It’s a fact that no business ever sets out to do the wrong thing by its customers. Of course not, every business wants to offer a first class customer experience. However, in the modern age, customer demands are increasing in order to accommodate their busy lifestyles.
Customers want brands now to be available at their convenience, not what's convenient for the company. This is often putting an increased strain upon businesses who may have been used to the traditional working hours.
All too often businesses naturally attempt to extend their working hours in order to meet customer demand, but such a move is fraught with potential problems.
Here are the top 5 pitfalls that in our experience as a trusted outsource partner, businesses face when trying to manage their own calls out of hours:
- Staff Burnout - Many of our clients reported that they used to simply hand a mobile to an member of staff who had worked all day to also handle calls during the night. This may be ok in the short term but long term consequences include poor morale, tiredness and burnout which has a detrimental effect on people's work.
- High Costs - Employing dedicated staff to manage the phones during quiet times is a costly solution, especially if you're paying any unsocial hours or on-call uplift.
- Damage to company reputation - If a customer cannot get an answer, they are often all to keen to spread bad news and bad news travels fast, especially in the days of social media. Take a look at #poorservice and #customerexperience on any social media platform and you will find thousands of customers who feel let down.
- Missing calls continue - It is all too common for customers to act like buses! It can be quiet for ages then multiple calls come in all at once. With the best will in the world, this is always a gamble unless multiple staff are employed, which would be highly inefficient and costly.
- Poor Customer Experience - Nothing screams 'unprofessional' more than distracting background noise. Quite often calls are received with the sound of children or dogs in the background and we have even known calls to be answered in a noisy supermarket, complete with tannoy announcements!
Some of these problems may be all too familiar already, or this may be new ground for you, either way, the question remains, what can you do about it?
Thankfully, the answer is simple. Utilising the services of a professional 24/7 call management provider provides a seamless experience for your customers and a cost-effective solution for you. By utilising such services, the above issues can become a distant memory.
Speak to our Solutions Manager today to see how Lemon can help your business achieve its objectives through the power of outsourcing.
Author: Peter Rabbage
