It is just as vital to have exceptional telephone etiquette as it is to answer the phone when it comes to your HVAC, plumbing, or electrical business. Effective and efficient communication between your customers and agents/receptionists must take place for continued growth of your business. There are three crucial factors that, if incorporated into each call, are certain to make every exchange between your answering service and customers beneficial to both your customer and your business.
Engagement with the Customer
There is a serious difference between just hearing someone talk and truly listening to what it is they’re saying. Therefore, it is paramount that an agent is totally engaged with the caller’s words. This facet of telephone etiquette is important because not only does it make the customer feel heard, but it ensures that they genuinely are heard, thus ensuring that an accurate message is taken from the conversation. To be engaged with customers, receptionists must:
- Hear customers’ stories in their entirety.
- Ask probing questions surrounding customers’ situations. Understand the what’s, when’s, where’s, why’s, and how’s of what they’re saying.
- Have a true concern for the customer by displaying empathy for their situation. Essentially, they should be compassionate to each caller and each issue, no matter how small the case may seem.
Being engaged with the customer makes for a more accurate phone call, as it allows less room for valuable information to slip between the cracks.
Accuracy in the Delivery of Information
Receptionists must ensure that the information they’ve gathered from the customer is precisely what the customer is trying to convey to your business. Otherwise, the point of the call will have been missed entirely! To ensure the delivery of accurate information, those answering the phone should:
- Get clarification on the aspects of customers’ situations that were not initially understood.
- Establish the main reason for which the customer is calling.
- Verify everything that’s been recorded as the conversation comes to an end with the customer. Essentially, this consists of repeating what’s been recorded back to the customer before the call is over.
While each of these tips is essential to telephone etiquette for your HVAC call center, accuracy very well could be the most important, as it has everything to do with getting the right message from your customers to your business.
Confidence in Speech
When answering the phone, it is imperative that agents and receptionists have confidence in what they’re saying to a caller. If they’re uncertain and tiptoe-ish, it makes it impossible for either engagement or accuracy to occur. Confidence in speech means:
- Maintaining a warm, yet clear/direct, tone
- Having a sincere understanding of how to find a solution to what the customer is asking
- Being able to assure the customer that their concerns will be addressed
If your agents do not speak with confidence, how do you expect your customers to feel confident that your business can get the job done? To establish trust between customers and your business, it is necessary that those in your answering service speak with confidence.
There will be a noticeable difference in the effectiveness of your answering service if each of these techniques is applied to every call. When people call, they want to be heard! These steps ensure not only that the customer is heard, but also that trust is established between your customers and your business.
If you’re looking for an answering service to get the job done, consider this the end of your search! Dexcomm applies each of these techniques to every phone call we answer. In fact, it is part of our culture to do so; we thrive in helping businesses to grow!
For even more information on call center etiquette and communicating with customers, check out this post here.
