make a difference.
As a company, you need to stay hands-on and monitor customer service activities personally; you may like to hire a manager to oversee customer satisfaction and service. Yet you, as a company leader, should stay hands-on too. A good idea would be to visit call centres to talk with reps, answer the phones yourself for an hour a week, or visit clients personally to discuss their satisfaction.
Distribute customer service surveys and develop measurable benchmarks that you can follow. If 90% of your customers said that they were "extremely satisfied" with your customer service two months ago and that number fell to 75% this month, that tells you that you need to act. If you weren’t measuring, you would never know.
Have processes in place to assure that customer service remains an outgoing process, not just an incoming one. Your company representatives should talk to customers who recently bought from you, not wait to hear from them when something goes wrong. That makes the process proactive, not reactive, and dramatically increases overall customer satisfaction.
All your employees should be aware that they are in the customer service business and they play a critical role in pleasing customers. Talk to them about it often, enthusiastically, and personally.
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