When your clients need to solve a problem about your products or services, it’s your responsibility to assist them with their questions.
Inbound calling is a popular way of providing that support.
Setting up support channels to field requests and complaints could help enhance your company’s accessibility and customer experience.
What is inbound calling?
Inbound calling refers to the calls made by clients to a company’s customer support team. These are commonly received by a call center or help desk who could handle the caller’s inquiry or request.
Once a client is connected, a representative will try to resolve the issue during the first interaction. Follow-up calls or emails may happen if they cannot be settled immediately.
The importance of having a good inbound calling strategy should not be underestimated. Most customer service employees collect several calls every day. Your team should be well-prepared to move communication forward until the caller is satisfied.
How to start inbound calling?
Inbound calling support is important for companies who want to be within reach by their customers. It makes brands more approachable and improves your brand’s image.
Here are several steps to be considered in kick-starting your company’s inbound calling strategy.
Create an effective strategy
In creating an effective strategy, you first must know whether your agents will mostly be providing technical support, proactive customer service, or both. Brand representatives are usually trained to handle both functions. While other companies focus on only one.
Planning how your team will grow as your business expands is also needed. As you gain more customers, you need to have a strategy for handling a higher volume of calls.
Considering these factors can help as you prepare your incoming inbound call agents for their jobs. It could also aid you in handling future roadblocks and keep your customer service stable over time.
Determine the number of representatives you need
Labor costs are not cheap. So to prevent hiring too many or too few support representatives, you have to estimate the number of calls your company can expect.
Obtain customer feedback to get an idea of how often your clients would want to communicate with your team.
If possible, survey and analyze your competitors and see how many agents are typically hired by companies within your industry.
At the time of hiring, find candidates who are patient and are great problem-solvers. The best choice as an inbound calling agent are those who have strong emotional intelligence.
They should also be able to gracefully manage difficult customer interactions.
Invest in the right equipment
To have a successful inbound calling approach, you have to adopt a system that would help your team field and distribute calls efficiently. Look for a communication software that can process calls and deliver them to your agents directly.
Extra help desk tools and calling software could track and record calls from your clients. Customer relationship management (CRM) can be used to find useful information that would help improve the customer experience.
Additionally, invest in hardware that your team will use every day. This typically includes headsets, computers, monitors, and keyboards.
These tools are crucial in helping your inbound call channel grow at the same time as your company.
Make sure your customers know
Promote your inbound calling channel. Partner with your marketing and sales teams to spread details about your new customer service platform to your audience.
Let buyers from other channels know about your new omnichannel service. This would show them that it is now easy to keep in touch with your brand wherever. It would also demonstrate your dedication to the success of your customer service.
An ideal way to promote your new inbound calling channel is to offer it as a beta feature to a select number of customers.
In this way, you could test and tweak your support system before it is officially launched to the public while hyping up your new feature.
Analyze and evaluate your metrics
The last step is analyzing and evaluating your call metrics. These key performance indicators (KPIs) will vary for every business depending on their target market and the needs of their customers.
General KPIs to be measured are customer satisfaction, average response time, first call resolution, average handle time, and abandonment rate. These metrics could identify whether your team is properly equipped to provide long-term support.
If the results show that your team is struggling in one area, re-evaluate your KPIs to better align with your clients. Constantly reassessing your inbound calling performance will help you create more effective customer service.
It is also important to make sure your team’s daily goals and quotas can be achieved and are being completed. These could help your organization create an effective inbound calling approach for its customer service and support.
