Communication & customer experience are undoubtedly two of the most important parameters in any business. Get it right & there’s virtually no end to how much you can achieve. Effective communication with customers certainly leads to increase in sales, referrals & high customer satisfaction. Whereas, the opposite puts adverse effects on your business.

Hence, there’s one simple question at the heart of it all. How can businesses improve their communication & as a result, thrive?  Let’s try to find out some answers.

Importance of Telephones

Contrary to popular belief, even today the most preferred & convenient mode of communicating with a company is a phone call. Research says less than 5% of the customer communication happens through emails & less than 20% through social media.

No matter how tech-savvy you become, telephones will always play a significant role in communication between customers/prospects & your company.

First Impression Matters

We’re not new to the saying, “first impression is important”. And it holds even higher importance for businesses because anything less than perfection will certainly take away the business from your hands to your competitor’s doorstep.

Research says that more than 70% of people don’t wish to continue with a company, after having bad experience during their first phone call. And believe it or not, automated call management does matter too.

The best possible way to ensure best customer experience via telephone is by installing a smart & efficient automated answering service in your system. Looks professional, reduces manual interference & does the job just fine. More so, the system responds to the call quicker & connects it to the best-suited person to make sure the prospect/customer talks to the right person in the first instance itself.

Keep the Waiting Time to a Minimum

Everybody loves to make real human contact. Last year alone, more than 60% of the people cut their calls when they couldn’t reach to a real talker. On the other hand… almost 70% of the people think it takes too much time to reach a real person via helpline.

If you want to stand out from the crowd, you’d need to do things differently. People don’t like holding the call for too long, no matter how sweet the automated voice is at the other end. The right thing to do here is to focus on technology & ensure minimal waiting time.

Priorities Customer Service Requests

Pre-sales service is just not enough in this competitive world. More than 55% of the prospects back off from a purchase if they aren’t convinced about the after-sales service. Hence there’s simply no margin for error here.

Have Real Conversations

With time customers have become a lot smarter & practical than before. Hence, it’s a good idea to do away with scripted conversation flow & start having in-the-moment proactive conversations with all your prospects/customers.

Just make sure you sound positive, interested, eager to help with a touch of humor. Should be good enough!

Bottom line is that companies should focus on transforming their service team into customers’ friends, people they connect to. Only then people won’t think a second before asking you for help. If you’re quick & meaningful enough… you’ll hit the bull’s eye.

For everything else… use a smart & agile CRM Tool like Wakeupsales.

Please leave your comments below, if you think there’s any other way to communicate with a customer better. I’d love to read them all 🙂