Are you making the most of customer communications? Fifty-five percent of customers would pay more for a better experience, according to Defaqto research, and the more effort you put into your brand connections, the more powerful your business can become.
A strong customer experience begins with a focus on making sure that you’re serving your clients with the support they need, when and where they need it most. By optimising the way that they handle business calls, the average enterprise can avoid falling victim to the 76% of people (Ovum 2015) who stop interacting with a brand based on poor experiences.
Of course, just because you know how significant the impact of Customer Experience (CX) can be on your business, doesn’t mean you know how to ensure all your incoming calls are directed quickly and effectively to where they need to be. The good news is that with the rise of cloud technology and new innovative software solutions, there are steps you can take to resolve your satisfaction issues and make sure every call is answered in a way that positively transforms your reputation and bottom line.
1. Unify your communications
One of the primary reasons for a missed call in the business world is a lack of organisation and the overwhelming pressure most agents experience when attempting to keep up with the rising demands of modern customers. Your clients require a whole new level of service today, which means that agents are juggling the concerns of writing reports, responding to emails, taking calls, and even retrieving important customer data.
With a UC strategy as powerful as RingCentral Office®, agents can better handle this deluge of tasks from a single, easy-to-use location. This means that your workforce has much better control over their time. A more strategic schedule means more time delighting your audience.
2. Move towards mobility
According to Statista.com, the number of active smartphone users per month in the UK is expected to reach around 53.96 million. That means that today’s brands can’t afford to overlook the value of mobility. A lack of investment in mobility solutions that support agents working outside of the office could be a common cause of missed calls and lost opportunities.
A UC solution that supports BYOD services and device mobility ensure that agents can remain connected to the business intelligence hub at all times, with the right software and strategies to take calls on any device. Whether it’s a RingCentral phone, mobile app, or personal smart device, these solutions ensure that there’s no negative fallout for the customer calling in, and your agent can maintain their mobile schedule. In fact, your agents could even tailor routing plans to suit their working hours, so that calls are sent elsewhere instantly when an agent isn’t available.
3. Implement intelligent CRM solutions
CRM integration is a useful way to upgrade the efficiency of your customer service environment, as it allows agents to more quickly manage all the solutions they need to delight customers in a single place. This is important in an era when clients will quickly look elsewhere if they’re not getting the efficiency they need from you.
Clever CRM integrations that can pop customer records directly to the agent screen based on incoming numbers means that your workers are always prepared. What’s more, this removes the need to switch between applications and speeds the workflow by ensuring that the agent always has the right information on hand.
4. Invest in intelligent IVR and self-service
Gartner suggests that by 2020, the customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise, without the need for human interaction. Therefore, it’s worth reconsidering whether it might be time to invest in an intelligent IVR and self-service solution for your team that allows your caller to bypass the primary switchboard and direct themselves towards the right department so that their issues can be handled faster.
RingCentral’s IVR, for instance, is quick and simple for companies to set up, and comes with a visual editor solution which means that every team gets a rich, configurable strategy for exceptional customer experience.
5. Monitor staff performance
Sometimes, it’s not necessarily the technology that’s holding you back, but a lack of internal management that means agents simply aren’t performing at their best. If an agent is showing a consistently poor performance rate, this could be a sign that you need to either invest in more training or replace that employee with someone more capable of handling their role.
A solution like RingCentral Contact Centre can ensure that businesses are prepared to carry out insightful real-time reports on their agents to ensure that they’re giving their position their all and working in the most productive way possible.
6. Configure missed call notifications
Message-direct.co.uk discovered that 85% of the callers who receive no answer from the service agent they attempt to contact will not call again. At the same time, Accenture found that 66% of customers will switch companies if they don’t get the right customer service straight away. Unfortunately, no matter how well-organised your service station might be, there’s always a chance that you could miss a call for reasons that are beyond your control.
Your clients require a whole new level of service today, which means that agents are juggling the concerns of writing reports, responding to emails, taking calls, and even retrieving important customer data. Click To Tweet
The key to success is making sure that you have a safety net in place when missed calls do occur so that agents can return calls as quickly as possible and ensure that customers don’t take their business elsewhere. An automatic “missed call” notification sent through email or instant message could be essential to ensuring customer satisfaction.
7. Consider alternative channels
Finally, remember that there are alternatives to the standard unified communications strategy on the market for those who simply can’t get everything they need to serve a customer through UC alone. If your UC strategy isn’t enough to ensure absolute satisfaction for your diverse and demanding audience, then a contact centre solution might be the next step up.
RingCentral Contact Centre, for instance, comes with all the features a modern enterprise environment needs to support many channels. This means that you can even dive into the benefits of an omnichannel solution, which is critical in an environment where more customers are choosing to connect with agents on platforms ranging from voice to social media, email, and SMS.
Originally published Apr 06, 2018, updated Jan 16, 2023
