Personalisation is the key to an exceptional customer experience

We all know that happy customers are an important ingredient in the recipe for a successful business. Enviable customer service has been proven to lead to improved customer retention, loyalty and of course revenue. There’s something to be said for the standout employee who is always receiving high praise, but consistency is key and should be reflected across the board no matter who handles your call.

So how do you ensure that all your customers leave a call feeling like they’ve just spoken to your best employee?

The ‘Six Pillars’ of customer experience excellence, discussed in a recent report are;

• Personalisation

• Integrity

• Time and effort

• Expectations

• Resolution

• Empathy

All of these factors combined create one unique ‘story’ for a specific customer relating to their experiences with your company. The key is personalisation, it might seem like a small factor but wishing a customer a Happy Birthday if they call around that time and you have that information or providing your own recommendations about a product or service that your company offers makes a customer feel you’ve gone the extra mile.

There’s nothing worse than having to repeatedly call a company for the same reason only to find that none of the previous conversations you’ve had with other agents are recorded in any way. Is there a way that your agents can record and access this information?

• Know your customer

• What did they purchase or what are they interested in based on past interaction?

• Know why this customer may be contacting you

• Know what the customer may want based on previous interactions

All of this information can be used by your agent to better interpret or assist with the customer’s needs, create a better B2C relationship, help shape future interactions with the customer for other agents, increase the likelihood that your customer will leave the call feeling positive about the level of personalisation and thus be more likely to recommend you.

Like it or not we’re all suckers for a compliment, make your customers feel special, respected, that their time is like gold dust and you are a heaven-sent customer service angel ready to wow them with your professional, yet approachable nature. It’s human nature to feel just a little self-obsessed from time to time so why shouldn’t we indulge ourselves with a bit of flattery every now and again?

KMPG Nunwood found in their report that personalisation had “the most significant impact on advocacy and loyalty.”

The report looks at how as business you will likely have looked at metrics and targeted customers based on their individual behaviour yet when we put ourselves into the customer’s shoes this changes your whole strategy, your focus should be on how your agents and company respond to your customer’s needs as this is a crucial element in developing and improving their experience.

How can you include personalisation in your customer service?

• Friendly and warm greetings

• Use of the customer’s name

• Know your customer’s history

• Patience and empathy with the customer

• Personalising and recommending products and services

• Listen to your customer and ask questions

If you’re ready to start making customers feel that their relationship with your company is one worth maintaining, then you need to ensure that there’s consistency, this means putting in the time and effort! If you’re not quite sure where to start why not speak to us about how we can help improve your customer experience, we know our stuff!

Want to rival the kings of customer service?

This weekend you might have been fooled by Nick Jablonka’s festive ‘spoof’ of the beloved John Lewis Christmas advert, which already has everyone talking. Jablonka’s advert was actually part of his A-Level Media coursework. By Sunday the video had been viewed more than 375,000 times. If a student can rival the John Lewis Christmas advert, then you can do your best to rival them as one of the top companies in the UK for customer service.

There’s no excuse when it comes to good customer service, it’s something we can all learn, we just need to know where to make the improvements.

1 – Knowledge & Experience
You may never have worked in customer service before but you could have spent the last ten years in a role which has given you the skills and prepared you to excel in that position. Companies need to look at the people they have in place and realise that development of current staff is crucial not only for morale but also to highlight the talent they already employ, rather than choosing to outsource. Consider putting together a skills matrix, a graph or spreadsheet of the main tasks your business completes and who within the company;

• Requires full training
• Requires some training
• Could complete the tasks assisted
• Could complete the tasks unaided but with review
• Is fully Trained
• You might find that certain areas need some work or that you’ve misjudged your staff’s capabilities.

2 – Stop treating the contact centre as a separate entity to your business.
Departments that work together stay together. If your contact centre is performing well, communicating effectively and helping customers, all other departments need to be performing at the same level, so as not to drag other sections of the business down. Contact centres are a hub of communication, there’s no excuse for this being ineffective. Interdepartmental communication can be a challenge, with various managers, team relationships and probably a particular approach.

In order to appreciate why interdepartmental strategising is so important, look at what the contact centre is responsible for and how this relates to other aspects of the business. Talking to customers, your staff will learn about their common queries, how they prefer to get in touch, what they like and dislike about the company. All of this knowledge will affect how you as a company decide on your marketing, your services, your FAQs and how these are presented to the customer.

