You’ve probably noticed that the number of ways you can contact customers hasn’t just “risen” over the years—it’s exploded. From texts to tweets to social posts—the list goes on and on. Yet, 71% of customer communication still happens over the phone. And 60% of customers will call a local business after finding them on Google. 

Business phone calls still dominate how local businesses communicate with their customers, new and old. The trouble is, whereas text and email give employees time to pause and respond—phone calls require immediate answers. If you leave customers on hold for too long, you’ll easily lose them to a competitor. 

With so many hats to wear and responsibilities to juggle, what can you do to manage your phone system properly and keep customers happy without losing your sanity? In this guide, we’ll answer that question and more. Read on to learn: 

• Best practices for handling customer calls quickly and efficiently
• Tips and tricks to get the most out of customer calls for new business
• How to scale your phone system without tying up your staff’s time

How Business Phone Calls Have Evolved

While the technology we use to make calls has changed, you could argue that customers’ expectations have changed as much–or more. Approximately 60% of people believe that one minute is too long to be on hold. More than 32% believe customer service departments should be answering immediately.

Add to this the facts that:

1. The expansion of business communication channels isn’t stopping anytime soon, 
2. The way customers find local businesses and their reasons for calling has multiplied,
3. And there is more competition than ever before, 

…and you have a real problem on your hands. 

Inbound callers could be interested prospects, a competitor trying to get the scoop, or even a tech journalist. Customers discover local businesses through social media, online ads, blog posts, and text messages daily. 

The crux of the matter is that today’s local businesses are fighting a constant uphill battle, continually trying to match limited resources to compounding volume. This leads to an increase in: 

• Complexity
• Frequency 
• Stakes 

These days, it’s really not about selling to the customer as much as helping the customer better than your competition does–and allowing the experience to sell itself. 

Identifying Friction in the Customer Journey

In recent years, eliminating friction has become a top priority in smoothing out your customer’s journey from discovery to sale and follow-up. In fact, research indicates that removing friction is a $213 billion opportunity. Noticeably, there are a few points at which friction commonly occurs across the board, and many have to do with calling. 

Friction typically arises when local businesses make customers wait in a queue, route calls to ineffective automated systems, fail to route calls correctly, don’t take the time to understand their particular pain point, and don’t offer an effective solution. 

As you can probably tell, most of these friction points have to do with phone call management—an area where many customer service issues arise. Many local businesses are unable to manage their calls and maintain the quality they’re known for as they scale, leading to lackluster service and failure to meet consumer expectations. 

What Modern Customers Expect From Local Business Calls

So, what do your customers expect? Today’s customer expects to be listened to and understood when they call you. They expect to be able to contact and be contacted by you using their preferred channels.

Most importantly, they expect you to be in-step with them—to be on the exact same page, to know exactly what’s going on, and to offer them a perfect, highly personalized solution.

As always, the key for local businesses is doing more with less through careful optimization and strategy. Exceeding a modern customer’s expectations these days includes not only being available on their time, but being armed with the right answers. To do that, businesses need tools, like VoIP systems, softphones, video, and transcription capacities. 

Managing Customer Calls

Managing customer calls is not just a numbers game, or a matter of routing strategy. At its core, it is a matter of emotional management–making sure each of your customers feels heard, understood, and helped without letting things slip. 

This includes using technology that works for you and helps you successfully anticipate requests, deliver explanations effectively, establish trust, offer support, educate without patronizing, and build a friendship–each and every time you pick up the phone.

With the right systems in place, a boost in emotional intelligence, and effective training in how to use modern tools, you’ll be able to do much more without breaking the bank. 

Managing Customer Calls

Managing customer calls is not just a numbers game, or a matter of routing strategy. At its core, it is a matter of emotional management–making sure each of your customers feels heard, understood, and helped without letting things slip. 

This includes using technology that works for you and helps you successfully anticipate requests, deliver explanations effectively, establish trust, offer support, educate without patronizing, and build a friendship–each and every time you pick up the phone.

Identify the Person and Issue 

You probably have thousands, maybe tens of thousands of customers. But in your customer’s world, they are your only customer. It is no wonder that they expect you to be completely briefed on their problem, caught up on their recent history, and ready to go. 

If Diana has called you once about an ongoing issue with her heater, she expects you to remember what she was calling about. If you are giving her a call back, she expects you to be briefed already—definitely not that she will have to explain again. 

When you use a phone system with a feature that instantly gives you the highlights of a customer’s history with you, you exercise an incredible advantage. Context not only makes your customers feel valued and satisfied, but also saves you time by helping you solve customer concerns more quickly. 

