Difficult customers are indeed “difficult” to deal with because they’re often angry and impatient. And it becomes even more difficult when you can’t avoid putting their calls on hold.
With some advanced features of VoIP Phone Systems you can shorten their waiting time, soothe their hot temper and enhance the customer experience.
Here’s how some features of VoIP Phone Systems can help you engage difficult customers on hold:
Know what extension or department to transfer the call to without putting the customer on hold by using the Busy Lamp Field.
The Busy Lamp Field is a downright simple feature. It’s just a set of small light bulbs on the phone’s pad, but it can save you and your customer a lot of time.
Each bulb represents each phone extension in across your business phone system. If any of your people are on a call, the corresponding bulb for that phone lights up to let you know that the person on that end is already taking a call.
This is handy because you’ll know right away if someone is available or not for a call transfer. If you need to transfer a call and the person is available, then you won’t have to put any customer call on hold. You can just transfer the call immediately, so they won’t have to wait and lose patience.
On the other hand, if you see that a particular extension is busy with another call, then you can immediately inform your caller and you can ask them to just call back. Or if they are willing to wait, you can put them on hold until the person or department they are trying to call is available to receive their call. Or, you can transfer the call to someone else that’s available if they have other concerns. That way, you can prevent having your customer wait for a long period.
Help calm your customer while on hold using Custom Hold Music or Tailored On Hold Messages.
At times when you can’t avoid putting your customer’s line on hold, suitable background music and targeted messages makes a useful way of engaging them indirectly. That’s why it’s now common practice for companies to use Custom Telephone On Hold Messages for waiting calls.
The principle behind this is that if you leave the line dead without any friendly sound, customers will feel abandoned and even more agitated. By using custom hold music or messages on hold, your customers are treated to an “entertainment” while you check on their concerns. It makes them feel connected and reassures them that there’s someone waiting on the other end.
Custom Hold Music can be presented in many different ways. If your company does it right, you can help soothe angry customers or inform them of other ways to communicate their concerns.
For example, your custom hold messages can promote products or services that the customer may not be aware of. It can also focus on customer assistance protocols that can help direct them to other communication channels like email, web chat or instant messaging.
The trick here is to make sure that the music or sound goes on without interruption or pauses. If there is a good reason for a pause, that reason should be the end of their wait. That is, someone is finally about to pick up their call, so the music stops, and their wait is over.
Use Escape From Queue to avoid extending your customer’s call waiting for long periods.
Time is certainly gold—yours and your customers’. And you waste a lot of time waiting on multiple calls. Fortunately, the Escape From Queue feature can help you with that.
Escape From Queue is handy when you’re handling and waiting on a long list of customers. If the whole office is so busy and can’t handle all the calls promptly within the hour, this feature will allow you to release customers from their wait.
When you hit the Escape key, your customers will receive a pre-recorded message that instructs them to leave a call-back number so that someone can get in touch with them later. That way, they can be released from waiting so they can use their time for more important things.
Transfer customer calls more easily using Call Park.
Usually, before you can transfer a customer’s call, you’ll have to put them on hold first. Then you’ll have to contact the other person in your office to inform them that you’ll be transferring a call. And then you’ll have to get back to the customer again to inform them that you’ll be transferring the call to the other person.
This process is tedious and can be an annoyance to your customers. With the Call Park, you can skip those steps so your customers can get in touch with the right person right away.
Instead of putting the customer on hold, just park the call and contact the other person that there’s a call parked for them. All that person has to do is pick up the phone and dial the parked extension so they can talk to the customer.
Final Tip
These features of VoIP Phone Systems can help you deal with difficult customers more effectively. The most important thing you should keep in mind is to make the call worth the wait.
Make your customers feel that they didn’t waste time waiting by handling their calls professionally and in a friendly manner. Your customers will appreciate a fantastic attitude more that any advanced VoIP phone feature.