Vice Versa this is just as important, what use is great customer service if your contact centre staff don’t currently know what is being marketed or offered or can’t tell your customers where to go on your website to find what they’re looking for? Integrate the contact centre into your whole business.

3 – Using a Net Promoter Score

This index ranges from -100 to 100, it looks at your customer’s behaviour and measures how willing they are to recommend or criticise your business to others. It works by measuring your customer’s experience and is based on their answers to common survey questions like; “How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?”

The customer’s response then fits them into one of three groups;

-          Promoters – A score of 9-10 – Loyal customers who are most likely to continue to buy or engage with your company whilst also recommending you to others, encouraging growth of the business.

-          Passives – A score of 7-8 – These people are happy with your service but are not overly enthusiastic and are more likely to seek other competitive brands.

-          Detractors - A score of 0-6 – Customers who provide this score are dissatisfied, they can impede company growth and damage the brand through negative feedback.

If you have this information about your customers, then that’s a good start, but what will really set you apart from the rest is what you choose to do with it. If you’re continually getting poor reviews or feedback on one product or service then act upon this and make improvements. It’s also a great way to highlight what your customers love about your company. Don’t make the mistake that many do by collecting this information and letting it gather dust, act on your NPS.

4 – Spoiled for choice.

When you visit a major retailer now and click contact us, you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to getting in touch. There’s emails, phone, post, live chat, call back service, social media, text service – which gives your customer choice and convenience. Your agents need to be trained across the board of communication, transitioning from one channel to another should be as smooth as transferring a call.  

What if your contact centre’s customer service over the phone was impeccable but when it came to emails, they were littered with poor grammar and the queries your customers were getting in touch about, were frequently ignored or not fully resolved? 

You’d realise that your multichannels need to be integrated, meaning all channels of communication must adhere to the same quality and standard as your main method of customer service. Firstly, you and the customer must identify what each channel is best suited to dealing with. For example, social media queries are usually a place where customers will vent their frustration or praise, whereas it’d be a poor choice of platform for making sales. Discover the strengths and weaknesses of each method of communication, and then you can look at where best to direct a customer to assist them.

5 – Think you’re ready to rival the top dogs now?

Even the top 50 adopt a culture of continuous improvement, they don’t become lackadaisical once The Telegraph pops them on the ‘Best companies for customer service’ list, because they know that there are always ways to improve customer service or avoid a bad review and unhappy customers.

Avoid the failure demand, whereby a customer is getting in touch because the company has failed to do something or failed to do it right, it’s within your control to turn things around. Failure demand is the scenario where the customer is in touch for the second or even third time because something they requested hasn’t yet been done or solved.

Are your agents limited in what they can do to assist a customer? Is the customer’s issue passed on to another department? Then it’s time to read over point three again and see if there’s something that can be done to unify your departments and improve their communication.

Who knows, maybe after tackling these points we’ll be seeing you here next year?

How average is your customer service?

“People won’t remember what you said or did... they will remember how you made them feel”

Can you think of a time you received exceptional customer service?

Can you think of a time you received poor customer service?

No one tends to remember the times that their customer experience was just average and at iNarrator we’re not fond of being mediocre.

We provide professional, clear and informative recordings to a wide variety of business types. No matter what sector you’re in it’s important to make a good first impression. Don’t mistake this for being the only important aspect of connecting with your customers. Coming across a helpful and friendly recorded message is only a tiny element of your customer’s overall experience.

Taking the time to prepare scripts and get your new recordings installed is time wasted, if once the phone is answered your caller receives poor customer service. Customer service is a talking point and we Brits love a good grumble, as the old saying goes news travels fast. The power of the internet has allowed us to see the good, the bad and the ugly of customer service go viral.

Poet Mary Angelou once said…

“People won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel”

This is the customer service mantra that we want your call handlers to adopt, the chances are that if they upset a customer that they won’t feel great themselves which could then have a further negative impact on their next few calls. Good customer service is underestimated, it doesn’t need to be a huge gesture to make someone feel that they’ve had a good experience with your company.

Your call handlers should strive to reflect the professionalism demonstrated in your IVR and In-Queue Messages. Mirroring and matching what your caller has been greeted with should be your standard. Customer’s expect to be met with a certain tone, manners and a handler who is adequately trained to assist them. Set the bar high and you’ll find callers are more satisfied, they may spend a little longer on the phone but this will help to build a positive relationship with your business and reassure them that they’re not just another number waiting in a long list of queries.

