Get the call to the right person and brand loyalty will follow

Neil Worker, Head of Sales for the UK Commercial, talks about the importance of customer service in tough economic conditions.

The answer to growing a business is simple: focus on customer service. Customer Loyalty and brand reputation are paramount if today’s businesses are to flourish.

A key component of customer service is being able to manage customer enquiries and sales made over the telephone to the highest standard.

We know that, regardless of industry, today’s CIOs are focused on three key interlinked aspects of call handling right now: achieving enhanced and unparalleled resilience; coupled with real-time agility; at a much reduced cost. They want to preserve the quality of every aspect of service that touches their customers, but need to find ways of doing this that are affordable and have longevity. And they are looking for ways of maintaining (and even improving) service standards that have long-term value, rather than being led down a technological cul-de-sac.

The smartnumbers portfolio offers a cost-effective way to ensure incoming calls are always received. The lifeblood of many businesses is the management of incoming calls, as many of these are revenue generating. The assurance that every customer’s call is routed to the best person to resolve their query, irrespective of circumstance is of significant value and can be brand differentiating. Many circumstances that can compromise this are often out of a businesses’ direct control. Denial of access to critical locations, local network or equipment failure, or even office relocations must have a robust business continuity plan in place. The agility to divert calls elsewhere in the network, or even allow staff to work from mobiles or homes can deliver essential business value. For many using a smartnumbers solution allows them to manage call centre environments in a far more cost effective, flexible and resilient manner.

Another key aspect I come up against time and time again is finding technology that can do what CIOs want it to do, and yet won’t be obsolete a few years down the line. Many businesses that have made significant, and relatively recent, investments in infrastructure that they are rightly reluctant to scrap. This is not to say that these organisations don’t want to move towards an IP and cloud-based environment — they’re just not yet ready.

Because our services work across any network, CIOs have the flexibility to move to IP when required. The bottom line is that they won’t be going down a technology cul-de-sac and have the ability to deploy services at a pace they can dictate.