Track Customer Service Impressions With Your Answering Service
Using an answering service to help improve overall perceptions of customer service is something that every business can benefit from. However, there are ways that you can use the talents of your answering services to bolster your levels of customer service beyond simply eliminating on-hold times. One way to go about this is to gather valuable feedback and customer impressions of your company. An answering service is one of many ways that you can start to accumulate this valuable data, but it has the potential to be one of the most effective.
Answering services can create custom scripts that are developed in collaboration with their clients. This is a great way to incorporate small questions to incoming callers in order to gather valuable data and opinions. Something as simple as, “Before I let you go, is there anything you feel we could be doing to improve your satisfaction?” can yield a huge amount of actionable information for your company.
One of the skills of highly trained answering service agents is the ability to take down accurate messages that convey exactly what a caller needs. This makes them the ideal team to reach out and gather a little extra information for a better picture of how your customer service is perceived.
Another thing to remember is that you can gather information in a less formal way if that is better suited to your operation. Simply instruct your agents to pass along any additional complaints or compliments that they may receive during the course of their shifts. A surprising number of customers offer up comments without being solicited, especially if they are having a particularly positive or negative experience.
On one hand, it might seem like more work to dig through messages and reports that offer qualitative insight into the perception of the service your company is providing. However, over the long run, this kind of information can help your management team formulate strategies to keep your customers happy. It can give you a glimpse into patterns of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) that help target your efforts going forward to give your customers more of what they want, or to improve where they think you fall short.
