First impressions are important, especially in business. There’s so much competition out there that you simply can’t afford to leave a bad impression on customers and your business associates. That’s why, the first ever call your customer makes is very important and should be handled well.
This actually marks the beginning of your relationship with your customers. It gives you the opportunity to establish a personal connection with your customers. If you don’t handle the first call of your customers well, they’ll turn towards the competition.
Training
Training is an important aspect of ensuring that your employees know how to handle customers well. During training, you should dedicate some time to help your employees understand how to handle first time callers. Training would give your team confidence and ensure that they will interact with the customers easily and thoughtfully. They need to understand that even if the customer is angry and being unreasonable, the first call is always an opportunity to enhance their loyalty.
If you handle the first call well, it’s very likely that the customer will stick with you. Unlike what most small business owners tend to believe, the modern customers aren’t fickle or disloyal. They will jump ship if you don’t give them good quality service, but if you do, they’ll stay with you.
Quality Control
While training is well and good, you need to keep an eye on just how well your staff is handling the calls. For that, you need to monitor the first time calls carefully. You need to assess whether the customers have a positive experience. You can always ask your customers to give you feedback on the calls.
If they’re truly upset, they’ll let you know. In this case, even a lack of positive feedback is a good sign. If you monitor the calls of your best performer and your worst performer, you’ll be able to understand the right way and the wrong way to handle the clients. This information can be used to train your future employees.
Look at it From the Customer’s Point of View
It’s always a good idea to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and experience what they experience. You can call your own customer service number and see just how your employees handle the first customer call. This would allow you to test the abilities of your employees and spot any problems or inconsistencies. Again, the information you get from this experience would allow you to train your team better and improve the quality of your service.
Heeding Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is a valuable source of information about your services. If your customers take time to actually point out problems and offer suggestions, you should respect that and heed their advice immediately. Of course, you should also thank them for taking the time out to help you when they don’t need to. It’s also a good idea to contact them after you’ve resolved the problem to thank them again and let them know that you’ve dealt with the issue. This is also a part of the first call, after all.
