Tips for Good Phone Manners

Tips for Good Phone Manners

For many industries, phones play an important part in their operations. They are used for contacting customers, vendors, or business associates. It also provides opportunities for clients or customers to contact the organization within its hours of operation. Because of this, it is necessary for any business, regardless of industry or size, to practice good phone manners.

The way a customer perceives a phone interaction with a company impacts the organization overall. Create a more positive business image by learning how to handle a phone conversation well. Below are some telephone etiquette tips that can help keep you on track:

Answer and end the call with a positive greeting
When answering the phone, make sure to begin with a positive greeting such as “Good morning,” or something like, “Thank you for calling Julie’s Beauty Salon, how may I help you?” It also helps to use your name.
When finishing the call, wrap up with a summary of why the customer called and how the problem was solved. Verify that they have no further questions, and thank them for their time before politely saying goodbye. The customer should leave the call feeling satisfied that their questions were answered with care.
Speak clearly
When on the phone, speak in a clearly in a voice that is neither too soft nor too loud. Words should be properly enunciated and should be clear enough for the caller to understand what is being said.
Do not interrupt the caller while they are talking
It is rude to interrupt someone while they’re talking, whether in person or on the phone. Even if you feel you already have the answer to their question, let the caller finish before you interject.
Ask permission when putting a customer on hold
If the caller needs to be put on hold, ask for their permission and offer an option to leave a message. When returning to the call and taking the caller off of hold, thank them for their patience.
Explain the need for call transfer if it is necessary
If you say something with no explanation such as, “Let me transfer your call,” this may make a customer feel like you are putting them off onto someone else. If there is a need to transfer a call, politely inform the person on the other end of the call and explain why you’re doing so.

It takes time and proper resources to train employees to follow professional phone etiquette. Phone answering services can help you save time and money without compromising the quality of your calls.

We take calls in Contact One is an answering service company based in Tucson, Arizona. We are at your service 24/7. Call 1(800) 278-3347 to find out how we can help grow your business today.

Don’t Believe These Myths About Customer Service

Don’t Believe These Myths About Customer Service

Customer Service

Great customer service is an essential ingredient for running a successful business. If you are having trouble keeping up with answering all of your customers’ calls or providing them with technical support, you may want to consider outsourcing your calls to an answering service. To highlight the importance of providing your customers with live customer support, here is a look at three commonly held myths about customer service.

Myth: Customer service only requires that basic demands are met

A business may be more likely to fail if its workers are only focused on meeting the basic demands of their customers. In order to achieve terrific customer service, you will need to make sure that you go above and beyond to ensure that your customers feel great about their experience when they work with your company. By following up with your services and offering additional support, you can make sure that your customers are satisfied.

Myth: Lack of negative feedback equals great customer service

As the owner or manager of a business, it is important to pay attention to all of the feedback that you get from your customers. However, just because you are not getting a high volume of negative reviews, you should not assume that your customer service is up to par. Instead, you should always focus on receiving glowing reviews and recommendations.

Myth: Customer service policies should be strictly followed

While it is important to have customer service policies and rules in place for your workers, you may disappoint your customers if these guidelines need to be rigidly followed. Providing your workers with some flexibility will allow them to keep your customers happy.
If you are in need of a live answering service near Tucson, be sure to get in touch with Contact One. The employees at our call center will make sure that all of your customers are completely satisfied with our services. For more information about how our services can benefit your business, call us at (800) 278-3347.

How Bad Customer Service Experiences Can Impact Your Business

How Bad Customer Service Experiences Can Impact Your Business

Customer Service

Customer service is more important today than it ever has been before, thanks to the widespread availability of customer opinions and testimonies online. A bad customer service experience can turn a customer off to your business, and he or she might tell others as well. If you don’t want to spend your time on damage control, read on to see how bad customer service experiences can impact your business.

