Your biggest customers, as a company, are always going to be other companies. They provide the heavy-hitting sales which can change the tides of your company’s entire quarter, so keeping them happy is tantamount to keeping yourself happy.
When interacting with another company, it is important to keep in mind the differences and similarities that it shares with your individual customers, as we discussed in a previous post. You may be led into thinking that a more distant interaction would be best, so you can have the time and freedom to edit your customer service responses to perfection via email or other routes. However, the reality is that this simply isn’t true. Your biggest customers like to be treated with the same level of care as your smallest, and despite the upsurge in automated and web based support, the number one choice for customer service is still phone care. Here’s the top 4 reasons big companies love to call.
1: Personalized care. Being able to provide truly personal customer care is the greatest strength of phone customer support. Each individual representative of your company brings his or her voice and personal skills to the table, which gives the caller a much more satisfying feeling of being heard and getting things done. Sending out an email can seem like drops in a bucket from the other side of things, but hearing a person on the line lets your customers know that work is being done on their issue right then.
2: Speed of resolution. With a phone call, usually the ultimate goal for both parties is first call resolution. The more times an issue is revisited, the more convoluted it can become. On a general basis, customers prefer calling in to get their concern addressed because it means results.
3: Accuracy. When speaking to someone directly, the chance of being misunderstood drops dramatically. Along the same line, if a misunderstanding does occur, it’s not possible for it to stretch on very long. With other forms of customer care, it can be easy to go back and forth multiple times before fully realizing the matter at hand.
4: Concise resolutions. If a company is taking the time to call you, it can often mean that they have more than one concern that they’d like to address in one interaction. Speaking with someone on the phone is a one-stop-shop which will allow your customer to lay out their concerns without needing to surf around for multiple answers or spend unnecessary time repeating themselves over email.
Perfecting your phone-based customer care is at the top of the list for pleasing your customers, big and small. Organizing your information and selecting the right set-up for your company is the first and best step toward creating the most effective customer service team, and PhaseWare can make that process easy. Whether you need to improve on first call resolutions or give your representatives the tools they need to succeed, having the right software is a great place to start.
