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It’s no secret that successful businesses use the most efficient processes. But what does it mean to be ‘efficient’? Usually, it means being able to produce a product or provide a service with fewer resources than other companies in your industry. For this to happen, every aspect of your business needs to run smoothly, from accounting and finance to human resources and customer service. However, one area of business operations that often gets overlooked is efficiency at the operational level.
Automate Your Call Flow
A call flow is a script that automates your calls and gets you to the right person at the right time. For example, let’s say you have an employee who handles new customers and another who deals with existing customers. You can use a call flow to automatically route calls from new customers to your new customer specialist while forwarding calls from existing customers to your existing customer specialist without having them ring on hold or wait in the queue until their number comes up.
To create this automated system, you need to know what questions will be asked about the caller during each stage of their interaction with your company. And then build a series of branching scripts to guide them through these interactions until they reach someone who can help them resolve whatever issue brought them in contact with your company in the first place.
You may also want an easy way for people outside of work hours like friends or family members who are trying to get in touch with someone at work but don’t have the access number provided by the HR department yet. These types of individuals could easily find themselves stuck waiting on hold indefinitely if there were no other way around this “wall” between regular office hours versus evenings/weekends when most people would rather not take off work anyway.
Forward Calls To Your Cell Phone
You can use a landline call forwarding service, which is an easy way to reduce the number of times you have to travel home and check for messages. If you don’t want to be confined by just one number, adding a VoIP app to your smartphone will enable you to receive calls on multiple lines with different numbers. It can help keep business contacts separate from friends and family members so that they never feel like being pulled into a professional conversation out of the blue.
Using Google Voice as an alternative solution allows business owners to juggle multiple jobs or responsibilities at once. Such as parents who have small children at home while trying their best not to miss essential meetings during work hours, to give themselves more time on the clock without sacrificing efficiency.
Use a Virtual Receptionist
One of the biggest challenges for any business is managing incoming calls. According to a report, most businesses miss about 22% of the calls they receive. They can be a huge distraction, especially when you’re trying to get things done and you need to devote your full attention to other tasks. It’s also difficult when your hands are tied up with other work and there isn’t anyone around to answer the phone.
A virtual receptionist can act as an assistant who will answer calls, route them correctly and keep track of all communication through your company’s phone number. This person will greet callers with a friendly tone and ask how they can help them before transferring them over to someone else on the team who is already familiar with what they do. It saves time by ensuring that important information gets passed along quickly without any issues getting lost in translation between departments or people unfamiliar with what each other does at work every day.
It’s not just about efficiency; it also helps businesses create better customer service experiences because customers don’t have to wait as long for someone else within their organization before getting connected with someone who knows about their needs and wants too.
Assign a Unique Extension to Each Department and Employee
One of the most important aspects of increasing operational efficiency is assigning a unique extension to every department and employee. It allows you to track how long each department takes to answer incoming calls and which employees have a higher call volume.
When you use a system that allows you to assign extensions, it’s easier for your business to organize and make changes as necessary. For example, if an employee leaves the company or is moved into another position, they can easily be removed from their old extension list with one click of a button.
Monitor Your Customer Service Strengths and Weaknesses
You first need to put a system in place that will allow you to monitor your customer service strengths and weaknesses. You can do this by using software such as Salesforce, which has a variety of customizable dashboards that allow you to track metrics like lead generation, client retention rate, and more.
By monitoring your customer service regularly, you’ll be able to identify areas where improvements can be made. For example: if a large percentage of customers are complaining about the speed at which they receive responses from your support team after they submit questions or concerns via email or chat, then this indicates an area where you may want to consider hiring more employees or improving communication between existing employees so as not lose customers due to slow response times.
Set Up an Auto-Attendant
When you’re trying to run a business, every minute counts. That’s why it’s crucial to set up an auto-attendant for your company. An auto-attendant is a phone system that answers calls and directs them to the right person. It can be used to direct calls to different departments, extensions, or voicemail, direct calls between time zones, or even route mobile numbers into a voicemail for efficiency. The more efficient your team is at getting things done—and answering their phones—the more productive they’ll be.
Leverage Find Me/Follow Me
If your employees work remotely, you can use find me/follow me to make it easier for them to be contacted when needed. As per a report, Find Me/Follow Me is one of the top VoIP features that increases the productivity of small businesses. Find Me/Follow Me allows you to designate a specific employee as the “finder” and identify another employee as the “follower.”
When the finder is in the proximity of a device marked with this setting, their phone will alert them that an active follower is waiting for contact. The finder can then initiate a call or chat session with the follower right from their iPhone or iPad by tapping on their name in the same way they would create a stable connection between two people within your business’ app.
You don’t need to be a big business or a big brand to experience the benefits of improving your operational efficiency. Small companies can do it too! By implementing these simple tips, you can streamline your company’s customer service and ensure that every call you receive is handled quickly and accurately.
