3 Ways To Know That Your Callers Feel You Serve Them Well

Male virtual receptionist answering a call

One of the most confounding parts of owning a business is really knowing your customers’ minds.

It’s not just that you need to offer the products they want at a price they can afford, but that you absolutely must do this in a way that they find appropriate. Rather than wondering if callers feel like they’re getting good service, it’s important that you know for certain so you can either adjust your policies or work harder to do even more of the things they like.

Good Customer Support Takes a Village (& Good Tools)

For many business owners, taking a call and attempting to resolve the issue at hand is all they think they’re really due a caller.

Oftentimes, they don’t wonder if the customer or potential customer felt like they were served well. If you’ve been overlooking caller satisfaction as a factor in your customer service efforts, you have a big opportunity to improve your lead generation and customer retention right away.

Here are a few ways you’ll know if your callers feel like they’re being served well:

  • Monitoring phone calls. You certainly can’t listen in to all of your customer service representatives’ calls or you’d be at it all day, but you can pick a few random calls to monitor here and there. Even if you’re using an answering service, you should have access to these audio files.Listen closely to the tone of the caller and the words they use. Do they sound satisfied? Are they thanking your operator because they’re thankful or because they’re being polite? These clues can help you know your callers’ minds.
  • Analyzing your data. Before you started your customer service crusade, you probably established some KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that would help you know if you were really, truly successful. These might have included some “caller satisfaction” metrics like first call resolution or the percentage of times a particular caller placed an order when they called.KPIs can’t tell the whole story alone, but if your FCR is low and customers are calling back again and again to order more products or services, it’s a good sign that they’re pretty happy.
  • Customer surveys. The customer satisfaction survey is still an excellent tool to help evaluate caller attitudes. Of course, you don’t want to make this a mandatory part of the call, but you can incentivize callers to provide quick answers about their call or simply ask them for their honest opinions in exchange for a long-term gain in customer service improvement.A basic rating system is a good place to start, provided you give the caller a chance to leave genuine feedback as well. Try adding an open-ended question that probes for problems, like “what could be improved about your call experience today?”

It’s hard to be certain that you’re really doing the best job possible for your callers, but by listening in to calls after the fact, implementing and reviewing KPIs and simply asking, you can come a little closer to knowing your customers’ minds. If you’re not already asking yourself how well-served your customers feel, it’s high time to start. After all, no one wants to find out down the road that callers were displeased enough to defect to a competitor.

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