I’m sure generating leads and converting prospects into fully paying customers are your primary goals like most businesses. But, while fulfilling these objectives, don’t neglect the experience you give to your customers. Because statistically, it is proven that 67% of customers mention bad experiences as a reason for churn.
Providing a personalized and memorable customer experience is critical for the growth and success of your business. After all, your customers form the backbone of your business.
However, dealing with customers isn’t a child’s play since at times you and your agents may not know why customers are upset or how exactly you can fulfil their requirements. Yet, if you want to be the leader in your niche, you’ve got to be prepared to face any situation that comes your way.
Here’s a list of the 17 things you should completely omit while handling customer calls at ALL COSTS!
1. Making your customers wait: Customers want instant solutions and hate it when they are made to wait. For example, telling your customers “Please wait I have another call to attend, I will call you later”, is a big no no. Your customers shouldn’t feel neglected or unimportant as this worsens their experience and they may never want to deal with you again in the future.
2.Taking too long to pick up calls: Your customers could reach out to you anytime with their queries, advice or feedback. Therefore, if you don’t want to lose a potential customer it is necessary that you answer the calls you receive instantly and leave a voicemail message in situations where you know you cannot attend to calls. Because, according to an American Express Survey, 67% of customers hung up the phone out of frustration because they could not get a timely response from a real person.
3. Transferring calls to many agents: While attending to customer queries, you need to make sure that their problem is resolved completely. So, each customer must be connected with an agent who is most qualified to attend to his/ her query. If this doesn’t happen you’d have to keep telling your customer “Please wait, I’ll connect you to the right agent”. Doing this adversely affects your customers call experience. After all, who would want to wait so long to get one problem resolved?
4. Not following up with missed calls: Staying next to your mobile phone or office landline at all times is practically impossible. So, it may happen that you miss a few customer calls while you were away from office or on a lunch break. In such instances, you should make it a point to follow up with your missed calls. For example, when you miss customer calls, call them back and ask “You recently called us. How may we help you?” Such a gesture makes your customers feel important and they are more likely to trust your company’s services.
5. Arguing with your customers: It may happen that you’re right about something while the customer on call isn’t. But, that doesn’t mean you start arguing and tell them “You’re wrong, so listen to me.” Remember, it takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience. So always be polite to your customers no matter how wrong or rude they are.
6. Giving your customers false hopes: I’m sure you’d like to obtain as many customers as possible for your business. Which business wouldn’t want that? But, while trying to lure your customers into purchasing your product/ service do not give them false hopes of discounts or make unreasonable deals as this would only increase your chain rate. In fact, the “News of bad customer service reaches more than twice as many ears as praise for a good service experience”.
[Tweet “Avoid these 17 bad habits while handling #CustomerCalls to improve your #CustomerService”]
7. Calling when there is too much noise around you: Every customer that calls you is a potential lead. So, to strike the deal when the iron is hot, you’ve got to have no disturbance while you’re on the call to clearly explain your product’s details and understand your customer’s requirements.
8. Asking them questions instead of letting them speak first: “What are your looking for? Do you know about our services? What’s the name of your business? What is your business type?” Asking too many questions of this sort is frustrating and annoys your customers. So, don’t keep asking questions. Give your customers a chance to speak so that you can address their problems with adequate solutions.
9. Not apologizing for your mistakes: No human is perfect so it’s absolutely okay if you make mistakes. Just make sure you admit your mistake and apologize by saying something like “I’m sorry you had to go through this, but don’t worry we’ll make this right.”
10. Not personalizing conversations: When a customer approaches you with their problems for which they seek solutions, ensure that you understand their needs and personalize the conversation to make them feel you’re there to help them. After all, no customer would want to talk to a machine, right?
11. Trying too hard to get your product sold: “I have a deal that you’ll get nowhere. It’s the cheapest product in the market.” Making such statements before actually hearing what the customer wants or pitching products that aren’t his requirements only makes you look desperate and worsens your customer experience. So sell your product only after understanding your customer’s requirement.
12. Committing too many grammatical mistakes: The way you talk to your customers directly impacts the way customers perceive your business to be. You could either project your business as a strong brand or crumble its reputation within seconds. Therefore, use proper grammar and be careful of the words you choose while conversing with your customers. You can use any online Grammar checker tools to help yourself with Grammar with great word choice.
13. Saying “No” without being sure: If you aren’t sure about a certain policy or unaware if you can make alternations in a plan, instead of saying “Sorry we do not provide that”, consult a senior employee or another colleague.
14. Using the same sales pitch for each customer: The “Same size fits all” approach doesn’t work when you’re dealing with customer calls because not all have the same requirement. So, you need to adjust your sales pitch according to what your customers actually need.
15. Ending a conversation abruptly: It could happen that you get a call from a customer that needs to get connected in another department. In such instances, connect that customer to the right department, instead of ending the call by saying “That’s not my job, you called the wrong person.”
16. Disconnecting calls because you are in a hurry: If you want to elevate your business sales you’ve got to work towards providing your customers with a call experience that makes them want to come back to you for more. This can only be achieved if you understand their pain points, offer them with a solution that best fulfils their requirement, track all customer calls, view daily analytic call reports and measure the performance of your agent’s on calls by listening to their call recordings.
17. Not providing your customers with an alternative: At times your customers may have unique requirements which your company may not provide in full. In such situations rather than bluntly telling them “Unfortunately no, that’s just not possible”, try to tell them that you’ve got a alternative or a similar solution that could equally fulfil their requirements.
If you want to elevate your business sales you’ve got to work towards providing your customers with a call experience that makes them want to come back to you for more. This can only be achieved if you understand their pain points, offer them with a solution that best fulfils their requirement, track all customer calls, view daily analytic call reports and measure the performance of your agent’s on calls by listening to their call recordings.
But, doing all this manually is very cumbersome and tedious.
MyOperator, a cloud-based call management system is the ideal solution for your problem. It will automate the process of managing, tracking, transferring and forwarding your business calls. This will allow you to resolve customer queries instantly and deliver a superior customer call experience.
Get a call management system for your business now.