The most helpful phone systems, (as pictured), can tell you about the last transaction your customer made, what kind of feedback they gave you, how recently they’ve communicated with you, and give you the option to view more details. 

Some even provide a picture, which can be a plus in helping your employees remember who they are. 

Use a Professional Tone

Understandably, the first few things you say will set the tone for the entire interaction. When speaking on the phone, business owners and employees should always aim to be relaxed and self-assured in order to instill confidence in the caller. Professional tone also means always using correct terminology in the context of your discussion.

If possible, you should greet the caller by name. You should also aim to match the energy of the caller. 

Being over-excited with a calm customer can lead to discomfort, just as a monotone voice can induce confusion. Matching the tone of your customer helps create empathy and set a good pace for the call.

If a customer is agitated, train your employees to stay calm. Help them remember that their positioning shapes the entire interaction. Encourage them to speak at a normal speed and clearly with a positive voice. They should aim to be supportive and intelligent, and work to understand the customer.

Your employees should also feel free to be themselves and use their own humor and personalization. This is what can make interactions with your business special. However, ensuring that they know how and when doing so will work to establish trust and get the job done.

Listen Carefully and Build Rapport 

In customer calls as in life, the most successful individuals aim to listen more than they speak. Listening carefully and taking time to build rapport can make all the difference in the success of a call. Here are some helpful tips:

• Always repeat back what you hear
• Ask clarifying questions
• Don’t rush
• Mirror the customer’s voice, tone, and positioning

Your customers want to feel like they have a real connection with you and your employees. Consequently, building real rapport is a must. Rapport works to increase respect and trust between you and your customer. 

Successfully breaking the ice (disarming the customer), listening empathetically, and carefully mirroring the customer all demonstrate connection in a significant and memorable way. 

Keep in mind that customers will remember what you said less than they will remember how you made them feel. It is far more effective for your customers to feel heard than it is for you to get your point across, so be aware of how you allocate your time. 

Ask Good Questions 

Anyone can ask “How are you?” or “What’s the problem?” However, the key is understanding that every question counts and can work to shape your customer’s experience. When it comes to helping customers, there are three primary types of questions. Understanding the difference between them and how to use each of them is critical to creating a good experience. 

1. Opening questions. Questions of this type help you get the conversation started. They are great for locating problems swiftly and showing empathy at the same time.
   
   
2. Probing questions. Probing questions help you go deeper–unpack your customer’s answers so that you can understand exactly what the issue is or what they’re looking for. These are great questions for problem-solving and setting expectations.
   
   
3. Closing questions. Questions of this type usually have yes/no answers and help you ascertain whether you’ve successfully understood the customer and fully addressed their primary concerns.

How to Close Out a Call 

Of course, opening a call is important. However, closing the call is a very close second. The trick is to make sure you don’t rush the ending–you’ve got to stick the landing. At the end of every call where the issue is resolved, you should: 

• Confirm next steps with the customer
• Demonstrate how you will prevent a recurrence 
• Make sure all questions have been answered
• Thank the customer for their time and continued business
• Offer a well wish, using the customer’s name 

At the end of the call, if you’ve determined that the issue cannot be resolved over phone, you should: 

• Offer an apology
• Confirm next steps with the customer
• Determine a time to follow-up
• Thank the customer for their time and continued business
• Offer a well wish, using the customer’s name 

As always, the most impactful elements of any customer interaction, no matter the issue or outcome, are transparency, proactivity, and empathy. If you show a sincere desire to help the customer and are clear about the steps you are going to take to do so, you will meet their expectations more often than not. 

Measuring Customer Service Call KPIs 

Want to know how well you’re doing? Customer service call KPIs are the measurements that businesses often use to determine how successful their customer support is. 

Businesses should typically set goals that measure for customer feedback, service efficiency, conversation quality, compliance, and engagement of employees. 

Important KPIs to keep in mind include call volume or the total number of calls (you should break this down into tracking for volume at certain times of the day, days of the week, etc.), call length, ratings customers leave for your service (NPS/CSAT), how many times a call was transferred, and how many calls your business is able to take immediately. 

Customer satisfaction can also be measured in listening to call recordings and evaluating feedback that has been received. This should be done together with your staff for optimum learning and improvement. 

Managing Inbound Sales Calls 

Inbound sales calls are every local business’s dream. No awkward sales pitch, no trying to convince someone to speak with you—they’re calling you because they want to speak with you. However, inbound sales calls are also arguably much more complex than outbound sales calls. In fact, they’re a completely different animal. 

