Customer satisfaction is a game that every company must play. It can be difficult to nail down what exactly will provide the right kind of support, when offered opinions can be so polarizing amongst even a very similar customer group. But the facts stand, and these should be acknowledged when financing, organizing, and preparing your customer support system. What does the customer really want? A recent report by the Consumer Preference Contact Centers provided some pivotal perspectives on how and where to strengthen your customer support department.
The first item to take into consideration is that 80% of customers prefer customer support via personal phone contact. In fact, 48% of customers use that avenue – the most of all the offered methods. People want to talk to other people. There are a lot of factors going into this, such as personal expression, pathos, the perception of a concise and clear exchange, and other elements. Whatever the cause, the fact remains that providing a stellar set up for phone-based customer service is absolutely imperative to meeting the customer’s needs.
The second most important factor to consider is that a whopping 54% of customers feel dissatisfied with the service that they receive. Despite all of the hopeful thinking and vying for personal attention via phone-based support, customers remain, over half of the time, disappointed. What is causing this calamity? Treating the customers with the respect and service they deserve is a trickier category than companies expect, it turns out. So here are a few tips to improving your phone-based support.
1. Empower your employees. Give the agents the backing they need to make resolute, positive, helpful decisions in the name of the customer. “I don’t know,†or “Let me connect you with a manager,†are comments that will immediately disappoint customers, who also report that their number one desire is for concerns and problems to be resolved quickly.
2. Give agents the resources they need to succeed. Nothing feels worse than floundering on a service call. Educate your employees, provide well-mapped and capable staff support resources like a knowledge base and an intensive training program so that representatives on the floor feel proficient, equipped, and prepared to deliver for the customer.
3. Hire for the position. Not every person on the street was built to provide customer service. Sourcing your call center with agents that have a positive, intelligent, naturally compassionate and helpful disposition has a tremendous impact on not only the service that your team is able to provide, but the environment that your service agents work in every day. Agents who are able to be positive towards each other have a much higher capacity to present that positive front to potential or current customers.
Five star phone-based support is the key to providing the kind of customer support that people truly want. Investing in the success of your agents is imperative to ensuring the success of your company!
PhaseWare is proud to have over a decade of expertise in providing customer support teams with the right tools. Contact us today to get started with a free demo.