For a business to thrive and grow in today’s world, it has to harness all the resources at its disposal to drive sales. A company that can win new customers over its competitors is the one that will grow in the long run.
Customer support is an essential component of sales-driven businesses. If a business wants to convert as many potential visitors and inquirers into customers, its customer support has to be top-notch.
However, sometimes even the best customer support agents lack the talent to drive sales alongside solving customers’ problems. It’s a skill that one acquires after spending a hefty period getting industry knowledge and experience.
Providing satisfactory support to potential customers is one thing, but converting them into actual customers is an entirely different story — and not every support agent can handle this task.
Want to convert every caller into a customer and drive more sales? Here’s everything you need to do.
Be available 24/7
Customers don’t like waiting to get a response to their queries. Whether they’ve sent you an email or a text message or calling you directly on the phone, they need someone to respond to their query immediately.
If you fail to respond to a customer query on time, they may ditch you and look for alternatives thinking you’re not available.
Make sure your customer support is ready to take and respond to customer queries 24/7.
Listen to the customer’s needs
If the inquirer is having an issue with your product or service, your support agents have to listen carefully. I know, support agents often have to hear the same query multiple times a
day, and they do feel they know what the customer wants by only listening to a portion of it. However, that’s not how you handle an asset as valuable as a customer.
No matter how confident the support agent is about their knowledge of the customer’s problem, they have to listen attentively to what the customer is saying.
This not only lets the agent understand the issue better, but also makes the customer feel like they are being listened. Your support team should never interrupt the customer mid-sentence.
Show them you know how they feel
Customers love being understood. Not only understood, but they also love being responded in a way that shows you really understand their problem and know exactly what they need.
Train your support team in a way that they clearly communicate with the customer throughout the call. While the agent is applying a fix or getting some other solution sorted out for the customer, he/she must keep the customer in the loop so they know they’re not being left behind.
Partner with a phone answering service
As a small business owner, you don’t have the resources to set up a customer support department that can operate 24/7. Neither do you have the budget to hire a workforce talented enough to provide industry-specific support to the customers.
That’s where phone answering services come in.
When you partner with a phone answering service, you know you can rely on their professional customer support agents who know how to provide excellent support to potential customers, as well as drive sales for you along the way. Moreover, their agents have industry-specific knowledge about your particular business, making sure no customer query is left unhandled.
Conclusion
To increase the conversion rate and drive sales through customer support, you need to train your agents to have the above-mentioned skills.
However, as you don’t have the budget and resources to set up a state-of-the-art customer support department in-house, you should partner with a phone answering service for this job.
