Click here to register for a webinar to learn how to improve your customers’ experience when they call you.
Phone calls are essential to customer service. 37% of customers would choose phone conversations with a live agent over any other channel if they want to get a problem solved quickly. As such, organizations need to ensure that the calling experience is painless – if not even pleasant – for customers who call in. Here’s what they hate:
1. Confusing Phone Menus
When customers call you, they do not want to listen to long prompts that are hard to follow or navigate. A poorly designed phone menu can drive customers to be hostile by the time they reach an agent. Frustrated, they may repeatedly press ‘0’ or hang up and run to Twitter to complain about you and hope to get your attention that way.
2. Getting Passed Along
It happens. A commercial customer landed in a residential queue and the residential agent can’t help them, so the customer is transferred to the right agent. We get that. But when the customer is in the right queue and the agent doesn’t know how or lacks the authority to help, the customer gets passed along – adding fuel to the fire of their frustration.
3. Is this thing on?
If the IVR takes information from the caller like their customer # or identifying information, why should she have to repeat it when she gets to the agent? Or if she tells the agent her story and gets passed along to another agent (see #2), she has to repeat the entire story all over again. If only there was a way to store your customer’s information to make this process easier for everyone…(HINT: There is!)
4. Long Hold Times
Let’s face it, we hate waiting. Especially when we are a customer paying for a service or product. It just feels…wrong. If your contact center is forcing callers to wait on hold, you are probably making them angry and complain. There is a simple solution to this problem – a call-back solution. This solution is surprisingly easy and cost-effective to layer on to your existing technology. We can help you with this.
5. Muzak
Now there is nothing wrong with the easy listening rendition of Arthur’s Theme by Christopher Cross, but what does it really mean to get lost between the moon and NYC? Must be an 80’s thing. If you must put your customers on hold, consider the demographics of your calling population and customize the on-hold experience accordingly.
Calling customer service can feel like a drag, but there are some things you can do to make your customers’ experience more enjoyable and efficient. Click here to register for a webinar to learn how to improve your customers’ experience when they call you.