Business growth and sustenance depend a whole lot on making the customer feel respected, valued, and cared for. It’s particularly vital for small and medium businesses. One of the ways to satisfy customers is to give them top-notch services, and inbound call handling is a big part of the customer support process.

Today, we’ll get deep into:

  • How important inbound call management is for small and medium companies
  • Strategies you can use to handle customer calls
  • Tips for efficient telephone call handling
  • New technologies that are revolutionizing the process

What is inbound call handling?

Inbound call handling is the process of managing a business’s incoming calls, which are phone calls that come in from customers and potential customers. Calls can come in for any number of reasons, including for queries, technical support, complaints, and service requests. Regardless of what the calls are about, you absolutely must take the calls to maintain the customer’s trust and satisfaction levels.

Why is inbound call handling important?

When a customer or potential customer calls your business, they want to speak to someone on the other end. When you receive their calls and help them deal with whatever issue they have with your product or services, they feel heard and valued.

In a study, it was found that businesses stand to lose $1.6 million in annual revenue if they miss just 30% of inbound calls. In 64% of cases, calls are dropped by the customer if no one answers them in five minutes. You could solve this issue with voicemail machines, bots, and AI tools, but 4 out of 5 people in the study said that they prefer to talk to a human being when they call a business.

You can tell from these statistics how important it is to pick up calls coming in from customers. With effective inbound call management, you can build trust, catch more leads, increase sales, and boost productivity. If you miss a few calls here and there, you miss out on opportunities to get a new customer, make a good impression, or keep an existing customer happy. Moreover, customers who have paid for your products or services expect a certain level of support from your business, and answering their calls falls under this.

If your support services are slow or inadequate, your customers will go to a competitor who is prompt in answering incoming calls. So, missed inbound calls can be even more detrimental to the growth of small and medium businesses.

8 Inbound call management strategies for small businesses

1) Call routing

Call routing is a system of directing different types of calls in a way that puts the caller in contact with the right person/department. It’s an efficient call management system where you can ensure that callers with urgent issues and VIPs are given immediate attention. If you run a business with complex sales cycles and have branches in different locations, you’ll want to keep things organized with call routing.

2) Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

The IVR technology automatically accepts inbound calls, and callers are made to navigate to the answers through pre-recorded messages and touch-tone keypad inputs. It’s basically the voice you hear at the other end of the line, asking you to “Press 2 to talk to a customer support executive.” In this method, the customer finds their own way to the answers or department they are looking for.

When they are still not satisfied, they will press the option that will connect them to a human representative.

When they do get in touch with a customer support executive, they will already have a basic understanding of the customer’s needs thanks to the inputs made while navigating the pre-recorded messages.

4) Call queuing

Call queues are exactly what they sound like- a queue of callers waiting for their turn to speak to a customer support representative. Call queues come in handy when all your call agents are occupied with callers. Instead of giving the overflow of callers a busy tone or making them call again later, you can put them on hold in a line on a first-come, first-served basis.

A pre-recorded message lets the callers know their position in the queue and updates them every time a call agent is done with a customer. Callers also get a callback option so they can hang up without their queue position getting affected. When it’s their turn, the system automatically calls them back.

5) Outsourcing 24/7 call answering

Outsourcing inbound management works out for small businesses because they don’t usually have the resources for a dedicated customer service department. There are plenty of companies that offer 24/7 call answering services to small and medium-sized businesses. Their call agents and virtual assistants are trained with the right etiquette to handle calls from customers. The staff are also taught how to represent a business so the customers feel like they are talking to a company representative and not an unrelated entity.

Outsourcing companies offer various inbound call handling solutions, like:

  • 24/7 telephone call handling and live chat assistance (with bilingual and multilingual options) ,
  • Lead capturing and qualification,
  • Appointment booking,
  • Order management (for businesses like eCommerce, retail, etc.), and much more.

6) Data-driven call management

Use the data obtained during the customer calls to improve the call support process. You can find out what is the most common issue, which department they ask for the most, and much more. Use this data to adjust your IVR, customer relationship management (CRM), and other technologies to make call management easier and faster for a majority of your customers.

7) Use the contact center approach

If you feel like you aren’t able to serve your customers efficiently through calls alone, use an omnichannel approach, like in contact centers. Keeping an omnichannel support service or contact center will ensure that your customers can get help in whichever way they want. Granted that most people want to speak to a human on the phone, giving them other options like live chat, etc., makes it easier for them to demonstrate their issues with various media, like photos and videos.

8) Integrating with customer service software

If you are using call center software, integrate it with your customer service software so your agents can get the complete customer relation history. It makes call handling for your business much easier and more efficient.