Loss of Repeat Customers

Even customers who have been loyal to your business for years are not under any obligation to continue offering you patronage, so you should be sure to treat them with respect. A bad customer experience can sway customers to try out other options rather than work with you, which is the opposite of what you want for your business. Consider hiring customer service professionals to keep everyone happy.

Tarnished Reputation

A single customer who has a bad service experience and decides to move away from your business may be enough of a hit; unfortunately, news of the unpleasant experience can spread quickly. A dissatisfied customer may post on social media about the experience, and this is even more dangerous if the person is particularly upset. This takes away from the reputation of your company and can directly reflect in your sales.

Damage Control

It’s never a good idea to let a bad customer service experience go. Instead, you should do what you can to make up for it and keep your customers. Constantly catching up on damage control will take your attention away from other responsibilities, however, and it can add unnecessary stress. Work with customer service professionals to make sure all of your patrons are happy with the way they are treated.

You don’t want to let your customers down, and you won’t have to when you work with Contact One. We are an answering service serving California and many other areas, and customer service is one of our many specialties. Please don’t hesitate to call us at 1 (800) 278-3347 for more on our services.

Why Customer Service Matters

Why Customer Service Matters

Answering Service / Call Center Support/ Blog/ Customer Service/ Receptionist Services

headshot

Customers expect to be taken care of and treated with respect and dignity when they call a customer service representative. A quality customer service professional will handle customers’ problems in a timely and respectable fashion. Your customer service department may also notice which types of issues tend to pop up most frequently. Here is a closer look at why customer service matters.

Solve Problems Efficiently

When a customer has a problem with any given product or service that he or she has paid for, the customer service department will typically be the one to contact. Remember that if you want your customers to give you their business again in the future, you need to take care of any problems they may be dealing with now. Customer service aims to solve these problems and ensure that your patrons have a positive experience working with your company.

Treat Customers with Respect

Customers, customer service representatives, and managers are all people, and everyone deserves to be treated respectfully. Your customer service team needs to make sure that each individual gets a chance to explain his or her case to a receptive representative. Some customers will be calm and collected throughout the entire process, while others will get worked up; it’s important that your team keeps its cool and handles every situation in a dignified manner.

Recognize Common Issues

Your customer service department can actually provide some helpful insight for your business. If certain types of issues tend to pop up more than others, you can find a way to place greater emphasis on the problem area. Paying attention to these trends can make your business more welcoming and even more profitable.

If you’re looking to step up your customer service department, please feel free to call Contact One at 1-800-278-3347. Our call center specializes in disaster preparedness and secure messaging in addition to everyday customer service. You can learn much more about us by visiting our website today.

Utilizing an Answering Service to Help with Your 24/7 Customer Response

Utilizing an Answering Service to Help with Your 24/7 Customer Response

Answering Service / Call Center Support/ Blog/ Customer Service

serving-customers

You never want to miss an important call, but you can’t be at work all the time; this is where an answering service or call center can help. This type of service keeps your customers happy while saving you money, time, and energy. Read on to see how 24/7 customer service from a call center can help your business.

Increase Convenience for Customers

Just about every working adult in today’s society has a busy schedule, and it can be difficult to juggle all of your tasks and responsibilities. A customer service system that operates 24 hours per day will cater to any type of schedule imaginable. This will allow people who work nights to get the assistance they need, even if it’s not during business hours.

Save Money on Operating

Keeping the lights on isn’t free, but turning your customers down could prove to be costly. An answering service will be able to take care of your customers’ needs at any time of the day or night. This means you won’t have to keep your business open longer than it needs to be just in case someone comes in to have a problem dealt with.

Don’t Worry About Hiring

Hiring new employees can be challenging in a few different ways; interviews, drug tests, background checks, and training all add up in terms of time, money, and manpower. When you use an answering service for your customer service department, you will not need to worry about these elements. Instead, you can focus on your immediate responsibilities and save some of your resources.

Are you interested in utilizing an answering service to ensure that your business runs as smoothly as possible? Feel free to get in touch with the team at Contact One or visit our website. We are happy to offer after hours support, medical answering, and more. Give us a call at 1-800-278-3347 for more information about us.

