We're all feeling the COVID Crunch and BrantTel is no different. We're putting effort into helping our customers stay connected to their customers, their networks and their tools. With the Cellular Networks jammed, the land lines pushed to the limit, and internet outages piling up, we wanted to share our findings as we have been trying to connect with both smaller and larger businesses.
Understanding that some Businesses are closed via the Provincial mandate. Many Businesses are still operating. Here's a list of helpers that can assist your customer facing strategy.
Contacting Your Business
1. Call your Own Main Number - We're seeing unprecedented numbers of busy signals while calling customers. This means that your phone trunks are full. Whether you have basic analog lines, PRI (23 Channels/lines) or even SIP Trunking. Understand that if you are using mobile twinning/call forwarding to mobile - this uses 2 lines on your phone system. Your phone lines can be tied up very quickly. Customers calling your Business and getting a busy signal - not a good experience, and they may move on to a Business that they can reach.
2. Listen to your Voice Auto Attendant announcements - Are they updated? Do they offer a custom message to callers? If your business is working remote, make a statement about response times and manage the expectations of your callers.
3. Run through your call flows - "Dial 1 for Sales", "Dial 2 for Support" etc. - Make sure that the people that are answering these queues, are answering, and extensions that are programmed into these groups are still accurate and people are answering.
4. Mailboxes - General Delivery Mailbox - after a no answer - make sure they are not full, and you are providing a live answer to your customers calling. A much better approach.
5. Voice Mail in General - The use of Voice mail has been rapidly declining for many years, this is unlikely to change. Many callers will likely drop the call rather than leaving a lengthy voice mail. Not a very customer friendly way to start a new interaction.
6. Remote Voicemail Passwords - We're seeing many businesses struggle with remote workers accessing their voice mail passwords. Talk to your provider and provide instructions to staff. For those who have never worked remotely before, this can be a new experience.
Connecting with Your Customers
All Companies have customers to take care of. This is an ideal time to reach out to those people. Whether you are a small Accounting firm or a large company providing Insurance services. People are getting peppered with news and media about Covid-19. A change of pace with a warm call from a supplier is potentially a good message to be heard at this time.
1. Outbound Calls - This can be either a Formal or an Informal process. People change roles all the time and if you are looking for a good time to call out and try and update those contacts. There are tools that can provide Outbound dialling software to assist the process. Contact BrantTel if this is of interest to your business.
2. Custom Email templates for staff - Enable staff with some email templates while they are connecting with your customers, keep the message consistent. Whether you are a small or larger business consistency of message is important.
3. Update your CRM - While you are doing those outbound calls, update your CRM, and if you have any insights from those calls, log them too.
4. Free or low cost tools to enable remote meetings, help you keep in touch with your customers, offering a human interface.
5. Web Site and Web Chat - With the landlines and cellular networks so busy, people are turning to self help online. At the very least implement a non-integrated web chat you can use on your homepage, it lets your customers know that you are still operating and many people are comfortable using these types of interaction tools.
6. Update staff voice mail greetings - This may seem like a no brainer, however, every person has their own unique way of explaining where they are and how to reach them. Provide a standard message that all staff can use as a script to record a greeting, it's neater, and the messaging is more consistent.
7. Email Signatures - Many organizations use custom email signatures with pictures, logos etc. During this time of working remote - a good time to update your critical numbers and related contact information if it has changed.
BrantTel is committed to helping businesses out during this crisis, if you need assistance or simply advice about how to stay connected with your staff and your customers, don't hesitate to reach out to us. This is what we do as a company and this is our core business.
The Team @ BrantTel