According to Walker Info by 2020 Customer Service and experience will be the leading brand differentiator, making how you treat your customers even more important than your pricing structure and products or services.  We take for granted how far a little empathy can go and the statistics below highlight the key skills that your customer service agents need to have in order to impress.

The research found that:

“71.5% of positive customer service experiences that people share in person or on social media began as negative experiences and in 82% of negative customer service stories employees were perceived as not caring.”

Training is vital in ensuring that your call handlers are able to deal with the kinds of requests and queries that they receive, there’s nothing wrong with going off script to make a call a little less robotic but the way agents handle calls should be monitored to ensure consistency, accuracy and professionalism.

If you don’t consider customer experience as something you need to be monitoring then you might want to read these statistics, consumers decide where their loyalties lie based on customer service so it’s important that you value them otherwise they won’t value you.

• 76% of consumers say they view customer service as the true test of how much a company values them. – Source: 2015 Aspect Consumer Experience Survey

• 60% of consumers have higher expectations for customer service now than they did just one year ago. – Source: 2015 Global State of Multichannel Customer Service Report

• 97% of global consumers say that customer service is very important or somewhat important in their choice of and loyalty to a brand.  Source: 2015 Global State of Multichannel Customer Service Report

•  88% of people have been influenced by online reviews while making their purchase decisions.  – Source:  Zendesk

• 79% of high-income people, 51% of B2B clients, and 54% of Gen Xers will avoid your company for two years or more following one bad customer experience.  – Source:  Zendesk

If you've got the right team but you’re lacking the right first impression, that’s where we can help. Plug in and listen to our Case Studies to discover what a good first impression really sounds like.

Source of Statistics:
http://customerthink.com/customer-service-statistics-to-guide-you-for-2016/

Merry Christmas from IVR Recordings

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from everyone at IVR Recordings.

Find your Moneypenny

Today sees the release of the latest Bond film, as ever it’ll be full of gadgets, action and of course cars. The Aston Martin makes an appearance in 11 Bond films and is one of the most iconic vehicles in cinematic history, yet even James Bond’s car needs a service every now and again particularly after running into an enemy!

From the Aston Martin DB5 featured in Goldfinger, complete with rotating number plates to the V8 that ends up in a wooden hut on an ice rink in The Living Daylights, it’s clear to see each of the cars featured in the films brought something new, whilst maintaining a Bond tradition. Yet most impressive by far must be the DB10 in Spectre. The car was purpose built for filming, with only ten being produced it’s never going to be sold to the public, making it the most exclusive Bond car of all time.

We think that you and your business should be as impressive and unique as the DB10, bringing us to an important question, are you an Aston Martin or a Reliant Robin? Does your company sound as good as it should? The Aston could have all the gadgets in the world but if it didn’t look the part it wouldn’t have the same impact. First impressions are valuable when it comes to your company, don’t settle for being reliable, be impactful.

According to Inbound Telephone Call Centre, 94% of marketing budgets entice a customer to call, yet only 6% of the budget is actually spent on handling inbound calls. Customers deserve to be entertained if they’re prepared to wait on the line to speak to your advisors, welcoming IVR Prompts and Music On Hold Marketing is proven to retain those waiting on hold, compared to those who are faced with silence.

Bond has Moneypenny, your customers could have an IVR menu. Being able to direct your customer’s calls as quickly as possible through simple and easy to navigate menus is far more efficient than leaving someone on the line or passing them from department to department. Bond has Moneypenny, why not include an almost virtual secretary to your phone systems with IVR recordings?

How to place people on hold

Yes it is as simple as hitting the hold button but, as always, there is a better way!

Over the summer we've been working closely with a call centre client to improve the experience for their callers. This included providing a report on the current system and offering a full solution to make customer service improvements, from rationalising the IVR routing scripts to recording the new IVR messages with a professional female voiceover; in addition we made a recommendation to train staff on how to place callers On Hold.

 Now stick with us here, yes it is as simple as hitting the hold button on the phone but how you prepare the caller before placing them on hold has an impact on how they feel and the customer satisfaction level. Think about it how often are you unceremoniously dumping someone on hold without any warning?

 It’s much better to explain (even apologise if the interaction isn't going well) before placing the caller on hold, something along the lines of:

 I’m going to place you On Hold, I’ll be back with you as soon as possible and won’t keep you any longer than necessary. Then place the call On Hold

When you return to the call: Hi [callers name] thanks for being On Hold, sorry to keep you.

