5 Steps to Offer High-Quality Service Over The Phone Provided by a Remote Team

1. Set precise working hours

First of all, think about changing the working hours of your customer service department. Extending or shortening your working hours depends on the industry you operate in. Practically all businesses are affected by this crisis, so it’s worth considering changing the availability hours of your customer service department.

Secondly, inform customers about service hours. Even if it’s a standard timeframe, it’s worth putting this information on the website in a visible place. Additionally, if the response time to inquiries or the process of accepting returns is longer than usual, it’s worth mentioning this in autoresponders so that customers don’t get stressed out if they don’t get a response as quickly as before.

2. Use dedicated channels for each type of enquiries

If more inquiries belong to a particular category, e.g., complaints, it’s worth separating the channels through which these inquiries are being received. This can be done by using additional virtual numbers and setting simple redirections to appropriate people or departments. It’s also worth leveraging the Departments feature in the CallPage popup.

As a result, each segment or inquiries will maintain the same quality level. The increase of queries in one category (e.g., returns) will not decrease the quality of service for potential customers.

3. Control the quality of remote customer service

Remote working is the best opportunity to test your team’s responsibility and approach to customer service. On the one hand, working from home may give you a feeling of having less control, but it doesn’t have to be like that. By using virtual contact centers or tools such as CallPage, you can control every call your agents make, and every received or missed call from a customer.

By analyzing the number of calls and their category, you will be able to control the dynamics of your business and the direction in which it is headed. 

Continuous monitoring of communication between your company and existing and potential customers is vitally important. In the current situation, it is not a matter of choice for you, but a necessity. A decline in the quality of the customer service level is the worst mistake you can make.

Don’t forget to be in touch with your team members by, for example, using teleconferencing tools.

4. Give customers the possibility to order a call 24/7 

In the current situation, the level of stress in society and for each of us is higher than usual. It’s therefore not worthwhile to complicate the lives of your customers by including misleading information on your website and making it difficult for them to contact the customer service department.

To eliminate such situations, implement on your website the possibility to order a callback for a specific time. It will be a small but pleasant thing for your client. They will be a little calmer knowing that tomorrow at 11 AM, someone from your company will call them because they ordered a call for that exact time.

5. Ensure seamless flow of data 

When customer service agents or salespeople work in one room, the flow of information takes place naturally and organically. The seamless exchange of information is much more difficult and challenging during remote working.

That is why I strongly recommend integrating customer service and communication systems to make sure that data about any customer interaction is not lost and properly logged.

By handling calls via CallPage, you can integrate the system with your CRM, any messenger you use and SMS notifications. This way, information about potential customers or missed calls is delivered to the right people and ensures the highest level of customer service.

Everything’s gonna be okay.

I am not a hopeless optimist, so I’m not going to try to convince you that everything will be back to normal in a moment. But no matter what happens now, every crisis ends one day and companies come out stronger and more effective. Let’s take this text as an example: the knowledge about providing quality remote customer service over the phone will allow you to build remote service departments in the future. This will result in additional savings and increased profitability due to the differences in earnings between regions.

Stay healthy and don’t stress too much. I wish you many new customers

About Author:

Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe. Digital Marketer. Co-founder at CallPage – Callback Automation for website and co-founder at Certifier – Online Certificate Creator.