Why do you need to improve your internal call handling?
According to a recent American Express survey, 78% of customers have terminated a purchase they were going to make because of poor customer service. 96% of customers won’t report bad service, choosing to buy from someone else instead. On average loyal customers are worth up to 10 times their original purchase and a key factor in keeping a customer loyal is their satisfaction when they contact you. These statistics raise the important of effective call handling to help retain and build loyal customers. With this in mind we have compiled 5 ways to improve business call handling as follows:
1. Set a target for answering calls – of course it would be easy to answer all calls within two rings just by hiring more staff but this is probably not commercially feasible. The industry standard target for business to business call centres is 80% of calls answered within 20 seconds with the best performing above 90%. Balance what your customers expect against what is affordable and make sure everyone understands these targets.