Customer phone calls are often very brief so they are frequently overlooked by companies as a critical piece of their brand reputation. Now more than ever, people are communicating and conducting their business over the phone. If you don’t have a robust strategy for measuring and monitoring the performance of your staff on the other end of that phone, you will fall behind your competition very quickly.
There are many different ways to structure your operations to handle incoming calls (automated receptionist, call center, etc.) but no matter which direction you go, you will need a mechanism to measure customer satisfaction. Surveying your customers after their interactions will give you direct feedback, which is certainly useful, but mystery shopping will give you an objective “deep dive” into how things are going, making it easier to identify opportunities for improvement. Surveys will tell you about how satisfied the customer is with the result of the call. Mystery shopping will tell you about certain aspects of the conversation that led to the result, such as:
- Mechanics of the call – Are customers getting to the right place?
- Employee phone presence – Is your staff giving off the right vibe?
- Employee product knowledge – Are customers getting the right answers?
- Employee selling skills – Is your staff pushing hard enough?
- Follow up/next steps – Do customers know what the next step is?
Using this method, companies can dictate to their mystery shopping partner exactly what their expectations are of their phone staff, and the shoppers can report back on each item based on their experience. The questions on the report carry a possible point value, which can be equal or weighted differently, so that each phone interaction may be scored against the same criteria each time. Rather than having to listen to each individual call or sort through surveys to find trends, mystery shop reports can be reviewed quickly to determine areas where staff may need additional training or coaching.
Phone call shops are very popular with our clients because they are easy to set up and customize and they are also inexpensive. Typically our phone shops range between $35-$60 each depending on the length of the call, the length of the report, whether or not we are recording them as well as several other factors.
Contact us today if you are interested in learning more about implementing a phone shop program at your company.