Want to improve your firm? Talk to Clare Yates! She has over 25 years’ experience in the property industry and is more than happy to share what she knows to help you get the best out of your business.
Here, she explains how training your team to make simple changes – such as avoiding jargon – can help to reduce repeat calls and improve efficiency:
Taking multiple calls from the same customer about the same thing is a waste of everyone’s time – but it can be avoided.
Try asking your team to be more proactive with these small tweaks to their telephone manner – and make sure that every customer gets the information they need first time around:
• Ask the customer to find a pen: If your team need to give a long answer to a question or explain a step-by-step process, they should ask the customer to find a pen first, so notes can be taken to refer to later on.
• Avoid jargon: Every industry has technical terms that they come to understand as “the norm”. Don’t make assumptions! If your team do need to use technical language, ask them to offer an explanation too.
• Double-check for understanding: A customer may politely agree with a member of your team as they explain something, but it doesn’t mean they are taking it all in. Before hanging up the phone, your team should always ask the customer if they have any questions about what has just been said, or if they would like anything to be repeated.
• Offer a follow-up email: If your team are explaining something particularly complicated, they could also offer to follow up with a helpful email. You could even share templates with the team to save time.
• …And actually send that email! In tmgroup’s mystery shop research, we discovered that 55% of firms that promised to send further information via email never followed through with their promise.
Take a step back…
If you could guarantee that every customer query could be resolved in a single conversation, what else would your team be able to achieve in their day?
With thanks to Clare Yates, Senior Business Development Manager at tmgroup.
Got a question? Connect with Clare on LinkedIn.
