One of the biggest factors of a business’ success is how efficiently it runs. The age old saying of things working like a well oiled machine is something that every business should strive for. If they can achieve that, they will be working efficiently and giving their clients the best customer service possible. One of the places businesses tend to lose efficiency is the one place that most of their customer interaction takes place – the telephone.
There are two things that contribute to efficiency in a business’s telephone system – how a customer moves through the system and how well their needs are met once they are talking to a representative. To ensure maximum efficiency and customer service in these areas a couple of things are required. One, the caller needs to be able to reach the person or department they are looking for quickly and easily. Two, they need to be well taken care of in a timely manner once they arrive at the proper place. Businesses are able to accomplish these things with one easy to use and inexpensive tool – a virtual PBX.
A virtual PBX allows a business to set up a main greeting auto attendant that directs a caller to the appropriate place smoothly. The auto attendant gives the caller options of where they can be transferred to and have their needs met. This reduces confusion on the caller’s part, moves them efficiently through the phone system and in turn ensures clients are receiving good customer service. Recently, many businesses are sending employees to work from home and for a variety of reasons: reducing their negative impact on the environment, downsizing, or to reduce overhead. These employees can still be within the umbrella of the virtual PBX. They can still be accessible and available to customers due to the unique call forwarding feature of a virtual PBX. This would also hold true for businesses with multiple offices or locations.
How the caller’s needs are met once they are forwarded to the appropriate place is the second important aspect of ensuring efficiency and quality customer service within a business’s telephone system. Using the call record feature of a virtual PBX, all incoming calls can be listened to and evaluated. This will ensure that the customer’s needs are being met and in an efficient manner. It can assist in training new employees, as well as old, on the best way to handle calls. This feature can still be used with off site employees so their calls can be monitored even though they are at a different location. Speeding up the time it takes to train new employees and reminding old employees how to handle calls the right way increases efficiency and customer service.
The ability to run reports is another feature of a virtual PBX that helps to ensure that caller’s needs are being met. These reports can be based on when and where calls are coming in, where they are coming from, and if those calls are being answered or sent to voice mail. This allows a business to track in what areas their callers are located, which extensions are receiving the most calls, what time of day is the busiest for calls, and how many calls are not being answered. Learning this vital information helps to make sure they are properly staffed for the peak times of incoming calls and make sure the calls coming in are being answered. An additional benefit to these reports is that if a business has a lot of calls coming into one particular extension, they can adjust marketing or customer support materials to better address the issues that people are frequently calling in about.
For a business looking to increase their efficiency and maintain a high level of customer service a good place to start is their phone system. It is a major part of how a business interacts with their customers and therefore a place where their employees spend much of their time. Because of that a business owner needs to be able to get their callers through to the person or department that they need quickly and easily while at the same time ensuring they are getting the best support possible once they are connected.
