Missed customer service calls aren’t something to be underestimated. Here’s what could happen if you’re not careful.
Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to solidify trust and strengthen relationships. During these crucial moments, your brand can show your customers how effective you are in addressing issues, answering questions, or finalizing sales. Unfortunately, this elevates expectations and could sometimes lead to missed customer service calls.
Such lapses can have lasting consequences, especially now that customers expect instant responses. There’s actually a lot on the line for your brand for each missed call, so customer service mistakes like these should be avoided.
Why Every Call Matters
Customer service calls are one of the most direct forms of communication your brand can have with your customers. When customers reach out via phone, they are often looking for immediate assistance, advice, or clarification. Missing such calls, therefore, jeopardizes the trust customers have in your brand.
And in the era of instant gratification, swiftness and relevance are key to nailing each call. Customers no longer accept long wait times or unanswered calls. To avoid being seen as providers of poor customer service, you should adapt your call handling capabilities.
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Short-Term Consequences of Missed Customer Service Calls
The immediate impact of missed calls can be felt in several ways. First, there is the direct damage to customer relationships, as unmet needs and frustrations accumulate. Customers who feel neglected or ignored are less likely to continue doing business with a company.
Moreover, sales conversions and repeat business suffer, as customers may take their purchases elsewhere when they are unable to reach a representative in a timely manner.
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Long-Term Consequences of Missed Customer Service Calls
Over time, consistently missing customer service calls can result in higher churn rates. As trust erodes and customers become disengaged, the likelihood of them leaving your brand increases.
This decline in customer loyalty directly impacts customer satisfaction scores and your overall brand reputation. If your brand fails to address missed calls, your brand image will be tarnished in the long run, making it harder to attract and retain customers.
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Financial Repercussions
The financial impact of missed calls can also be significant. Your business may incur increased costs to regain lost customers and repair damaged relationships. These costs may include additional marketing efforts, offering incentives to win back lost customers, and investing in customer service improvements.
In extreme cases, your brand may face significant revenue loss due to the compounded effects of poor customer service.
Now let’s get to the specifics and learn more about what you could lose from customer service mistakes stemming from missing just one call:
1. Customer Trust
When you miss a customer service call, it could give the impression that you do not prioritize your customers. When callers get this feeling, they become hesitant to reach out in the future and slowly disengage from your brand. Rebuilding trust after such incidents is an uphill battle, far more challenging and expensive than maintaining it in the first place.
To maintain customer trust, responsiveness should be your focus. If your support staff is accommodating too many customers, you can implement a callback system or virtual hold queues. That way, customers will know when their concerns will be addressed without them having to start the conversation over.
2. Potential Revenue Opportunities
Whether it’s resolving a concern, helping a customer complete a purchase, or upselling additional products and services, customer calls are critical to your bottom line. Miss one, and your revenue streams will be compromised. Most callers would need support from your brand or are already ready to purchase a product. But if you don’t respond, they’ll switch to a competitor.
A more streamlined operation can avoid poor customer service from slipping through the cracks. Intelligent call routing systems, for example, give customers the reassurance that they will be directed to the personnel who can best address their needs. Meanwhile, when call volumes are high, you can outsource customer support to a reliable provider.
3. Competitive Advantage
Today’s customers expect prompt and effective service, and if your business fails to meet these expectations, they will not hesitate to turn to competitors who can. A single missed call might not seem significant, but it reflects poorly on your brand’s ability to handle customer needs. Dissatisfied customers could be won over by competitors who are more responsive.
If you haven’t tried outsourcing your customer service, here’s a page you can take from their book. Having a workforce management system can help your brand forecast call volumes and maximize coverage during peak times. Once these are set, it won’t be hard for your brand to deal with different customer needs.
4. Brand Reputation
Your brand’s reputation is built on the cumulative experiences of your customers. When you give them something positive, you generate loyalty. Meanwhile, if you miss just one call from customers, they will think that their concerns mean nothing to you. Naturally, these missed customer service calls will translate into negative reviews and low customer satisfaction scores.
Proactive communication mitigates the damage from such customer experience mistakes. For starters, automated follow-ups effectively acknowledge missed calls and provide alternative ways for customers to reach out. Additionally, offering personalized recovery solutions, such as discounts or compensation, can help rebuild goodwill with frustrated customers.
5. Customer Insights
Customer feedback is one of the most valuable resources your business can have. It provides insights into what your customers appreciate, where they re struggling, and how you can improve your offerings. Customer service calls are a primary channel for collecting this feedback, so when a call gets unanswered, you’ll be missing out on critical information.