3 Essential Elements Your Customers Look For

3 Essential Elements Your Customers Look For

Customer Service

iStock_000012681402XSmall Customer service is an essential element of any company’s success. The businesses that make an effort to keep their customers happy tend to do the best. If you want to please your customers, you have to know what they want. Keep reading to learn about some of the features for which your customers look in a business.

Good Communication Skills
Customers want to find companies that listen to their questions and concerns. There is nothing more frustrating for a customer than to have trouble finding someone to hear them when they are making the effort to speak. If you want to find success in your industry, you have to improve your communication skills so your customers always feel like they have someone to listen to their needs.

Follow Through
It is one thing to listen, but it is another thing to actually deliver on your customer’s needs. The companies that can actually listen to what their customers want and find a way to give it to them are the most successful. When you can target certain products or services to particular wants and needs, it helps you optimize your customer service capabilities.

Room for Growth
Customer needs are not always the same. Because of this, they often gravitate toward companies that have the ability to grow and to change. This trait shows clients that your business genuinely cares about their needs and wants to initiate business practices that reflect that. If you want to show your customers that you care about them, you have to be able to grow and change with them.

Contact One Call Center is here to help you find the best way to interact with your customers. With services like order taking, appointment setting, live chat, and secured messaging, we help you communicate with your customer base so you can better deliver on their wants and needs. To learn more about our services and how they can help you, visit us online or call 1-800-278-3347.

Measuring Your Customer Service Effectiveness

Measuring Your Customer Service Effectiveness

Customer Service

178083075 Focusing on your customer service efforts can help you improve the way you do business. Spending too much time on services that do not improve your customer relations could be bad for your company, though, which is why it is important to see how they are benefiting or hindering you. Keep reading to find out how you can measure the effectiveness of your customer service efforts.

Record Your Calls
Recording your phone calls gives you an easy way to check on your answering services and to make sure they are helping your company. Keep notes on how your customer service representatives handle their calls and how they can make improvements. You can also use the recording to determine whether or not your customers seem happy with the efforts of your staff.

Ask the Customers
Sending out surveys is a great way to ask your customers if they are happy with the services they receive and if they have any suggestions about how you can improve. You can use the surveys to ask them about a variety of different experiences to measure their level of satisfaction. Sending out surveys gives you a new way to interact with your customers and to hear their opinions on the way you currently run your business.

Utilize Social Media
Setting up social media pages for your company makes it easier than ever to talk to your customers. When you take advantage of websites like Facebook and Twitter, your customers can instantly talk to you about what they like and what they dislike about your company. Social media also makes it easier for your staff to respond directly to these comments.

Contact One Call Center wants to help you improve the way your company handles customer service. Whether you need some assistance answering phones or taking orders, our reliable team members give you the communication help you need to ensure that you can interact with your clients on a more personal level. To learn more, visit us online or call 1-800-278-3347.

Retaining Your Hardworking Team

Retaining Your Hardworking Team

Blog/ Customer Service

Keeping your best employees requires ongoing, two-way communication based on trust. Not only should you discuss assignments and deliverables with your employees, but you should also learn about their career goals and aspirations. Otherwise, you won’t be able to tailor opportunities at your company to their professional growth goals.

Focus on communication.
Communication is an equal combination of the words you say as well as how you say them. This means your tone of voice, eye contact, hand gestures, and body positioning play a crucial role in shaping your communication. Your employees will gather meaning from what you say by assessing your non-verbal cues. As a result, much of your communication message may be lost if you only meet virtually with the team. Even if it’s difficult to secure face time, it’s very important for establishing trust with your employees. You should try to schedule in person meetings with those who work in remote locations at least two to three times a year.

Use performance reviews to discuss growth opportunities.
Performance reviews aren’t just an opportunity to discuss your expectations for your employees. They are also a great time to discuss your individual employees’ career goals. This input can help you create new opportunities for them to succeed, in their current job positions as well as in new company roles.

