Use Technology Responsibly to Improve Customer Service
It is easy to get distracted by the latest advances in technology, like smartphones and tablets, or social media sites. Whether you are a small business owner or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, the last thing you want to do is get overly distracted by technology and what is currently trending when adapting it to your business operations. It is much better to ask yourself what the latest advances can do for your business in real world environments and how they can give your customers what they want when they want it.
A good starting place to answer this question is to understand what your customers’ desire. You would be surprised at how many business operations do not take the time to even evaluate their customers. Instead, these businesses determine what it is they like and try to come up with marketing and social media campaigns as a means to attempt to influence their customers to change. Sometimes this strategy works, but most of the time it does not. Businesses need to be adaptable and bend to their customers’ needs, even it means utilizing technology in different ways from your competitors.
For example, one of the biggest customer demands is being able to speak to a live person who lives in the United States. They do not want to spend their time entering in account numbers, trying to figure out how to navigate automated call trees, or being placed on hold for what seems like an eternity. Further fueling this demand is the frequency at which customers are rolled to someone’s voicemail, or worse, when they experience dropped calls from automated systems. The easiest way to give your customers live operators all of the time is to subscribe to a live answering service.
Customers tend to grow frustrated the longer they are on hold, and they become more irate if forced to leave a voicemail message. A live telephone answering service has the support staff and resources to answer your customers’ calls 24/7. In addition, you have the flexibility to determine exactly when you want the service to start taking calls or assist with call overflow during peak operating hours.
Another way to put technology to work for your business while adding value for your customers is to give them more control for self-service online. For instance, start a chat forum on your company’s website or social media site where customers can share tips and tricks, and their problem resolutions with one another. Allowing your customers to communicate with one another is also a great way to find out what they like and do not like about your products or services, as well as features and technologies they would like to see you make available. Additionally, consider enabling live chat services through your answering service on your Internet sites so customers can ask questions or obtain more information through instant messaging.
To learn more about live telephone operator answering services, chat management services for your website, and other solutions for your business, contact Signius Communications now at 800-295-7000.