Fortunately, phone calls aren’t the only avenue for your brand to gather feedback. Online surveys, social media, and email forms can give customers the flexibility to provide input that could be of great help to your brand. Incentivizing customers for giving their opinions could also work, too.
Final Thoughts
Every missed customer service call is a missed opportunity to build trust, secure revenue, and strengthen your competitive position. Over time, these lapses accumulate into larger issues, from a tarnished brand reputation to a lack of actionable insights that stifle innovation.
Avoiding customer experience mistakes means your brand has to make sure that each customer is valued. When you prioritize the customer experience, you not only preserve your bottom line but you also protect your brand from being perceived as a provider of poor customer service.
Say Goodbye to Missed Customer Service Calls with Open Access BPO
It’s been mentioned before, but outsourcing truly is the most effective way to never miss a customer service call again. Outsourcing to Open Access BPO, in particular, reveals new ways to serve your customers.
We at Open Access BPO guarantee responsiveness to every customer reaching out to your brand. This is made possible by our diverse teams and multichannel capabilities. What’s more is our solutions are available in more than 30 languages, allowing your brand to cater to as many customers anytime and anywhere.
Get in touch with Open Access BPO to tap into high-value customer solutions.
There’s a reason why most brands are obsessed about speeding up their customer support processes: they don’t want to miss even just one call from their clients.
Unfortunately, there are cases when this is unavoidable, especially if you’re in the middle of a hectic period such as during holidays or when you’re going through a nightmarish public reputation crisis.
You might also not be able to handle all incoming transactions if you’re understaffed, or if your labor demand forecasts were inaccurate. In these situations, your call center agents may not be able to cope with transaction surges. Thus, they might resort to putting callers on hold or leaving live chat, email, and social media messages unanswered. Customers on the other end of the line would then grow frustrated and end up ditching the interaction altogether.
The thing is, when it comes to customer service, a missed call is a missed business opportunity. But have you ever wondered what you really lose when you fail to attend to a customer who’s trying to reach you?
Here are the five things you’re forfeiting if you fail to handle a support transaction.
1. A prospective buyer
The secret of all successful businesses is that they treat every single consumer as a prospective buyer. Call centers must adopt this same principle when they deliver customer support.
Every person who gets introduced to a brand can potentially become a buyer, and gradually evolve into a brand advocate. When this happens, they contribute a lot of value to your brand, and not just in monetary terms. Beyond this, they can help you reach more people as they recommend your products and services to their social circles.
Missing a call from a prospective customer thus translates to huge losses that are difficult to quantify. Customer service providers have a crucial responsibility, and that’s to represent a brand in the best possible light whenever they interact with a consumer.
2. Your stellar image
Customer experience leaders such as Starbucks, Zappos, and Amazon have built a stellar reputation, especially because they provide high-quality support to their clientele. These brands thus can’t afford to slack off when it comes to assisting their customers in whatever way they can. Otherwise, the reputation they’ve worked hard to build will be tarnished.
Whenever you miss a call or a message from your customers, your reputation will always be put on the line. Customers can grow disappointed, and thus, they might spread negative feedback about your brand. It can be hard to repair a tainted reputation, making it difficult for you to acquire new customers.
3. A chance to delight customers
Every single customer service interaction gives you a chance to show customers what your brand is capable of. That’s why most call centers follow a set of guidelines on how to handle transactions across multiple channels. This way, they can make sure that their agents are adhering to the standards they’ve set.
On the other hand, ignoring a customer, even though you didn’t intend to, can create a negative impression. This is especially true if it’s a customer’s first time to reach out to your brand. You don’t want to have them instantly include your brand in the list of businesses they won’t be transacting with again. The thing is, this is exactly what would happen if you fail to take proper care of them when they reach out to you.
4. Useful insights and feedback
Customer support calls aren’t just business opportunities. They’re also rich sources of useful insights and feedback, which you can use to create effective strategies.
A conversation with a customer gives you a glimpse of their wants and needs. Without these pieces of information, your organization will be flying blind, as you’ll surely not be able to capture people’s exact expectations.
5. Customers’ trust
Meaningful customer relationships are built through performance consistency. Brands and their call centers must work hard to deliver consistently high-quality services to secure people’s trust. This means responding to their queries quickly, empowering them with relevant and updated information, and finding ways to upgrade the customer experience.
Missing a call and leaving messages unanswered on your live chat, email, and social media platforms are often signs of incompetence. So make sure that you’re always sufficiently staffed and that you have all the resources you need for an exemplary performance.