Typically, you don’t know who’s calling—a competitor, prospect, new developer. And if they are a prospect, you don’t know why they’re calling–or what they want you to bring to the table specifically. 

If you don’t identify the pain point, and quickly demonstrate how you can help, your caller will probably turn to a competitor. That’s why figuring out caller motivation is the most crucial part of managing inbound calls. And why the most important work takes place before the call–preparation. 

Helping is the New Selling

As we mentioned, when it comes to inbound calls, local businesses find the most success when they put their “sales” mindset on the shelf and activate their “help” mindset. The question becomes not a matter of convincing, but of understanding. How can you help the prospective customer? How can you assist them in achieving their goals? 

Being able to help means taking the time to accumulate knowledge about your business and your particular products and services. Unsurprisingly, ensuring that your employees are well-prepared to answer questions and inspire confidence in prospects requires a high level of specialized training. 

A major part of helping in a valuable way is making sure that the customer is talking to the person or department that can best assist them. A great way to anticipate and meet expectations is by asking a prospect what their question is so that their call can be directed to the correct department or individual. 

This method allows employees to avoid the “Let me get back to you” or “I’m not sure” jig when they don’t know how to answer a specific question, or even when there may be someone who can simply answer a question more convincingly and accurately. 

Confirm the Company & Background Information

On any inbound sales call, your employees should start by confirming your company and background information, as well as their position within the organization. 

This sets the ethos of the call, asserting the credibility of your business, performing important brand work in how you are perceived by the customer, and establishing trust. 

It also gives your employee a chance to set the tone of the call and communicate the personality of your brand. Perhaps most importantly, it simply tells the caller they’ve dialed the right number. No one should ever have to ask if they’ve called the right business. 

With the complexity of inbound calls these days, anyone on your staff should feel confident discussing your company’s history, including your mission, track record, and product/service details. Their expertise should include anything from technical questions to knowledge on how to implement a product or how reliable a service can be. 

Identify the Pain Point & Reason for Calling

Unlike outbound sales calls, the focus shouldn’t be you, or your amazing products, or the services you offer when it comes to inbound calls. It should be about your customer’s pain point–what they want, and why they have come to you in particular. This often involves understanding where they are in the buying process. 

• Are they comparing you to a competitor? 
• Are they wanting to ask final technical questions, the answers to which could convince them to finally pull the trigger? 
• Are they simply curious about the industry? 

Keep in mind that you don’t need to bring up new features, benefits, your impressive customer list, or awards. In fact, you probably should avoid doing so, if possible. More often than not, the customer has called because they want you to understand their need more than anything else. If you can demonstrate that you’ve understood, and effectively show that you can solve, you’ve “made the sale.”   

Multiple factors play into being able to present your business as the solution to the prospect’s problem. After listening, these include: being able to access company data quickly and easily (pro tip: it really helps if you have a platform that collects it all into one place), and knowing every employee and their expertise at the company so that you can route calls quickly, if needed (pro tip: it also helps if you have a platform that can do this for you automatically). 

Ask for Contact Details  

Unlike outbound calls, you typically don’t know the key demographics of the inbound caller you are speaking with, including their preferred communication channels and contact information, which can prevent future follow-up and service. Consequently, you should always ask for contact details. 

Getting contact details helps your caller feel more connected to your organization and invested if they’ve made an appointment or committed to a next step. While getting the caller’s name and number is a must, asking how they most like to be contacted and when is also crucial. Whenever possible, you should aim to connect with prospects and customers via their preferred channels at times that are most convenient for them. 

According to our research, 65.6% of customers think texting makes working with a local business more convenient. And they’re almost twice as likely to prefer it to any other communication method. Customers also prefer to message via social media. When asking for details, do not neglect to learn how you can connect with the customer via social media if they have a preferred platform. 

Ask How the Caller Found You

The final step of managing inbound calls includes learning how the caller found you. Why is this important? Learning how a caller found you can give you important insights into what’s working in your marketing strategies and what isn’t, which should always be accounted for in your data and lead to future action.

If most of your callers are finding you through a local Facebook page, perhaps you can put more work into the page to spread its reach. 

If callers are saying that it’s difficult to find you online, you should probably put more work into your online presence and making sure your contact info is clear and accessible across all online platforms. 

Scaling Your Local Business Phone System to Stay Ahead

You’re a growing business, and you need your phone system to keep up with you. Because growth should never come at the cost of quality, you need a phone system that can grow exponentially too–as well as shrink without waste, if the need arises. 

