Additional phone lines allows for greater customer-service success
In today's society, we are all subject to customer-service in one way or another. Whether you're calling the cell phone company for a new plan or waiting on hold for customer service with your credit card company. Having additional phone lines for these companies can immensely improve their service to customers and allow them to answer every call within seconds of it coming through.
Any individual who has ever called these companies are well aware that customer service is a tough job. They have thousands of people calling in a day and not enough employees to handle the call volume which means they need more lines just so that people can get through the line in the first place.
If a customer-service representative is forced to wait on every single call to do their job they will quickly loose their patience and become frustrated. This will lead them not to want to help you and eventually hang-up or transfer you over to another representative when they can't handle the call volume.
By simply adding another phone line for the company, the callers can get through faster and help the company take care of business easier which could potentially save them time, money, and headaches from frustrated customers.
The idea behind this lies in a simple economic theory called supply and demand. The more supply there is in a product or service, the more demand is created which can lead to greater gains and profits for a company.
Supporting a bigger customer-service department will increase the companies profit by handling more calls per minute. This means that they spend less time on each phone call and have more time to handle even more customers which will bring in way more revenue than they would be if they had less support staff. More revenue also means happier consumers since their issues were resolved faster or better than ever before and potentially bringing them back as loyal customers who often repeatedly buy from the same company again.
Companies such as Best Buy and Verizon Wireless will benefit from the additional phone lines on their phones. Best Buy has been doing this for quite some time now and is showing a lot of great results. They have had a success rate of over 90% in many areas they service calls through this way so that they can answer all their calls within seconds of them coming in.
Best Buy states on their website: "So it goes without saying that if you call us at Best Buy, we expect to be there immediately." What sets a company like Best Buy apart is that they have a service team dedicated entirely to caller support, with employees trained to deal with all types of customer issues. They can instantly connect to a caller's problem and solve it without transferring it to someone else.
At Verizon Wireless, they have a similar approach except they use it for their cellphone customers. This helps them engage in conversation with the caller right away, get to the root of their caller's problem and fix it immediately. This way the caller does not have to wait on hold for extended periods of time and ultimately not getting frustrated about waiting so long for support.
Having an additional phone line is beneficial for any type of company online or otherwise since most businesses today are looking to improve their customer-service department in order to stay competitive in the marketplace. Easy access to customer-service is crucial to any company's success, online or off and increasing the amount of support staff is the way to go.
If you are a service or call center representative, it's important that you understand what your company is doing in regard to their phone lines and how they plan to use them for customer-service. If you have any questions about your companies customer support, feel free to contact us at any time for more information about your phone lines.
For our full range of customer service articles and advice on how to improve your company's customer support, visit www.AdviceToServiceProviders.com .
- I've been a customer service representative for over 8 years and a Support Rep for 2 year. I've worked in the IT, customer service, and retail industries. I'm passionate about helping others better understand their job and how to get along with coworkers and managers.
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Posted by Chris Smith , Thursday, June 26, 2011 17:56 PM.Comments Off on Additional phone lines allows for greater customer-service success.
A guest post by Sam Perrin:
It's common sense that more choices, especially when it comes to customer service, is better than fewer choices. Whether it's choosing a phone provider, bank or even buying a new cell phone... the more options the better. That being said, more options often puts pressure on companies to improve their customer service programs as they must now make the call to action easier for customers to take care of business or else lose out to competitors.
The call center world is the same way. However, there is a certain type of pressure that comes from a lack of choice... and we've all experienced this at one point or another. We will often find ourselves calling companies over and over again, asking for the same thing only to be told that "the system does not allow me to do that", or some other excuse for why we can't have what we want. The worst part is... this kind of statement coming from companies who are supposedly dedicated to providing their customers with exceptional service!
If you want to provide your customers with great service, here's a simple formula:
1. Offer more options to everyone, not just those who "need it"
2. Break down barriers and make it easy for customers to do business with you
So what if a customer is deciding which phone provider they will go with? Will they have trouble accessing their account information or downloading their phone number? Maybe, but the added time and effort will save them time on asking to get this done, plus prevent frustration. If anyone says that giving a customer multiple means of accessing their information will cause delay in service then there is no need for this article.
Most companies out there are doing a very good job at one step of this formula: offer multiple ways for customers to access their account information.
Conclusion
The next step that companies need to take in order to improve their customer service is making it easy for customers to do business with them. This means breaking down barriers that keep customers from doing what they want on their own time, not yours. This simple step will keep customers happy and lead to repeat business.
... And no, I didn't forget about the phone call. Companies must be ready and able to answer calls at all times of the day, everyday. One of the main reasons a customer will stop calling or visit a company is because they cannot get through to speak with someone who can help them at the time they are having an issue.