Your telephony system might be the best marketing tool you’re not using
By Warren Hawkins, Managing Director – Euphoria Telecom
Before joining Euphoria, I was MD for online retailer Yuppiechef, a company which used a Euphoria Telecom system.
Yuppiechef is a brand renowned for its customer service, and the Euphoria system was an important part of how we were able to deliver that. But, as an executive, I honestly did not grasp the full value that a system like that offered from a customer experience point of view.
When talking about customer service, what it really boils down to is whether you’re providing the kind of service that people will tell their friends about. If not, you’re missing out on a valuable marketing opportunity.
The customer service call is a valuable opportunity to pinpoint where you are delighting customers, and when you’re letting them down. Since joining Euphoria Telecom, I’ve learned vastly more about the features that can be game changers in the customer experience realm.
In business, a net promoter score determines customer loyalty by calculating the percentage of people who would actively promote your business by word of mouth.
In determining the score, only the experiences of the people who’ve encountered the best and the worst service are included. So any business looking to compete on service must ensure that the number of happy customers far outweighs the number of merely satisfied or unhappy ones.
Increasing your net promoter score, in turn, increases referrals. And referrals are the best and most cost-effective form of marketing, so really honing in on the customer experience makes real business sense.
Are you servicing the customer where they want to be met?
Euphoria Telecom’s system offers over 200 features for call centres and businesses both large and small. Based on my own experience, many executives might not fully grasp the array of features available on their phone systems and how the data they provide can be used to track and improve quality of service.
With dispositions, or outcome management, agents can select the outcome of the call at the end. So if a customer calls in with an issue, but it’s easily resolved and the customer hangs up happy, then it would be marked as such.
But, if a customer calls in with a question about a product and a call centre agent directs them to the website – is that helpful? Well, only if the information is easily accessible.
If nine more customers phone in asking the same question about the same product, it’s clear that there is a problem with the information available on the website. And unless your customer service people are tagging the outcomes of each call, you probably won’t pick up that you are not servicing the customer where they want to be met.
The same goes for call wait times and agent ranking after the call. Your company may hire good people and train them well, but unless you’re listening to every call, you can’t tell if your people are hitting the mark.
As an executive, knowing whether a customer was able to have their query resolved at the first point of contact, or whether they were bounced around between agents and extensions, will give you a very clear view of the kind of service they received.
Every call is an opportunity to impress your customers, turning them into an enthusiastic advocate for your brand. It’s key that the entire process, from the moment your customer dials your number, until the moment their query is resolved, is seamless to give your brand the best possible chance of doing this.
To explore what your phone system can do for you, contact Euphoria on 087 094 5999 or find out more on euphoria.co.za.
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