In an economy of convenience, scaling your phone strategies is essential to getting ahead of the curve and keeping up with your competitors. You need to employ the highest quality systems that will not only continue to meet, but predict and then exceed consumers’ growing expectations. This means turning to VoIP technology. 

What is VoIP Technology?

VoIP is an acronym for “Voice Over Internet Protocol,” and is the latest in calling technology. Essentially, it’s a channel that allows businesses (and others) to communicate via phone calls by way of the internet. Unlike the technology used for landlines, VoIP phone systems don’t rely on copper wiring or fiber optic cables. 

Instead, VoIP phones operate by being connected to the internet. When you call someone, your voice is divided into digital packets. During the call, these packets are transmitted as data via the internet to the receiver on the other end.

Benefits of Using VoIP Technology 

Today, VoIP is completely transforming the world of telecommunications by equipping local businesses to deliver unprecedented CX and establish the clearest internal communications to date. And the benefits don’t stop there. Businesses using this technology report productivity increases by as much as 20%.

Using VoIP tech offers: 

• Additional features. VoIP phone systems offer features such as automatic call forwarding, three-digit dialing, voice analytics, voicemail to text or email, etc. With the right platform, additional features are often simple to activate and provide endless new opportunities for local businesses. 
• Scalability. Another perk? VoIP phone systems scale with you. This means no limits for how many new hires you can have or how much you expand your operations. And most importantly–no worries about spending more of your budget on extra phone lines. 
• Increased accessibility. Having VoIP technology means being able to make calls from literally any place you can get a reasonable internet connection, helping local businesses guarantee accessibility for their customers in a remote marketplace. This empowers employees to work efficiently, no matter where they are. You’re also able to redirect your phone calls to someone else, access transcriptions, and have voicemails emailed directly to you. 
• More security. As a business owner, we know that phone system security is one of your biggest priorities. Businesses are receiving more spam calls than ever before. With advancements such as enhanced encryption and identity management, VoIP technology helps local businesses greatly reduce threats to their security and that of their customers. 

Getting Started with VoIP Technology

Because VoIP technology relies solely on internet connectivity, it’s important to know how to set it up for success, including how to avoid common pitfalls. When getting started, local businesses need to ensure that their internet connection is not only good, but consistently reliable. A tricky connection will lead to spotty conversations and then–you guessed it–poor customer service. It will also hold up your employees. 

Local businesses should make sure they have a sufficient ethernet cable, adequate routers, and a high network bandwidth. (As a rule of thumb, each unit should have an upload speed of 100 kbps minimum). They should also offer adequate training for their employees and have experts on staff who can help in case of an internet crisis. Local businesses should keep in mind that VoIP devices have very limited emergency call location tracking, and should plan accordingly.  

Using VoIP Effectively 

Of course, VoIP technology will only benefit you if you understand how to use it correctly and train your employees well. And you should optimize your technique and processes for optimum quality in your VoIP calls. Here are five ways you can do so: 

1. Use a good headset. As you probably know, using a headset during a call greatly increases convenience. However, a substandard headset in a VoIP setting can make for a substandard call by making it difficult for you and the caller to hear one another. Consider investing in high quality headsets designed specifically for VoIP settings. Noise cancellation is a plus, and you should remember that USB and corded headsets provide audio flow that is more stable than wireless or Bluetooth devices. 
2. Don’t let your network get too busy. Unsurprisingly, improving the quality of your calls involves guarding the traffic stream designated for your VoIP calls. Usually, your IT team can help you locate the VoIP traffic stream your technology is using. Then, they can tag this same traffic to protect your calling, designating a certain amount of your bandwidth for VoIP data alone. 
3. Ensure you have a good internet connection. Ethernet is always best when using VoIP phone systems. But if you have to use WiFi, make sure the internet connection is strong.
4. Turn off your Bluetooth devices. This might seem a bit counterintuitive. But using multiple Bluetooth devices can clog up your frequency. If you rely on Bluetooth, try turning off your headphones, keyboards, and mouses first. 

As always, remember that every VoIP solution setting is different. Optimizing your audio quality may take some trial and error. For more helpful tips, check out this article on VoIP optimization. 

Final Thoughts

Modern business calls are all about understanding the customer and what they’re actually trying to communicate, regardless of what they verbalize. They revolve around careful research and empathy for the customer and survive on emotional intelligence and skillful listening rather than a typical persuasive sales strategy. 

Your customers want what you have to give them, and you can make it happen with the right tools. Ready to make the transition to low-cost, flexible, effectively managed internet calling? 

Podium helps over 100,000 local businesses of all sizes effectively manage their communication systems with world-class technology. Learn how you can get started free with tools specifically designed for small businesses here.