Personalise Customer Service - Increase Revenues

Personalisation in customer service can generate great results. However, personalisation in telephone communications specifically, can often be a companys area of weakness.

In contrast, personalising digital communications is very common, with channels such as email and live chat more easily offering personal greetings and targeted responses. Undoubtedly, the level of personalisation a business is able to give has a big impact on customer service and perceptions of a brand.

Companies are now questioning if it is possible to personalise calls when dealing with large volumes of customers. Alternatively, can SMEs without the big budgets of corporations still deliver personalised calls without the expensive technology? Personalising all calls is possible and should be taken seriously if you want to achieve strong levels of customer service and the resultant growth in revenues.

CRM

Whether big or small, it is more than likely that your business will use CRM software. Take advantage of your business’ CRM system when looking to personalise inbound calls. Businesses should be fully integrated with their CRM allowing customer facing team members access a customer’s relevant details. The CRM system is vital in viewing customers’ engagement with your company. Have they recently made a purchase from you? Have they phoned several times in the last week with an ongoing issue? Having access to a customer’s record with a company will allow your team to handle the call in the best manner. They will be knowledgeable of all historic and ongoing circumstances, preventing the customer from repeating themselves numerous times.

Your CRM is a great tool to profile customers and understand their behaviours and requirements. If all members of staff have access to the CRM, detailed records of each customer can be created. Contact with customers can then be personalised accordingly, delivering exceptional customer service. 

COMMAND LINE INTERFACE RECOGNITION

Command line interface (CLI) is a clever bit of technology that can be assigned to each caller’s profile. CLI can monitor the source of the call and connect this with the caller history. It allows callers to be directed to a team member that they have spoken to previously if they are available.

When executed well, this is a fantastic method of personalising communication. Instead of the caller having to repeat an issue several times or worry about miscommunication between team members, the customer is connected to someone who they are familiar with and who is already aware of their current circumstances. Through personalising calls, a strong relationship between the company and customer is created, resulting in high levels of caller satisfaction.

CLI can even help stylise a greeting with customers. Categorising customers into certain profiles – with blue indicating a formal greeting style or green for a warm and empathetic greeting style depending on previous interactions. The difficult part with this however, is how to categorise new callers,

TRACKING WEBSITE ACTIVITY

Cookies allow businesses to track customers browsing on their company website. From this information, the likes of Google and Bing can determine when a call is made and what page they are on when they call. Teams can then greet the caller with a strong estimate of what the call will be regarding. Are they on your sales page for a product? Perhaps on a refunds page or a recruitment advert? Being prepared for the call and anticipating queries will help your team deliver personal customer service. 

This may also help with targeted offers – personalising sales for customers makes them much more likely to buy, as well as showing that you are taking the time to understand what they want. Using analytical tools like Google and Call Tracking software also helps businesses to understand what parts of their website or certain adverts are resulting in increased calls and which areas aren’t performing so well.

PERSONALITY

This is perhaps the most important aspect of customer personalisation. The primary advantage of using the telephone is that the person taking the call has the opportunity to show emotion with the customer and really build up a great rapport, something that is a lot harder to achieve through digital methods of communication. A simple act of personalising a call is tailoring your greeting, introducing yourself to the customer and in return greeting them by their name. 

It is easy to tell when someone is working off a script. Its important that the conversation flows naturally and the caller made to feel like they are talking to a person that is listening to and understanding their needs, not a robot. This is reinforced by the fact that 84% of customers say being treated like a person, not a number, is very important to winning their trust and their business.

CONTROL AUTOMATION

Personalisation is all about focusing on the customer’s need and directing them to the solution as quickly as possible. Automation can therefore do wonders for customer service. Tools such as an IVR, which can narrow down a customer’s enquiry or let them use self-service to find the answer they need, can greatly help the efficiency of enquiries. Automation is also great to direct calls to people best suited for the enquiry.

However, too much automation can be a bad thing when it comes to personalisation. There are still people who would prefer to be transferred by someone who has listened to their need first and decided on the best person to deal with their enquiry. Excessive layers of IVR or flawed voice recognition technology is going to depersonalise the experience for a customer and leave them unsatisfied with the service received.

Personalisation for calls is definitely possible, even without large budgets. Measures such as greetings, IVRs, access to customer history and specialised skills are great ways to personalise customer interactions. Personalisation can greatly increase your levels of customer service which in turn will create a great reputation for your brand. Through creating trust with your customers, sales and revenue are more likely to increase, helping your business to grow.

Tim Morris is Managing Director of Cymphony - specialising in providing thousands of companies inbound personalised telephone services and helping them build their business revenues.