Good customer service is critical for any business. In fact, if a business offers great customer service, 93% of customers say they are likely to make a repeat purchase. Since many businesses use calls as the main mode of customer service, it’s critical to make sure this path meets your customers’ needs.
One way to do this is by implementing call recording. This simple addition to your company’s phones can improve your customer service in a number of different ways. Those wondering how call recording can benefit their business should read on to find out!
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What Is Call Recording?
Call recording is exactly what it sounds like. It is a system that is integrated into your business’s phones that allows you to record calls. At its core, all call recording systems use this.
These call recordings are typically saved by the system. They are then made accessible to whomever the company has tasked with that responsibility. That person or persons can then use the call recordings in a positive way.
However, individual systems offer different features or settings that companies can choose to make use of or not. This will impact how call recording works for each company.
For example, Fastcall’s app in Salesforce has the ability to automatically record all calls and the ability to alter this setting. It lets you record all calls or, if you want, to record only inbound or only outbound calls. Some companies may find that they do not want to automatically record any calls but would prefer the option to turn on call recording when desired.
Other options come from disclosures. Many states require a disclosure anytime a call is recorded.
Because of this, call recording systems often have the option to include a disclosure at the moment recording begins, which is usually at the very beginning of the call. More advanced systems have the option to turn this feature on or off depending on the situation.
Call Recording Improves Your Business
One of the best features of call recording is that it can actually improve the way a company does business with its customers. This applies equally to large corporations and small businesses.
This improvement in customer service helps the customer by improving their experience and helps the business by improving the likelihood that their customers will stay with them.
Know What to Expect From Customers
When it comes to customer service, there are a lot of different reasons customers may call in. These range from questions about the product, to problems with the company itself, to anything that may create a problem. It is hard to say exactly what will happen on any phone call.
However, after a while, certain trends start to appear. For example, you may have customers that often call with a lot of questions about how a specific product works. However, your customer service representatives may not know enough about that product to give helpful answers.
With a call recording system, you are able to notice this is happening. You see that the majority of your calls are dealing with a specific problem and realize that your customer service representatives should be given more specific information about how to address that problem.
In this case, you could write up a product guide that you could give to your customer service representatives. This way, when the next call about that product comes in, they are better able to help.
Fix Problems
While a call recording system can help improve the quality of customer service you provide, it can also help determine if more significant changes need to be made. These can relate to the way you do business or the products you produce.
For example, imagine you run a landscaping business. Every now and then, you get calls complaining about the mulch you are using. After a while, you could look back on your recordings and notice the number of complaints that exist.
In this case, you could change your mulch supplier. You could even listen to the recordings and see if your customers mention anything specific they would like to see from the mulch you use. Then, as you search for a supplier, you can keep these desires in mind.
This is where Fastcall’s Salesforce call recording helps. Without it, you may never have realized that there was a problem with the product or service you provide. With it, you are alerted to the problem and are better able to find a solution.
Provide More of What People Like
Call recording doesn’t just tell you what people don’t like, it tells you what they like as well. Just as it helps you pick out negative features of your business, it also alerts you to what people enjoy about your business.
You can then use this information to provide more of what people like. This makes your customers even happier.
For example, if you run a software company, you might get feedback indicating that people liked the previous version of your program much better than the current version. You can then take a look at these calls and examine what people liked about it. Then, in your next update, you can implement these changes.
Retrieve Information
Imagine this situation. You just convinced a customer to stay with your company by promising to send them a replacement for a defective product they bought. However, as soon as you hung up the call, you realized that you forgot to write down the address to send the replacement.
This is just one piece of information that could be missed during a call. It is possible to miss the person’s name, their payment details, or even specific details relating to their problem. You could call the person back and ask for this information, but this makes you look unprofessional.
With call recording for your business, reexamining the call and pulling out this information is easy. All you have to do is pull back up the call recording. Then, you can go back and look at everything that was said by both parties.
Salesforce call recording even takes this a step further. It offers the ability to have your calls transcribed automatically. This way, you can review the transcript after the call, which makes retrieving information even easier.
