Your business phone is one of your lifelines to the world.
Yes, many people enjoy using email or even social media to connect with brands. But some prefer to get things done on a traditional voice call, which they feel is faster and more convenient than alternatives. A human connection can help people get through even frustrating situations.
The question becomes: how can you deliver truly excellent service?
The first step is to have a business phone system you can really rely on. If your business phone system is old, outdated, or overworked, it’s likely you face all kinds of issues on a regular basis. Calls get dropped, go to the wrong person, or break down due to poor call quality.
At Atlantic Communications Team, we recommend upgrading your capabilities with a cloud-based business phone system. These business-focused platforms are robust, easy to use, and packed with versatile features. You might just wonder how you ever got by with anything else.
As helpful as it can be to have a modern cloud-based business phone, it’s not the whole story. You still need the right people in the right positions – especially if they’re interfacing with the public mainly via phone. Customer service, sales, and IT are just a few of the functions that call for great phone skills.
Finding the Right Tone to Bring Your Customer Care to the Next Level
While we all know the basic rules of professionalism, there’s no one right way to answer the phone.
In fact, the best way to answer the phone always depends on your audience and what they expect from you. In that sense, it’s just like marketing your business: Every marketing piece is developed for someone – and you have to have that person in mind before you know what will resonate with them.
That brings us right to the start of our guide:
1. Know Your Audience
Businesses can cater to a wide variety of people or be very specific. Whatever the case, though, only a small subset of your customers will ever call you on the phone. So, instead of looking at everyone your brand touches, zero in on the specific customer profile that makes up most of your calls.
Ask yourself questions like these:
- Who are they? Where are they calling from?
- How long have they been customers of yours?
- What is their most common problem or issue?
- What’s their biggest concern about calling you?
Gathering call data helps your customer care team, but it can also inform your business in other ways. By examining calls, you can understand patterns in them, such as typical issues you might want to train your team members about or areas where your automated response system can be improved.
A cloud-based business phone system is especially helpful in parsing this kind of information!
2. Keep It Short and Simple
When people call into your business, their first priority is to be heard. With that in mind, it’s valuable to make sure the initial greeting your staff uses is short. Pare it down to the absolute essentials, such as the name of the business and name of the representative.
The principle of keeping it short can apply elsewhere throughout the conversation. For instance, many customer care representatives have been taught to “reflect back” what the other person is saying using phrases like, “I can see how that might be upsetting …”
While they come with good intentions, verbiage like this often falls flat because the listener perceives it as inauthentic. That’s especially true if a speaker is using a script. Respecting the caller’s time is the best way to demonstrate sincerity, and you do that by keeping it short.
3. End on a Positive Note
People are most likely to remember what happened at the beginning and the end of every experience. As a result, how you finish a conversation is just as important as how you start it. Even if you will send the caller on to a customer experience survey, it’s vital to do it in a cordial and respectful way.
Be sure team members are asking if there’s anything else they can do for callers before transitioning to their sign-off. If steps will be taken to resolve the caller’s problem after the call ends, reiterate those steps, when they should be completed, and how to get further information.
Atlantic Communications Team helps Central Florida businesses like yours enjoy the benefits of today’s best information technology. Contact us today to discover a business phone system that empowers you to create positive memories when your customers call in.