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In 2021, customers can choose from a huge variety of communication channels when they want to contact a business.
However, according to recent data by Statista, 42% of them still prefer to just call a business when they face any issues.
To keep these customers happy, it’s crucial to provide a positive experience when they call.
All of us have faced the frustration of endless queues, dial-through menus, lines cutting out, and listening to the same hold music for hours.
Fortunately, modern business phone systems provide tools to avoid these scenarios and leave callers satisfied.
The majority of modern business phone services work via VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol. This has the advantage that they’re reliable, accessible from anywhere, and come with lots of additional features that make life easier for both your agents and your customers.
Here are the four most important tools to prevent caller frustration.
1 – Interactive Voice Response
First off, smart interactive voice response (IVR) spares your customers from navigating several rounds of “press one to -”.
Instead of being forced to listen to a long menu of (mostly irrelevant) choices, customers can state the purpose of their call in their own words.
Then, advanced IVR uses a natural language processing (NLP) algorithm based on artificial intelligence to parse the caller’s intent.
Once this intent is known, the system takes action. For one, it can connect the caller to an available agent with the right skills. For another, it can directly take care of routine tasks such as (re)scheduling appointments or giving account information.
2 – Skill-Based Routing
Next up, skill-based routing saves customers from being passed between agents like a hot potato.
In many businesses, incoming calls are handled by the first available agent. Often, however, these agents are not the right ones to deal with a caller’s specific request.
Consequently, callers are put back on hold while the right person to handle their issue is being pinpointed – and then some more until they are actually free.
To avoid this, you can harness skill-based routing. This combines a database of the capabilities and level of authorization of every agent with their availability status.
When a call comes in, the system then automatically matches the callers’ request to this database. Then, it connects them straight away with the currently available agent best equipped to help them.
3 – CRM Integrations
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are a cornerstone of most business operations in 2021. Here, businesses can store data on every single customer (or potential customer) to cater to their needs and ensure maximum satisfaction.
One huge advantage of modern business phone software is that it easily integrates with many CRM systems, such as Salesforce and HubSpot.
This means that you can save any call-related data pertaining to a customer alongside information such as purchases, online interactions, and previous issues.
For example, you can see the frequency of their calls and the names of the agents that handled them. This allows you to understand how particular issues were solved, and which channels of communication were involved.
Even more usefully, modern phone systems can provide automatic transcripts and even summaries of calls thanks to NLP. Once the transcript of a call has been generated, you can automatically transfer it to the CRM and keep it for future reference.
Then, if a customer calls again to follow up about an issue they’re having, they won’t have to recap their entire story. Instead, your agents will have all the necessary information at their fingertips.
4 – Virtual Real-Time Assistants
And finally, virtual assistants can help your agents provide the best possible service to any callers.
Based on NLP and AI, these tools act as a personal assistant to every single one of your agents. Better yet, they work mostly autonomously – without having to be instructed what to do.
For example, if there’s an incoming call from a customer who’s had issues before, the virtual assistant will recognize the caller ID. They will then automatically pull the pertinent records from the CRM and show them to the agent handling the call.
Virtual assistants can also provide assistance during the conversation between the caller and your agent.
For instance, they can analyze the callers’ sentiments in real-time based on their choice of words and tone of voice. When they recognize that a customer is becoming agitated or aggressive, or that an agent is at a loss for what to say, virtual assistants then provide talking points and suggestions for resolving the situation.
Conclusion
Ensuring customer satisfaction should be any business’ highest priority. To achieve this aim, it’s crucial to provide frustration-free channels of communication.
By harnessing the tools available in modern business phone systems, you can make sure that any customer who calls you has the best possible experience.