Simple but effective and callers will appreciate it. Test it out. Get your teams together, brief them, then at the end of the week hold a team meeting and see the responses they have had.

How call centre metrics impact customer service

We all know the frustration of badly recorded IVR messages, a muffled at the other end of the line presenting a baffling array of department options then being placed on hold and listening to terrible music. Do we ever think about the people at the other end of the line? There’s pressure behind these calls for measuring and judging staff on several different factors that we often overlook.

Call centre staff usually have their work measured and assessed on their average call times with a customer, the amount of calls they make or take in a day and of course customer feedback. Are all these factors really contributing towards good customer service? Or are they merely ensuring the numbers at the end of the month are on target? What impact do these metrics actually have on a customer’s call?

In any work environment being assessed can leave you with a sense of self-doubt, even when you know you do a good job. Whilst it may be better for a company making or taking calls to have their staff abide by a strict max call time, this won’t necessarily benefit the customer or resolve their issue if an agent is rushing to get them off the phone. A three minute call doesn’t quite justify half an hour on hold.

Many large companies choose to outsource their calls to a call handling company, which can mean agents need to know the ins and outs of several businesses and be familiar with different call handling styles and queries. For example I had three calls in the same day last week from a telephone provider, from the same agent each time in an outbound call centre, demonstrating the desperation some agents face just trying to hit targets.

There are several areas call centre staff are rated by:

• Call handling times
• Sales tactics
• Feedback and surveys   

The issue is that, to really get to the bottom of where improvements need to be made in a company, calls need to be monitored by senior members of staff, yet their time is precious (they don’t have the time to wait on hold, unlike the rest of us, clearly) thus instead of listening in to their staffs’ calls they merely take the averages and turn this into statistics, which are often unreliable.

Call Centre Helper note the importance of realising what your customer wants and then using this information to make changes to the products and services you offer. This is where you see the real indication of what improvements are needed, rather than being focused directly on how staff handle a call and pressuring them to shave seconds off their call times. They note that “Monitoring from the caller’s perspective will give you an overall impression of what it is like to call your centre. It will demonstrate how frustrating it can be to wait in a queue and how friendly or annoying your voice messages really are.”

Perhaps it’s time to call your own company and experience a call from the customer’s point of view? If you think you could do with an update and improve your company’s image then contact us today for a quote for our professional IVR message solution. Maybe next time you’re put through to a call centre agent spare a thought for the real reasons they’re rushing and pushing!

Is your IVR suffering from broken window syndrome?

In the early 1980s James Q Willson and George L Kelling introduced the world to 'The Broken Window' theory. 

The theory gives the example of a building with one broken window; if the window remains broken, more windows will suffer the same fate until eventually the building is broken into in its entirety.  This, Willson and Kelling refer to as the ‘norm setting’, which will signal all-out urban disorder! 

The same applies in business - if a guest arrives at a hotel to a hostile welcome from the front desk this sets the tone for the remainder of their stay. So when they arrive in their room to discover a cobweb, or when they are shown to a table in the restaurant and not given menus, they are much more likely to complain about anything and everything throughout their stay.

The same is true of your IVR system.  It's your front of house.  Your head housekeeper.  Your maître de. 

If a customer has to spend what seems like an eternity in a call queue listening to the same messages telling them their call is important, their call is valued, their call will be answered as soon as an agent becomes available…frustration builds, and before you know it their patience has just about run out. 

How can this situation be avoided? Well like any good hotel you should have happy, well-trained, informed and interested front of house staff.  Think more Cesar Ritz than Basil Fawlty.

Call queues are, more often than not, unavoidable, but at least if those queuing callers are listening to the right style of music, a voice over that puts them at ease, and informative, engaging messages, they might actually learn something about you instead of just being irritated by the time they speak to a human being! 

Sound like a good idea? Got a ‘broken window’ that needs fixing?  Then give us a call - we can mend your IVR system and avoid all-out caller disorder.

Welcome to the new IVR Recordings Website

Hello and welcome to our new look IVR Recordings website, we hope you like the refreshed style and additional content.

We've got lots of information and audio samples of IVR Message Prompts to make your call centre sounds great. If you need professionally recorded IVR Prompts for your telephone IVR System then we're the people to talk to!

You can also Request a Call Back or Free Quotation here

Keep checking our blog as we'll be launching some exciting new content over the next few weeks.

If you're looking for On-Hold Marketing Messages then visit our sister website www.iNarratorOnHold.com