Phone calls are vital to the success of your business. An effective organization will have a strategy in place for its customer service that places a lot of emphasis on support, and customer satisfaction. An efficient, reliable call flow process is at the core of this critical communication.
By “call flow” we refer to a system designed to intelligently convey a call through every stage of its interaction with a company. Moreover, call flows are also responsible for handling incidents such as busy lines, disconnected or misdirected calls, etc.
The importance of laying out a comprehensive call flow process cannot be underrated. In fact, a Forbes study shows that it takes only 7 minutes to make a first impression, meaning that – should anything go wrong in the early stages of a call – chances are you may lose a customer. Luckily, there are steps you can take to improve the call flow process of your BPO contact center. Below, we have gathered seven.
1. Greeting
Needless to say, positive interaction starts with the perfect greeting. Regardless of the type of service provided, it is important to address the caller with warmth, openness, and a welcoming attitude. Agents should answer every call as if it’s the first call of the day, with enthusiasm and energy, they should introduce themselves and state the company’s name before offering their help.
2. Authentication
Equally important is to verify the caller’s identity. This will not only help deter scammers, but it will also save your company valuable time. Furthermore, it will put your caller’s mind at ease as it will show your organization takes their sensitive information seriously. To identify a caller, agents will typically ask them to confirm personal information such as birth date, previous purchases, or phone number which they will cross-reference with information from your CRM.
3. Identify the issue
Once the caller id has been checked, the agent can move onto the reason for the call. At this stage, the call will often be re-routed to a specialist. It is important for the person picking up the call to identify the right agent for the job, as missteps in escalation are known to negatively affect the customer journey and potentially lead to damage to brand reputation.
4. Empathize with the caller
Once the issue has been identified, the customer should feel you are taking their issue seriously and are eager to help. In fact, it has been estimated that skipping this step in the call flow can negatively impact the overall customer’s feedback.
5. Troubleshooting
After acknowledging and confirming the issue with the caller, the agent can proceed to find a solution. This stage of the call flow will vary greatly depending on the problem at hand. The agent may need to handle the issue themselves or escalate it to the designated department. This process might be solved on the spot or be broken into several steps.
6. Summarizing
Once the issue has been resolved the agent must give a recap of the call to the customer. This includes a statement of why they called, what the problem was, and how the agent resolved the issue. Lastly, the agent will ask if there is anything else they can help with. This is to ensure the customer’s needs have been met.
7. Branding
At this stage, the caller’s issue will hopefully have been solved. It is important for agents to not rush through the final stage of the call, making sure instead to state the company name again, thank the customer for their time and allow them to leave with positive feelings about the interaction.
Every industry will have its specific approaches and requirement concerning the customer journey. Notwithstanding, these are high-level guidelines have a proven successful record across all industries.
