When a customer calls your business, the rubber meets the road on customer care.
Dozens of different things can go wrong during these brief interactions. In fact, research has shown that a poor customer service interaction over the phone is one of the biggest factors that can cause customers to take a look at your competitors.
Even customers who have been affiliated with you for months or years may reopen the selection process if they feel they are not getting the kind of customer care they expect from your brand.
Any time customers call you, there are two main goals:
- Identify and resolve the problem so the customer can return to pursuing his or her goals
- Make sure the customer feels heard so that he or she retains long-lasting brand loyalty
Your customer service representatives train hard to meet these objectives. Without the backing of a good business phone system, however, the task is much more challenging than it should be.
Your business phone system provides the architecture and infrastructure you need to exceed your customers’ expectations. And you can align the features and performance of your business phone system by ensuring that you’re tracking customer results through every customer service contact.
Tracking Net Promoter Score Helps You Get More Value From Your Phone System
A business phone system is usually replaced when it is no longer meeting your needs.
Typically, that comes about after a spike in calls where the system was not able to keep up. It can also be caused by shortfalls in call quality or in other key features, such as effective call routing.
You may have great technical reasons for updating your business phone system. For it to really excel in the coming years, though, it’s a good idea to pay attention to how it affects customers. Net Promoter Score helps you do it.
Net Promoter Score (or NPS) is a way of rating the customer experience and correlating it with the key improvements you can make in your operations. As your business phone system is such a visible and essential part of your customer interactions, it can benefit highly.
Your NPS score is calculated by soliciting feedback from your customers as soon as possible after an event, whether that’s a call to your business, a new purchase, or other forms of contact. The key question is whether your customer would recommend you to a friend or colleague.
This allows you to segment customers into clear categories:
- Detractors: Ratings from 0-6 need proactive outreach to prevent brand damage
- Passives: Ratings of 7 or 8 are vulnerable to offerings from your market rivals
- Promoters: Ratings of 9 or 10 indicate loyal customers likely to fuel referrals
Of these figures, passives are often left out of the final score calculation. This allows you to focus on your detractors and promoters, those most likely to take proactive action around your brand. Negative online reviews come from detractors, while promoters drive word of mouth.
High NPS scores associated with your phone-in experience are a great barometer of satisfaction.
Most people who call into your business phone system are not happy to be doing it. They’ve run into a problem that’s keeping them from moving forward on their own tasks and goals until they solve it. Your task is to resolve the issue in a way that leaves them feeling better than when they started. With that in mind, you start every call at something of a disadvantage.
When you take NPS figures soon after a phone call, you’re more likely to get lower figures than higher ones. However, you’ll notice customers who are thrilled with their call are more likely to give you a 9 or even a 10 rating. The effect becomes clear within the data when you track NPS scores over a long period of time and evaluate the trends behind them.
As you start on the process of planning a new business phone system, it is a good idea to solicit NPS scores from callers after their business is concluded. You can do this immediately after the call or use a follow-up email. The chance to respond to an email can be more convenient for time-crunched customers who are eager to get off the phone and get on with their day.
Along with your overall score, you can request feedback on key aspects of the phone experience:
- How would your customers rate the quality of their call?
- How do they rate the speed with which they got answers?
- How do they rate the accuracy of the answer to their issue?
- Did they experience other unexpected positives or negatives?
As you correlate survey responses to the data from your business phone system, a picture of your team’s performance will become clear. For example, your phone system can report the total length of each call and the number of times the customer was routed to another agent.
Aligning Your Business Phone System With Customer Feedback In Your NPS Program
In situations where replacing your business phone system isn’t an emergency, it’s a great idea to start collecting data about six months before you move forward implementing new technology.
This data gives you the power to ensure your business phone system selection is fully built on your operational needs. The right features give you new options for moving your customer care metrics.
A good way to start the evaluation process for a business phone system is to determine what data it collects and how it gets shared. Recorded calls provide you with some of the best raw training data in customer service. With them, team leaders can pinpoint training gaps more effectively.
Personnel should also have the opportunity to listen in on live calls as they happen. This is a fine way to onboard new team members. It can also help train personnel for new responsibilities as they move up the ladder, allowing them to effectively “shadow” their managers.
Selection of more sophisticated business phone system features hinges on the data you’ve been able to collect. For example, if you are consistently hearing from customers that they wait too long or reach the wrong personnel, it suggests issues with call routing on your current system. A newer setup with more robust self-service could be one solution to the problem.
Atlantic Communications Team provides with you both the technology and the business strategy that means real ROI from your business phone system. We have the expertise you need to craft your system – and get rave reviews from your customers in the future.
To find out more or get started, contact us today.