When thinking of the phrase ‘call response times’, many people might automatically associate it with the pressures that the emergency services face when handling critical incidents – and how every second counts.
That’s because each conversation that takes place has to be met with an immediate decision – whether that means assigning an ambulance to attend an incident or providing real-time advice while professionals arrive at the scene.
And yes, businesses aren’t typically dealing with such pressurised life and death situations, but call response times do also really matter to them. For instance, they can be pivotal when it comes to maintaining customer loyalty and building brand credibility.
After all, what does the person on the other end of the phone truly want from a company they’re speaking to? Amongst many things, the overriding expectations centre around how active they are when providing a solution – all while offering an excellent level of customer service.
Everything is now moving at a rapid pace and that means customer expectations will only continue to soar and evolve. If they’re engaging with a business they want their query to be answered correctly and at the first time of asking. And, although it’s seemingly British culture to enjoy queuing, that might not always be the case when waiting to book an emergency doctor’s appointment or addressing broadband that’s on the blink and hindering company performance.
Within an optimised world, patience can often wear thin – and especially so if a call is either missed or results in a ‘busy’ tone. This can be catastrophic for an enterprise as it watches that customer move on to a more proactive competitor.
How the UK Lockdowns Have Forced Business Leaders to Rethink Their Customer Engagement
The Covid-19 pandemic has shone a beaming light on the pressures that organisations face and accelerated the need for an exceptional level of consumer experience. But when the crisis has struck so many industries that once relied on physical premises – as a main source of footfall – how do they transform their communications so that these shoppers are still catered for online or over the phone?
Putting this into context, think about a builder’s merchants or hotelier business as prime examples of how firms have had to swiftly transition from in-person to remote-based engagement. Not only have they had to be ‘present’ – just like they would if somebody were to visit their site – but they’ve had to ensure the right infrastructure is in place to cope with even more calls and website enquiries.
It’s forced these firms to tap into a level of resilience like never before – and figure out, quickly, how to address the likelihood of slower pick-up times and lengthier conversations, as they deal with the vast volume before them.
And if firms don’t get this right, it leads to one thing – missed sales.
While that can be absolutely damaging for a brand to contend with, there is a single word that possesses a great deal of power in response – and that’s data.
The Good News? Data is Everywhere
Intelligence can help companies provide a quality customer experience that’s so vital in today’s fast-paced society. What organisations now have to do is find out a way to unlock this insight and make sense of it all. For the enterprises able to get it right, they’re presented with a wealth of insight that can help to drive business-critical decisions.
It can empower healthcare managers to plan resources – whether that means bringing in senior staff to handle complex calls during higher call volume times or offering additional training to inexperienced staff. For insurance chiefs, they can tap into its powers to identify fraudulent callers – alerting them to capture dishonest calls swiftly and safeguard vital hours for employees to dedicate to fielding genuine claims. And revisiting the builder’s merchant example, they could see that a missed call has been made and ring the recipient back to try and reignite the sale.
All this enables business leaders to analyse the channels that lay dormant and instead redeploy them to support peaks in demand. It might empower a decision to restructure their organisation’s unified communications and collaborations network, to provide greater efficiency that customers greatly need in a rapidly moving society.
So, what can these actions, via the power of analytics, present? Less chance of businesses missing calls that could ultimately lead to missed sales.
Now is the time for managers to make sense of their data in order to transform their enterprise’s responsiveness and provide an exceptional level of customer experience. Investing in savvy tools can not only equip teams to enhance business performance but also deliver on brand reputation and loyalty, employee experience, and competitive advantage – when it’s needed the most.
Guest blog by Phillip Smith, software director, Tiger
