The Telephone Call: The Lifeline to Customer Trust

By Jill Nelson, Founder & CEO, Ruby Receptionists

Jill Nelson, Founder & CEO, Ruby Receptionists

Back in January, Facebook VP of Messaging Products David Marcus raised eyebrows when he predicted the disappearance of the phone number. “Why call when you can engage business through Messenger threads?” he posited.

" The telephone call makes or breaks a customer’s trust with your brand "

And it’s true, the means and methods of communicating are proliferating at reckless speeds. Companies are connecting with their customers through email, web chat, texting, messaging, web conferencing, social media, and chat rooms to rattle off a few. But when the time comes for making a purchase, nothing wins a customer over like the trust you can gain by creating a great call experience.

In our digital age, we are no longer constrained to do business with our neighbors. Online ordering, real time tracking, and free two-day shipping offers make long distance transactions more than attractive. This, combined with the rise in mobile search, is driving more business phone calls than ever before. In fact, according to the 2015 Invoca Call Intelligence report, 52 percent of people that connect with a business after doing a mobile search do so with a phone call, and 61 percent say “click to call” is the most valuable feature in the purchase phase of shopping. The phone call isn’t going anywhere, and it’s your most valuable communication channel.

At Ruby, we have built a live virtual receptionist service on the Interactive Intelligence Unified Communications platform. We still use traditional PRIs, but we are transitioning to feature rich cloud based platforms like Twilio. Regardless of the platform, consistently delivering a friendly and helpful experience to help our small business customers grow their business is our single-minded goal. Here are a few of the ways we’ve leveraged our CTI and ACD queuing create the personal experience:

Leveraging caller data to connect a customer.

We expect a CTI to include a customer’s order history and call records. But by leveraging third party integrations, you can expand your CTI with instant access to the caller’s local weather and sports team news to promote a personal connection. Make sure to include room on the screen to gather personal anecdotes to use as conversation starters for a call at a later date.

Deliver a WOW by answering the phone.

At Ruby, 99 percent of all our calls are answered live within four rings. In this day and age nothing gets a WOW like being presented with a friendly person ready to help when you were expecting long hold times. We engineered our queues so that even when all of our team members are engaged, a backup team (who also handles our email correspondence) is there to greet callers before placing them in the hold queue. And our creative staffing model and real time analytics allow for perfect phone coverage at all times of the day.

Create a CTI with Decision Trees Rather than Call Scripts.

Designing a decision-tree based CTI creates a more personal experience than forcing a highly trained agent to simply read a script. Combine caller provided information with call data and customer history for the smartest and most helpful sounding agents around.

In today’s world, the telephone call makes or breaks a customer’s trust with your brand. By leveraging your communications platform, your telco can be your best sales channel.