The Real Cost of Poor Customer Service

According to a recent report by Forbes, poor customer service costs businesses just like yours around $75 billion each year. This is a sharp year-over-year incline that shows no sign of slowing down. That same report found that a staggering 67 percent of consumers are willing to switch brands based on a poor customer experience alone, up a whopping 37 percent from just two years prior. Poor customer service can bankrupt any business, large or small, especially one that relies so heavily on phone calls for orders.

Dubbed “serial switchers,” the same customers who keep your business going, just might be the nail in your coffin. With nearly every call feeling like a “make it or break it” situation for your business, it can be easy to get overwhelmed. As a business owner or operator, you should always strive to understand the motivations and values of your customers. Sometimes, however, that just isn’t enough.

Luckily, with a powerful and reliable cloud-based phone system, empower your team to provide the best customer experience possible.

What is “Bad Customer Service?”

A negative customer experience is detrimental to both customer retention and acquiring new ones. You’ve not only just lost that customer, but their negative online review, Facebook post, and story that they told to whoever would listen, could be keeping even more customers away. Word of mouth spreads fast, make sure you know what to be aware of. Americans tell an average of 15 people about a poor service experience (American Express Customer Service Barometer).

Value Your Customer’s Time

According to Forrester, 66 percent of adults feel like valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide good customer service. It seems simple enough, but when facing a storefront full of customers, online orders and multiple phone orders, things can certainly get hectic quickly. Don’t lose business before you even get them in the door. Make sure every interaction and phone call reminds the customer how valued they are.

Show Appreciation for Your Customer

Another customer service red flag is when you leave your clients feeling unappreciated. Maybe you or your employee was a little too quick rushing them off the phone, forgot to say thank you, or didn’t follow up in a timely manner. These are each a relatively small faux pas, we’ve all done them before. However, as a customer, these small things can add up and send the message loud and clear that their business is not valued.

Of course, there can be a number of different events that might lead to “bad customer service,” but by and large, valuing a customer’s time and making sure they feel appreciated are sure fire ways to ensure a positive experience. A reliable VoIP phone system like S-NET’s Cloud Phone system, can help you coach your team in real-time, and make sure every call is a positive one.

How a Cloud Based Phone System Can Boost Customer Service

Moving your outdated phone system to the cloud gives your business the freedom of VoIP and leading call center features. With these advanced features you can easily train your team. Better serve your clients and see your customer satisfaction and revenue grow.

Call Monitoring

As a business owner or manager, call monitoring may just be one of the most utilized features of your cloud phone system. With call monitoring you can Listen to your team’s calls for quality

assurance and give them valuable feedback on their customer service skills. Not only that, but you can interject to coach your team through a challenging conversation, or fully hop into the call and speak with the customer directly.

Call monitoring is your secret weapon to ensuring high quality customer service and can help save more than a few sales.

Advanced Call Routing

Use advanced call routing to set up a virtual call center entirely with software. Direct callers to the appropriate agent or employee using numerical values, or IVR menus.

Save your employees’ time by making sure they only answer calls relevant to them, and save your customers time by understanding their intentions immediately and avoid multiple frustrating call transfers.

Custom Ring Strategies

Similar to advanced routing, custom ring strategies ensure that your phones ring exactly how you want them. Is answering a call immediately critical to your business? Choose a ring strategy like ring all, giving everyone an opportunity to answer the call on its first ring. Looking to distribute the workload amongst your entire team? Select an option like ringing the least recently answered phone, or whomever has had the fewest calls.

Whatever your goals, S-NET has a ring strategy to support them. Rely on our Cloud Based Phone system to take care of your call strategy so you can focus on what matters: providing a positive customer experience.

S-NET Can Help

Clearly, providing stellar customer service is critical to keeping your business open. Your phone system, when equipped with leading call center features, like S-NET’s, can help you ensure that all experiences are handled with care and leave your customers satisfied.

If you’re losing customers to long wait times, frustrating conversations, or poor customer service, your phone system may be the key to turning those experiences around. Think about how many times you’ve wished you could have a moment back, if you could change just one thing, maybe you would have made the sale. With S-NET’s Cloud Based Phone system, you now have the freedom to get those moments right.

Contact us to update your phone system and give your customer service a boost.