Call handling best practices: Tips for efficient call management

Create customized call scripts

Scripts help call agents stay on track and always say the right things. When you have sufficient data on what kinds of problems are common, you can prepare the script accordingly so that the issues can be resolved quickly and consistently. You can also identify different scenarios your customers might face when using your products or services and prepare a script to deal with them.

Prompt problem resolution

Another important part of the inbound call center process is answering customer calls as quickly as possible. Some calls, like last-minute appointment cancellations or emergencies, require immediate attention from your business. Ensuring that the calls are answered promptly and the problems are addressed quickly shows the customers feel valued. Prompt responses also ensure that the customer’s issues don’t get worse.

Open the conversation enthusiasm

The way in which a call is answered had a big impact on the customer’s impression about your business. If the customer support representative answers the call with an enthusiastic greeting, the caller will feel like they are talking to a friendly person. Ensure that your call agents are professional and polite when answering calls. It’ll make your business come off as approachable, and customers will also feel respected. Also, train the customer service agents to introduce themselves and the business so the customer knows they’ve been connected to the right company/department.

Always have positive attitude

Many times, customers will call your business when they are angry or upset about some issue they have with your product/service. However, to reach the best solution and maintain good relations with the customer, your call agents should respond with a positive attitude. When you respond to the caller positively, they will become calm and feel at ease. It will also make the conversation much more civil and you can reach a proper solution.

Be engaged and listen well

Listen to what the customer is saying, understand them, and repeat to them what you have grasped about their issue. Like this, the caller will know that you are engaged in the conversation. This is also an important thing to do because you cannot solve a customer’s problem without first understanding it.

When talking to the customer, try your best not to interrupt them, as they will get annoyed and frustrated. Once you have understood the problem, repeat the issue and confirm all the details with the caller. It will reassure the customer, and they will feel less stressed because they believe that you are dedicated to helping them.

Be empathetic

Empathy is a very important quality for a customer support agent to have because it helps understand a problem from the customer’s perspective and is a trait that can’t be shown by AI or automated systems. And that’s most likely why customers prefer talking to a human when calling a business.

When your call agents display empathy, the customers will feel that you care about them, increasing their satisfaction levels. They will feel heard and valued by your business, and, over time, they will grow more loyal to your brand.

Train agents with industry-specific knowledge

It is never a good look for call agents to not have the necessary industry knowledge. Customers call your business so you can help them solve their issues. They expect you to have the answers. So, if your representatives don’t know what the caller is talking about, they will get the impression that your staff are poorly trained or inexperienced. Always ensure that you hire people with the required knowledge or train them sufficiently so they can provide satisfactory customer support.

Set expectations of problem resolution time frame

Sometimes, it won’t be possible to solve a customer’s problem during the phone call. However, don’t turn away the request. Instead, tell them what steps to take to solve the problem so they know what to do after the call. You should also let them know when to expect a call back from you with an update on the progress of the resolution.

Follow up and take action

After setting an expectation for the problem resolution, you must follow up with updates or resolve the issue entirely. It won’t be a good look if you tell the customer the problem will be resolved within a certain time frame and then forget about it. The customer will feel like you are not taking them seriously and lose trust in you. They’ll even stop doing business with your company and go to a competitor that has better customer service.

Always keep your promises if you want to retain your customers and keep them happy.

Technologies available for inbound call handling

Artificial intelligence-powered tools

Many call center software and CRMs today are integrated with AI tools for easy call handling for businesses. Some of the services they offer include:

  • AI virtual assistants
  • Chatbots
  • Automated call routing,
  • Real-time speech analysis
  • Data collection and analysis, and
  • Personalized customer engagement.

What these tools do is not replace people but help make the call agents more productive and fast in problem resolution. Because, at the end of the day, you can’t forget that customers still want a human to speak to when they are facing an issue.

Cloud-based call-handling software

So far, inbound call management software have been installed on local computers or servers. Nowadays, we have cloud-based software that are better at offering flexibility and scalability. It comes in handy as your business grows because the volume of incoming calls will increase and also fluctuate during the year.

Balancing Efficiency and Customer Care Through Effective Inbound Call Handling

Call management is the handling of calls coming in from existing or potential customers. The calls can be about anything: inquiry, feedback, request for technical support, to make a complaint, etc. As a business, you have to make sure that none of the calls go unanswered because you could lose out on sales opportunities and chances to make a customer happy. When you take their calls and solve their problems, the customers’ sentiment about your business and brand will improve greatly.

There are many strategies you can adopt for improving how you manage incoming calls (like using automation and AI), but it’s important to remember that customers usually prefer talking to an empathetic person. And the people who are answering these calls should be the best representation of your brand.