In addition, when integrated into Salesforce’s CRM, recorded calls are associated with cases, contacts, and accounts. This allows you to know exactly which call or transcript goes with which client.
Call Recording Makes Better Employees
A big part of call recording relates to how it is used to train and improve employees. This is one of the most popular features of call recording and is why many businesses use it in the first place.
Train New Employees
It isn’t always easy to train employees. You have to deliver a large amount of information and then ensure they retain this information. Then, you have to let them go about their job in order to see how well they are doing.
Luckily, call recording can assist at multiple points in this process. This is especially effective if you have call recording implemented for a while.
As you use Salesforce call recording, save examples of calls that were successful and calls that weren’t. Try to save ones that are particularly helpful in either direction. You can even pick specific examples where employees properly used a skill or tactic.
Then, once you have examples lined up, you can have new employees listen to them. This gives them direct knowledge of what calls are like. By pointing out the good examples and condemning the bad examples, they will have even more experience with what to do and what not to do.
The other way in which calls can help train employees is by providing feedback. This is at a later step in the process.
As new employees start making calls, make sure to save the recordings for these calls. Then, you or another management figure can look back over these recordings and examine how the employee did. If you find they have room for improvement, you can play the tape back for them and explain where they could have done better.
This level of quality control and training really helps. It gives employees a good foundation and ensures that they continue to do well.
Train Old Employees
New employees aren’t the only ones who need training. In many cases, providing a method for training existing employees is just as important.
Studies suggest that it only takes around 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. This means that, as your employees make calls and deal with customers, they are developing behaviors that will soon be an automatic part of their interactions.
Sometimes, this is a good thing. If they are saying the right things and getting positive results, this is exactly what you want to happen. It means that employee is becoming better and better at their job.
However, other times, this is a bad thing. If an employee is repeating an improper behavior over and over again, this bad behavior will soon be automatic. They will then use this behavior in all of the calls they make.
This is why feedback is incredibly important. It gives managers an opportunity to inform the employee about what they are doing wrong. Then, the employee can correct their mistake before it becomes ingrained in their routine.
Call recording helps make that feedback possible. It allows managers to find the mistakes or places for improvement. A good business will regularly review calls by every employee, in order to determine how everyone can do better.
Without call recording, providing feedback like this is difficult. Managers could still listen to an employee’s calls but they will not have the ability to rewind and review exactly what happened. This hampers the feedback and the learning process.
Prevent Altercations
Often, customer service can be frustrating. There are cases where customers feel they have been hurt or mistreated by the company and decide to take their anger out on the customer service representative.
In this case, the customer service representative may choose to respond to the customer’s anger with anger of their own. This leads to a verbal altercation that hurts both parties. However, it also hurts your business, as no customer wants to do business with a company who’s representatives have insulted them.
Simply knowing that the call is being recorded can help prevent this. People tend to behave better when they think other people are watching them. In this case, your employees are being “watched” by the call recording system.
An employee is also less likely to lash out at a customer when they know it can cost them their job. Without call recording, it is the customer’s word against the employee’s regarding if the employee acted inappropriately. With call recording, you know exactly what happened.
Better Manage Work From Home
It is becoming more and more common for work to be done outside of the workplace. Work from home positions and distributed teams are seen at many companies. As this becomes more common, properly managing at-home employees becomes more essential.
Call recording provides one way to do this. With a service that records all of your employee’s business calls, you can check in on how their calls are going at any point.
This ensures your employees are on task. You can double-check to see if they are making frivolous calls or if they aren’t putting in a good effort for their calls. This can indicate if working from home is a good idea or not.
It also alerts you if there are any problems resulting from their being at home. For example, if you hear dogs barking or family members talking during their calls then your customers can hear these things as well.
Using Call Recording to Make Your Business Better
Call recording offers a lot of benefits in the way your company does business. It is also tremendously easy to integrate into your company’s system. Together, these factors make it a very attractive choice for any company out there.
If you are interested in taking advantage of the call recording, make sure to contact Fast Call to see what options are available.
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