How to handle calls effectively in any team

A look at how Call Manager Plus can support any team using cloud telephony

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Following on from our last blog where the fundamentals of customer service were discussed, it’s now time to look at the technology that will help support any inbound or outbound team when using cloud telephony (or VoIP) to interact with customers.

To deliver a first-class customer service experience you must combine a first-class team with the right technology. Firstly, you need to understand the needs of your team, will they be answering calls like a taxi firm, or engaging with customers two-way, making and receiving both outbound and inbound calls like a sales team? Either way Windsor Telecom’s Cloud Telephony service with Call Manager Plus could be the service you’re looking for.

Let’s have a look at some of the features that you’ll need when building the perfect customer service team.

Call queues

Call queuing is one of the first processes that should be addressed when looking at inbound. We have all spent countless hours waiting on a phone, listening to awful hold music slowly getting more and more annoyed. Addressing call queuing is critical, making sure that people are directed to the right person via a planned IVR (interactive voice response) as quickly as possible.

Do you know when your peak times are? Can you quickly and easily add or remove people from queues and hunt groups to match the ebb and flow of call volume? Can you create the exact call routing you need to match a special promotion quickly and efficiently? Being able to do all of these things and more effortlessly is vital to keeping your customer service welcoming and flowing at all times.

Personalised greeting

Other options to have while the customers are on-hold include simple things like hold music that is appropriate to your business and a personalised greeting. Making sure you give customers an alternative to waiting on the phone is another good tip. Having a self-help, FAQ or knowledge base section on your website is a great way of reducing the number of calls received – remember to direct customers to it in your IVR if it’s new and not yet well-used.

User availability management

Everyone loves a team that’s self-sufficient, but so many large-scale contact centre solutions are overkill for small team needs. You just need visibility and control over your teams’ availability to answer calls, set breaks and adjust wrap-up time between each call.

That’s why we’ve launched Call Manager Plus as an extension to our Cloud Telephony solution. It provides exactly this, plus access to analytics and stats so everyone can see how many calls are being managed, how long individuals have been on break and how they’re comparing to other team members. It empowers every team member to visualise the customers’ journeys and plan out their day most effectively to deliver that five-star service we all strive for.

Real-time reporting and wallboards

As the manager, you’ll also have access to these analytics as well as real-time wallboards that give you a visual representation of what’s happening; call queues, call abandonment and time to answer. All these features give you the powerful information to analyse and improve the customer service, recognise trends and identify where employees may need help, or who should be employee of the month.

Making calling straightforward

If you find that your teams are having to balance lots of different internal systems, your can streamline your interfaces by integrating both Cloud Telephony and Call Manager Plus directly with Microsoft Teams, creating one seamless communication and collaboration tool. Not only can you receive calls this way but colleagues proactively contacting customers can use the inbuilt dialler capability to manage their outbound calls too.

So, whether you’re in sales team, customer service, tech support or maybe something more niche like a charity donation line or taxi bookings – anyone having to manage a high volume of calls every day needs the right, straightforward technology to make their days easy and enjoyable, as it’s only when your internal teams are achieving that that your customers will too.

Head over to Call Manager Plus to find out more or contact one of our experts to have a conversation about how you can deliver a first class customer service experience.