Good call handling skills and mindsets really make a difference to your customers and therefore to you
Your contact centre, call centre, depot or branch, represents the personality of your company.
The conversations your people have with your customers are your brand.
Good call handling is a good conversation, and conversations with customers are important. After all conversations improve relationships, and relationships strengthen business.
What skills and attributes do you need to have good call handling skills
- Customer focus; showing the customer is important to the organisation
- Communication skills; managing and leading the call expertly and professionally
- Tone and clarity of voice; how easy is it for people to understand what you are saying. Does your tone trigger an emotional response in a caller
- Building rapport; welcoming a caller, putting them at their ease, and signalling you can help
- Listening while searching for information in a computer system
- Helpfulness; helping a customer with a simple enquiry or an unhappy customer when there is a problem
- Accuracy; ensuring the information that is given is accurate, and follows the company’s procedures
- Complaint Handling, putting things right when things have gone wrong, helping unhappy, angry or vulnerable customers
- Sales skill might also be key depending on the types of calls you take
- Stamina; the last customer of the day is as important as the first
As technology changes the way that customers interact with us, calls into an organisation can be seen as an escalation, as customers have not been able to answer their own queries online. This means that the nature of service calls are changing, and they are getting longer. More
As anyone in the role knows, good call handling skills are more than answering the phone. More
What are the benefits of investing in developing good call handling skills?
Good Call Handling
- helps customers
- increases order values
- improves cashflow by accurate order taking
- controls the call effectively to manage call length and call volumes
- minimises call backs
- help you achieve sales targets
- protects price and profits
- ensures that the call is managed well when items are not in stock
- retains customers when things haven’t gone to plan
- deals with difficult customers or situations
- reinforces your brand values and brand experience
- puts things right when things go wrong
We know because we’ve helped our clients achieve real results in all of these areas by developing their call handling skills.
