There are various channels available nowadays for customer service to utilize, such as social media, emails, and apps. But phone calls are still the best way to communicate with your customers.
An up-to-date help desk system is necessary for managing communication with customers. Unfortunately, answering phone calls from customers is not easy. More often than not, instead of helping customers, we made the problem goes from bad to worse. Therefore, recording and managing the customers’ phone calls with an integrated help desk system is necessary.
One way to solve this problem is by using complete Help Desk & Ticketing Software to help you get every conversation with each prospect logged so that it helps sales reps understand leads better and optimize your customer service.
That’s why the customer service department needs to have the essential skills on how to help the customer via telephone calls. Besides implementing the right help desk system, here are some of the skills they need:
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Use a positive tone
This may sounds cliche, but your smile can be heard by the person on the other end of the phone call. Smiling can help you build positive and friendly communication with your customers.
Make sure your intonation is clear. Don’t talk too fast so your customers have a hard time understanding you. Avoid raising your voice so the caller won’t think that you’re angry at him/her. But also don’t lower your voice so it’s hard to hear.
Maintain your pace at 130 to 150 words per minute. Try to talk naturally but still be enthusiastic enough about whatever your customers had to say. Maintain those aspects, and then you will see your customer service improving.
Make it crystal clear
When talking with customers on the phone, make sure you express your intention clearly. Use words and phrases that are easy to understand by anyone. Avoid jargon or words that are hard to understand.
As a customer service, the last thing you want is a confused customer or make them feel inferior. Avoid slang such as “dude”, or “yeah”. If you are still using filler words such as “um” or “like”, start practicing pausing instead while thinking about your answer.
When the phone rings while you are eating, you need to stop eating before answering. A lot of people still think that talking while eating is improper. Also, we often encounter in a service desk team one member who is superior to the other members.
These staff often handle customer complaints or IT issues from other staff. It means that there is an unequal capability which can be fixed with some training for other staff. You can keep track of your employees’ competency through a comprehensive Competency Management System to make sure that everyone is capable to handle the job.
Related article: 5 Ways of Handling Upset Customers Correctly
Be a sincere customer service
Start by picking up the phone and saying “hello”, you have to do it sincerely. Avoid scripted greetings. Your customer contacts you via phone calls means that they want to speak with a person, not a robot.
Get used to saying your company name, yours, and offering helps after you pick up the phone. If you receive a transferred call from another department, make sure you mention your department name to make the customer feels connected to the right people.
Don’t say such things as “I don’t know”, “I can’t help you with that”, or “wait a second”. After hearing what the customers had to say, provide them time estimation on how long you can solve their problem.
Say the customer’s name
After acknowledging their name, use it to address them. Don’t address them with “you”, call them by their name. Personalization is the best way to build a healthy relationship with the customer.
Don’t hesitate to ask them to pronounce their names. A personal touch like this is valuable to your customers and will make them feel honored.
Improve your customer service by leaving them satisfied
Before ending the telephone call, make sure the customer fully understands the solution you provide. Don’t forget to ask “is there anything else that I can help you with?” until the customer had nothing more to ask or say.
Give them information that you think they will need. If you think they need a follow-up, inform them when is the best time to contact you. The phone system helps to improve customer service and collect data which will be useful for the company’s quality improvement.
When all is said and done, finish the call in a friendly manner such as “thank you for calling us” or a simple good morning/afternoon/evening. This kind of gesture will make your customers know that you are more than happy to help them and willing to do it again in the future.
Conclusion
Answering phone calls certainly requires some skills and training. When necessary, you can implement a system to further improve your customer service team, such as the sophisticated Help Desk & Ticketing System. The program can help you provide the best service to your customers by automating back-end administration tasks.
The system can also help you to record phone call conversations and convert them into tickets to be followed up later. You can start HashMicro’s Help Desk & Ticketing Software demo for free now.
