Ok, your business is running fine and your customers start to spread the word about your excellent service or your good products; new customers start calling you and the current customers are looking for support. A mobile phone is not enough and you can not stay in your office waiting for customers to call you. How will you serve your customers properly?
You may think that instant messaging, e-mail and a mobile number are enough, but a recent study showed that 75% of people consider a phone call as the fastest way to get a response. So it is best for your business to have a way in which your customers can call you easily and different from a mobile phone. The solution for this is to set up a call center and count among others, with basic benefits such as:
- Having your own phone number for your business
- Answer calls of more than one client at a time to take advantage of your work team.
- Greeting messages.
- Keep track of inbound and outbound calls, missed, besides voicemails left by customers.
Maybe you think that having all this will cost you too much or that your business can not afford it, but if you think about the customers you can lose for each missed call or whenever several customers calling and you only have one phone, maybe this spending begins to look more like an investment. To start a call center for your startup or small business, you do not need to invest too much. VoIP technology enables cloud telephony to improve communication with your customers and your work team without expensive devices or complex facilities, besides you can pay monthly and you do not have to buy anything. You pay for what you use, nothing more. You can start to serve your customers correctly with 3 simple elements, a good telephone system, a CRM and a team with excellent attitude:
1. A phone service for your business
A virtual phone number is the best alternative you can use for your business phone line since it will allow you to answer calls from your browser or smartphone without the constraints of traditional telephony. It will also allow you to have additional services such as simultaneous calls, voice mail, call history and caller ID, among others. Cloud telephony services offer a better cost-benefit ratio, since although its price may be slightly higher than a traditional phone line, it has included features that you should pay additionally in a landline.
With Toky you can get a phone number in more than 60 countries, your customers will be able to call you for free from your website or Facebook page and much more.
2. CRM software
It is important to store and organize the information of your current customers and record all the contacts you have with them. Your customers will appreciate that whoever listen to them knows a little about who they are if they have pending cases, previous purchases and anything that makes them understand that they are important for your business. A good CRM system will help you to organize and there are several that offer plans with which you can start for free such as:
There are other good paid CRM alternatives you could try:
The best thing is having your telephony integrated to your CRM, with Toky you can have everything in one place because can be integrated with the previous CRM. Try Toky for Business Free!
3. A team with great service attitude
Good customer service is not done by technology, but by people; to achieve this you must have in your team, people who not only use well the tools that you have at hand, know your product or service perfectly or that they express themselves correctly; make sure they have skills like:
- Listening skills: Excellent customer service requires listening to who calls you in order to take the necessary actions. Whether it's a sale or support on your product or service.
- Patience: Those who call your business may have specific problems and may not be in the best of attitudes, so your agents must be able to overcome their emotions, control and adequately serve even the most upset customers.
- Natural communication: Prepared responses can be interpreted badly by customers; it is necessary that your agents give natural answers and according to what the client needs. The scripts can be practical but a real dialogue is preferable to parliaments that can be given by a tape recorder and not by a real person.
65% of people prefer to contact business using the telephone and a 42% calls a business at least once a week.
It is important to make sure that your customers have the service they deserve because a good experience will do much more for your business than an advertisement.
In the end, if you rely on cloud telephony services like Toky you will not need a big investment to have a simple and effective call center for your business, this will not only improve the image of your company, but it will help you better manage the customers who are the resource that will bring your business forward.
Do you want to start a call center for your business? Try Toky for Business free