How to raise telephone customer service standards? 7 tips

High standards of telephone customer service translate into customer satisfaction and loyalty, and these impact the company’s profits and development.

Let’s start with a few statistics – what does high quality customer service mean? As many as 90% of people will spend more if the service is personalized, while 81% are more likely to buy something if it is of good quality. 64% of companies record an increase in sales thanks to great service, while 61% of customers will leave for the competition after just one negative experience.

In this article we present the most important standards of phone customer service that influence its quality, and we advise how to improve it thanks to the often underestimated factor – automation.

The benefits of quality customer service for your business

But first, let’s establish why it is worth fighting for the quality of customer service. The benefits of good telephone customer service standards cannot be overestimated, and include:

• positive image of the organization
• customer satisfaction
• customer loyalty
• higher sales
• higher competitiveness
• fewer complaints
• lower staff turnover

So as you can see – it’s worth it because all these factors translate into the company’s profit in the long run (and also determine its very survival on the market).

So what should professional phone customer service standards look like?

Telephone customer service standards and automation

The telephone still leads the way among customer service channels – for 76% of customers it is the channel that provides the greatest satisfaction. This is the fastest way of contact (unless you have to wait on the line) and the most direct one.

Telephone customer service can be divided into:

• incoming hotline (when the customer calls), where customer matters are dealt with, their orders are handled, various questions are answered and complaints are reported
• outgoing hotline (when the company calls), through which the organization conducts marketing, information and research activities towards its clients

Technology offers opportunities of partial (and sometimes almost complete) automation of both hotlines. This involves supplementing the service desk with an intelligent virtual voice assistant, namely a voicebot. 

It is a machine based on advanced artificial intelligence that communicates with humans in natural language – that is, it understands exactly what the client wants to say and is able to handle their standard case from start to finish (data from our projects indicate that it handles as many as 80% of cases this way). How does a voicebot ensure that the highest standards of customer service are maintained?

Customer service standards – challenges and solutions

What influences the quality of customer service over the phone? Both organizational and interpersonal factors. What are the most important challenges and how can a voicebot help solve them?

Speed and availability

Customers expect that they will be served immediately, and the hotline will be available – preferably 24/7, and if they are foreigners, also in their language. What frustrates them the most is long waiting for the connection, which is a common problem due to small service teams and work overload.

Research indicates that being forced to wait, 5% of consumers hang up immediately and 28% do not wait longer than 5 minutes. For the customers, respecting their time is one of the most important customer service standards. 

Therefore, in the fight for customer loyalty, companies that will be able to provide fast and accessible telephone service will win.

With a voicebot:

A voicebot answers the phone immediately because, as a machine, it can talk to thousands of customers at the same time – processes as many as 5,000 calls per minute. It also serves customers 24/7 and in more than 150 languages.

Personalization

It is important for customers that the company knows and understands their needs and tailors the offer adequately – with the appropriate technology, customer service standards can be raised through personalization. 

Knowing the name, preferences or history of a given customer, we can serve them faster, better and more accurately. All customer information (as well as history of the calls) should be saved in the CRM system, from where every consultant has easy access to it.

With a voicebot

The virtual voice assistant has access to customer data, which it processes in real time during each conversation. With this information, the voicebot can also call customers with a special offer, e.g. for a birthday or related to a recent purchase.

Culture and language

One of the good standards of telephone customer service is maintaining a high conversation culture and using appropriate language – including polite phrases and right vocabulary. The message should be simple and understandable to the recipient. Thanks to this, the customer will not only be more satisfied, but also the matter will be dealt with effectively.

With a voicebot

A voicebot never loses its composure – regardless of the customer’s behavior. Its language is standardized, which also includes the use of appropriate polite expressions and well-thought-out simplicity of expression.

Effectiveness

In reference to the above, the key condition for high-quality customer service is the effective handling of the matter with which the customer calls. And this is influenced by an appropriate, repeatable procedure that indicates what to do in specific cases – preferably as simple as possible.

With a voicebot

A voice assistant has been programmed to solve specific customer cases – its scenario is tailored to this. It follows transparent procedures and learns with each case, which is why subsequent cases are solved in an increasingly more effective and perfect way.

Flexibility

Flexibility is a good standard of customer service, based on proactively responding to callers’ requests and inquiries. The telephone makes this possible because, by definition, the conversation is unrestricted and can go in different directions – thanks to this, the client feels more satisfied with the resolution of the matter.

Of course, flexibility doesn’t mean that the conversation will turn into just a small talk. You should always keep the client’s goal in mind, i.e. solving their problem as efficiently as possible.

With a voicebot

A voicebot – although well-organized – is also flexible enough, and thanks to artificial intelligence understands a person regardless of the words they use. In rare cases (about 15%), when the voicebot is unable to resolve the matter on its own, it redirects it to a consultant.

Consistency and completeness

Information that is passed on to the customer and is available to them (both on the incoming and outgoing hotline) should be consistent (in each analogous case the same for each client) and comprehensive (that is, as broad as possible). Thanks to this general rule, the customer service standards will increase and managing them will become easier.

With a voicebot

A voicebot does not make typically human mistakes, it therefore provides each client with the same set of information, without distortions. Moreover, its knowledge base can be filled with any amount of information – there are no restrictions here, and the voicebot will reach them immediately after the customer asks a question.

Callback

If a customer asks for telephone contact, you should of course contact them at the right time and quickly enough – this is a good standard of customer service. This should also happen if the matter – for reasons attributable to the company – was not resolved during the first conversation.

With a voicebot

A voicebot can be automatically programmed to call back at specific times and conditions – you don’t need to remember anything extra.

All of the above elements affecting the quality of customer service must be taken into account when building your hotline – so that they form one coherent strategy.

Customer service standards – summary

Modern customer service standards are aimed at resolving the customer’s matter as efficiently and smoothly as possible, but it is not without reason that we call them modern – technology can play an important role, which shows how to improve the quality of customer service.

A voicebot makes the processes more efficient and orderly, and on the other hand, it is not as “soulless” as it might seem – today it is quite intelligent and able to adapt to people. 

Therefore, it is worth taking advantage of its capabilities and using it to solve the most popular customer service problems – without giving up the human approach, but combining the advantages of both worlds.