Controlling a caller’s expectation makes all the difference in the world when it comes to happy callers. Happy callers will make happy clients.
What do I mean when I say “Controlling the caller’s expectations?” A call center representative is trained to handle each call as it comes in. No matter how well we are trained we are not part of the office staff. There are many variables we do not know nor need to know.
Controlling a caller’s expectations is to professionally let the caller know that we are a call center and not the office. This is very important because if the caller believes they are speaking to the office or a technician from that office they will be expecting a different level of expertise or understanding of their problem. For example, we have several plumbers on our service. If the caller thinks that we are the plumber and begins asking specific questions about their problem, and we are not qualified or simply can’t answer their questions the caller may become frustrated and hang up thinking the company as a whole is not qualified to fix their issue.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs can be useful only if there are specific answers to the questions, what is the cost to come out, etc. More detailed questions should only be answered by a technician or office staff. When a call center answers a question we are speaking on behalf of the client and there may be liability if the answer is wrong.
With a list of FAQs with answers, an operator is reading off a screen without a true understanding of the questions and or the answers they are giving. Answering FAQs can be more dangerous than simply saying, “We are the answering service, may I find someone to help you?”
Auto-Answer Feature
Our phone system has a custom auto-answer feature. This feature allows our clients to record their own greeting. When a call is forwarded to the answering service, the caller will hear this custom greeting created by your business to your potential clients. A good example of how this feature works is to hear a recording. One of our plumber’s recording says, “Thank you for calling ABC Plumbing, we are closed now, but please stay on the line and a customer service representative will take your call. They will be able to reach an on-call technician for you if that’s necessary.”
The message does two things for our clients. It lets the caller know that we are not plumbers, but we are here to help. It also says that we have the ability to reach someone immediately. Often, callers don’t know that we can reach the business after hours, and the willingness to do so is an asset to many businesses. I know that if I had a plumbing emergency and a company came out that night, they would have a client for life.
Send us your FAQs and set up a greeting today to make callers happy customers!