If you’re a business owner you may be surprised to find out that close to 35% of your incoming calls are repeat calls. Now, looking from a certain perspective you might think that this is good for your business. Repeat callers mean repeat customers, right? Not necessarily. Repeat calls don’t always indicate an augmented interest in your company.
When a person calls your number repeatedly, they’re either not getting their questions answered or they’re not getting the help they really need. This perspective on the matter implies the rate of repeat callers can be viewed as a negative customer satisfaction metric. If the rate increases, customer satisfaction takes a turn for the worst and negatively impacts your bottom line.
More than half of repeat callers call back with the exact same issue the second time too. This is a strong indication that the person answering the call the first time didn’t answer the caller’s query or assist them when they had the opportunity right at the outset. The other half of callers come back with questions and underlying concerns that weren’t answered during the initial contact. In other words, most people call back because they need clarifications that could’ve been addressed by a receptionist with a stronger understanding and wherewithal about the business.
Here are some ways you can reduce repeat caller rates and ensure that your callers don’t allow those lingering concerns to fester in their minds. Experiencing lowered customer satisfaction can result in poor reviews and unnecessary tension between those callers and your business.
Start Identifying the Biggest Issues You Have
Most businesses hire a receptionist or a team of receptionists (if we’re talking about a larger company) and often expect them to handle all the customer care concerns a business may encounter. Unfortunately, this line of thinking is not compatible with making sure that your customers are happy with the kind of service they get. To enhance customer care and avoid repeat calls start with identifying primary concerns your customer care representatives may have. This can range from a lack of an adequate workforce to something as simple as an outdated telephone infrastructure.
Gartner suggests businesses make a list of at least 10 to 20 important issues that stop customer service agents from delivering the kind of service your customers deserve. You will be surprised to learn that these issues often change with time. Thus, you’ll need to revisit this list every three months in order to keep your customers’ issues on the level. And, it will help you keep track of how your contact center or receptionist is equipped to deal with these requirements.
Pro tip: Work towards developing a standardized form in which you can collect opinions of your customer care staff regularly in order to track and identify the important issues.
Determine Secondary Issues that Affect Customer Service
Once you begin to collect the opinions of your receptionist or call center team you’ll realize that there are many secondary issues that interrupt you from delivering the highest-quality customer care. This may include the inability to deliver round the clock service, lack of training opportunities for your staff, an inability to handle multiple calls at the same time, and so on. Secondary issues can result in query non-resolution, leading to an increase in the number of repeat calls made to your agents.
Once you have listed your primary issues, address the secondary issues and start working on them. You’ll be surprised to learn that many secondary issues that keep you from delivering great customer service also cut you off from up-selling and cross-selling. As customer data and insight is linked to marketing success, secondary issues that you identify can also lead to better marketing and sales outcomes.
Pro tip: Secondary issues that hold you back from delivering good customer service are often elusive and may be difficult to identify. Spend additional time to discover why customers are calling repeatedly despite your well-trained staff and infrastructure. A form that regularly collects customer feedback is a great way to identify these secondary issues.
Publish a FAQ Page that Adequately Answers Common Queries
Research shows that a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page dramatically reduces the number of calls made to customer care centers. An FAQ page should be written only after significant deliberation and research have been conducted. A well-written FAQ page addresses most of your customer’s concerns so that they don’t have to seek clarifications or answers to commonly asked questions. This also ensures that when they do call up your contact center, your agents have more time and resources to build rapport and answers queries in an empathetic manner.
Try to probe the kind of queries you normally get and make sure that your FAQ page projects you as an expert in your field. Trust and credibility are known to reduce the number of calls made and this includes repeat calls as well. What’s more, FAQ pages help you with SEO as well. Ranking high in search engine results is very important. It helps build trust and credibility for your business which we already know are influential in reduces call rates.
Pro tip: Hire a professional and experienced content writer to write the FAQ so that the choice of words won’t lead to ambiguities. A well-written FAQ page helps you build a positive brand image as well.
Hire an Answering Service
If you closely observe your primary and secondary issues, you’ll notice that most issues emanate from your contact center or lack thereof. It’s not possible for most businesses to train, accommodate, supervise and maintain infrastructure to run a full-fledged contact center. It’s also difficult to ensure that they match international standards that customers have already begun to expect. And, it’s crucial to hire an external partner that provides a phone answering service in order to keep your customers happy.
A phone answering service like Abby Connect can help you take your customer service to the next level by offering 24/7 live receptionist solutions. Customers can seek answers to all their queries and avoid having to call back, leading to enhanced CSAT scores. You’ll notice that hiring a phone answering service will also improve your marketing and sales metrics as it becomes easier to communicate with your target audience. You can choose the number of hours or slots of a phone answering service so that you don’t spend over your budget.
Pro tip: Hiring a phone answering service makes you look larger professional. Having this service will lead to enhanced trust and credibility scores.
Sign Up for Abby Connect
If you were considering a professional phone answering service, you’ve come to the right place. Abby Connect specializes in providing top-notch live receptionist and phone answering services. Our services are available round the clock and you get to decide when you choose to keep your business phone line open for calls. Our live receptionists are professionally trained and are native speakers of English. So, there are no hard to understand accents here. If you don’t have a business phone line we can help you with a toll-free number too.
Our services ensure that customers won’t call repeatedly to get their queries answered. We answer the calls promptly and our well-trained live receptionists know how to clarify doubts and ensure that your customers don’t call back repeatedly. Admittedly, you’ll notice an improvement in your customer satisfaction scores and other important metrics.
In short, Abby Connect is a one-stop-shop for all your contact center and customers service requirements. To learn how we can help you with a tailor-made phone answering service, contact us today.
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