Provide something tangible with positive feedback.
Rewarding employees for superior performance doesn’t always require bonuses, raises, or promotions. Your employees will also appreciate small gestures of appreciation such as dinner on the company or performance awards. You can also emphasize how much your employees mean to you by recognizing their start-date anniversaries. These tangible signs of appreciation are better ways to enhance employee loyalty and commitment than verbal feedback alone. Creating a work environment where people feel valued is an important step in retaining your hardworking employee base.

With Contact One Call Center, our technology links to yours, so you can keep up with the speed of the marketplace. Call 866-692-3670 to learn about our nationwide answering service and call center services. We also specialize in bilingual services.

Improving Your Customers’ Experiences

Improving Your Customers’ Experiences

Blog/ Customer Service

Your final product may be highly impressive and your staff may be incredibly skilled, but this becomes meaningless if your business lacks good customer service. It may seem obvious, but many managers overlook the importance of improving or maintaining high quality customer service. Meanwhile, your customer service team is the face of your company and your customers will define their experience with your product based on their interactions with your customer support systems.

Manage your customers’ needs.
The first step in any customer service plan is to ensure your team has the right skills for your customer base. For example, you need to secure services that provide empathy, patience, and consistency. Some people who call will be very irritable while others will have a multitude of questions. Your customer service center needs to be equipped to handle all types of personalities.

Ensure clear communication.
When it comes to customer communication, you need to make sure your customers completely understand your message. You don’t want your customers to be mistaken about the price or product they are receiving because of ambiguity in communication. However, your customer service representatives should use authentically positive language and maintain a positive attitude in every interaction. Most importantly, your representative should never leave a conversation without understanding your customer’s needs.

Prioritize good time management.
Even though customer service representatives should work through each problem, they also need to be able to manage time spent with each customer. Failing to allocate time appropriately will lead to customers waiting while only one customer’s needs are met. What your customers are ultimately searching for is knowledge of your product or service. Make sure your representatives are equipped to field the most common questions about your product. However, if questions become too technical, your representatives need to be honest about their extent of knowledge.

Call 1-800-278-3347 to learn about the answering services available through Contact One Call Center. Even though we are based in Tucson, we provide after hours support and customer service to businesses across the country. In addition, each one of our representatives is bilingual.

Serving Your Customers: The Basics

Serving Your Customers: The Basics

Blog/ Customer Service/ Professional Services/ Small Business

A good product is not enough to attract customers and keep them interested. Customer service is also essential for maintaining a strong and successful business. Give your small business the boost it needs by following these customer service basics:

Be Patient
Patience isn’t just a virtue; it is essential when it comes to quality customer service! Customers often feel confused or frustrated when they contact a company to ask a question or voice a complaint. Being patient is important for helping customers feel comfortable and making sure they can express their thoughts thoroughly. If you are patient when dealing with customer service interactions, customers will see you as professional and courteous.

Be Friendly
Friendliness and patience tend to go hand-in-hand, which is great because both are very important for providing good service to your customers. Training employees to stay friendly during every customer interaction will help your company maintain a kind and professional reputation. Being friendly will encourage customers to keep coming back and can even change customers’ minds if they have had a negative experience.

Be Understanding
Customers want to know that the companies they buy from care about them and not just their money. Being understanding during customer interactions is one of the best ways to ensure customers that you care about their opinions and want them to be happy with your product or service. If customers are frustrated or annoyed when they contact you, try to understand their point of view so you can provide the right solution.

Be Informative
It is important to be able to provide answers to your customers’ questions. Even with the other basics, your customers will not be satisfied unless you can help them get the information they need. Make sure your employees are knowledgeable and can find the information that your customers request.

Contact One Call Center can help you provide the best customer service possible! Let us handle secure messaging and after-hours support so your team can focus on the business. Learn more by calling us at 1-800-278-3347.

Category: Customer Service

Tips for Good Phone Manners