Mystery Calls
What can they do for your business?
Mystery calls are a powerful tool in measuring your customer experience over the phone. By using mystery calling, companies can accurately analyze and address the manner in which customers are greeted and helped when calling into the business. This data in turn allows for the improvement of the frontline service, training strategies, and effectively follow-up on development of further customer experience improvements.
Mystery calls can measure a variety of things, but, most popularly it can be used to measure specific aspects of a customer call, such as:
- Waiting time. How long does it take before a call is answered, how long does a customer spend on hold?
- Treatment. How does the staff member on the line greet a customer, how do they ask questions and listen to customer needs and enquiries, is it up to the standards laid out by the company?
- Transfers. If the call needs to be transfered, how is that handled? Is the customer transferred to the correct department each time?
- Company Information. Does the staff member answering the call provide all the relevant company and brand information? Are they relaying the relevant and correct news and information to the client
- Communication. Does the staff communicate clearly and correctly? Are they using active listening skills?
- Product and Service knowledge. Is the staff member on the call knowledgeable about the latest services and products? Can they provide answers to questions when asked about details?
- Up-selling and cross-selling. Does staff make use of up and cross selling opportunities?
- Follow-ups. Is follow-up contact made when relevant?
- Farewell. Are customers given the proper goodbye at the end of their call? Is staff following the appropriate guidelines and making use of the correct scripts if relevant?
When a proper mystery call program is set up, a company can reap the benefits almost instantly. The benefits of a mystery call program include improving customer experience, and, as we’ve established, great customer experiences directly improve sales. In addition to that, the current information that comes back from the program can help develop better training and guidelines for the entire company.
Mystery calls can be a great boon to any business when set up and used correctly. It’s not enough to just run the program though, it’s important to make sure the data is used correctly. After all, all the data in the world will only make a difference if it’s actionable.
A real time understanding of what’s working in your company’s phone system, improves the preparedness of staff – the more prepared, the more confident, staff are the better able they’ll be to help customers. The better the customer experience and service, the stronger their sense of loyalty towards your company’s brands and services; who knows, with the right amount of effort and service level, customers may start acting as your best source of marketing – brand ambassadors.
