Communications has changed quite a bit in the past 15 years. Now we have not only telephone calls, but text, chat, video, and smartphone apps.
Businesses should take advantage of the new communications landscape; far too many companies are treating their phone systems the same way they did before these new platforms arrived on the scene.
Most companies still make their customers manually dial a phone number, suffer through a lengthy interactive voice response (IVR) message, and wait for an agent to come on the line and answer their call.
There is a better way.
Forward-thinking businesses can help make it easy for customers to contact them for support by having a call-back button on their web site or smartphone app. This not only makes it easier to contact a company than manually dialing a number, it also sets the stage for a faster, more efficient calling experience.
That’s because call-back functionality saves customers the time of having to wait for an agent. Since the agent is calling them back, they can go about their day until the agent is ready to talk.
This functionality can not only happen through call-back buttons on web sites and apps, but also it can be baked into the IVR system to ensure that customers don’t have to wait.
It also is possible to collect customer information before the call through IVR, smartphone app, or web form. This saves the customer time by having them input their info before they speak with an agent, speeding up the call process.
Businesses also can get away from a purely phone-based approach to customer interactions and mix calls with chat and text. This enables a richer communications experience for customers, one that also can be more efficient since there are cases when written responses are faster and more accurate than verbal ones.
The communications landscape is not what it was even 15 years ago, and businesses need to make sure they are not living in the past. With the rise of the Internet, the competition is now only a few clicks away. So good customer service is more important than ever, and that means delivering it the way that customers want it.
Edited by Alisen Downey