Start the year off strong with a few resolutions to get your company on track. With technology advancing every day, your business can easily provide the best communication tools for your team and customer service for your customers. Get ready to make 2020 your best year yet.
1. Streamline Communications
Email, chat, texting, phone calls…. many people use a different app for each one… or a whole different phone! With a centralized VoIP app, you can send and receive calls or texts from inside the app using the same number as a desk phone (even if your employees aren’t at their desks).
With voicemail-to-email and transcription, everything needed to take care of customers is built into a single app. With fewer places to look, teammates stay efficient and are less likely to miss details.
2. Resolve to Empower Remote Work
More and more studies show working in an office setting lowers efficiency and work-life balance. With a Unified Communication system, your team can stay in touch whether they work onsite or from home. With the added benefit of Microsoft Teams, teams can collaborate in real time without being face-to-face.
Don’t be afraid to let your teams work from home at least one day per week. By showing you care about their priorities and trust them to complete their work, they’ll reward you with better service and longevity with the business.
3. Utilize Available Data
January is a great time to begin tracking the data for your call center or even your personal phone usage. If you don’t know where you began, you can’t track growth in the future. Login to view the many reports in your dashboard and get a baseline for the year (maybe even review past reports to see progress from last year).
Set aside time each month, or week if necessary, to review your data and make changes to your customer service training or sales scripts. While the goal should never be rushed customer interactions, learning how often a customer calls back or the time spent on hold will provide insight to operations and training overall.
Even outside of a call center, teams should recognize how much time they spend on the phone. Whether you have a designated customer service team member or a receptionist, they may be surprised how little time is spent on the phone and how much time is wasted in other areas.
4. Train and Develop Customer Service Reps
No customer wants to feel like another number to be checked off a list. Proper customer service training resolves a problem quickly AND professionally. Even if you have a receptionist answering the phone in your office, a little training can go a long way in helping customers feel confident in your service.
Through a clear training process, your team will know the answers to the most common questions and be able to connect with the right person quickly when they don’t know the answer. Whether they need to transfer the call or simply chat with a teammate to find a resolution, service reps should have a clear understanding of the process while remaining friendly and helpful.
5. Reward Good Service
Now that you’ve started tracking your call center information, you can start rewarding your reps for their improvements. “Gamifying” your data adds some friendly competition and gives the opportunity to reward good service – whether you choose to reward based on problems resolved or shortened hold time, your team will appreciate the extra recognition. They’ll also appreciate the clarity into their job performance.
6. Provide the Best Tools
As an IT professional, you can resolve to provide your clients with the best tools for their company. Each year, businesses become more dependent on communication tools, not only to reach their customers, but also to communicate efficiently within their own company. With Viirtue’s record uptime (we’ve never had an outage!), you know you’re offering the best service on the market.