We live in an age of instant gratification. Look no further than the supply chain issues plaguing the news lately. The world will absolutely grind to a halt because materials and goods harvested and built in the far reaches of the world might take weeks to get pulled out of a shipping container instead of hours. Look, we want our Amazon Prime deliveries NOW just like everyone else, so we are not advocating patience (where is that rubber horse mask I ordered?!). It’s just incredible to think that customer expectations have been raised so high, we expect nearly anything we could ever want or desire to magically appear on our doorstep within two days — or there will be hell to pay! This is why customer support is so critical to businesses big and small.
In this article, we cover:
- The instant gratification effect.
- Customer support statistics.
- How to transform phone communications into electronic communications.
Speaking of customer support, did you know that 78 percent of consumers will do business with a company again after a mistake if the customer service is excellent? Conversely, roughly 50 percent of customers would switch to a new brand after just one bad experience. In other words, get customer support right, and your customers will stick with you despite a rough patch. Get it wrong, and they’ll bail quickly. But in this day and age, it can feel impossible to maintain an effective presence on every channel customers use to voice their needs: email, social, chat, phones, carrier pigeons — you name it. What you need is agility and versatility (and maybe a good bird coop).
When you think about electronic communications channels, there are no real limitations. You can answer emails, social posts, and chats from just about anywhere: a mobile device, a desktop computer, probably even your fridge. But then there’s the phone calls. You need to set up a call center to traffic every ring and dozens of people to man every call, right? That’s going to get expensive and complicated quick.
And don’t even get us started on raising pigeons.
How to Do Customer Support Over the Phone Small Business Style
So it’s a choice between poor customer support over the phone or chartering a small village to handle it all, right? Not so fast. What if we told you there was another choice — a choice particularly well-suited for small businesses. It begins with a designated virtual phone number. It’s so simple, it’s genius. A virtual phone number transforms the concept of the land-locked land-line into something that resembles electronic communications more closely. By disconnecting the phone line from a physical location or SIM card, the possibilities begin to open up. Now you can make and receive phone calls, manage voicemails, and even send and receive text messages from virtually anywhere. And by leveraging the power of smart devices and app stores, a virtual phone number can be acquired and activated almost instantly on a whim. Instead of calling up Ma Bell to schedule a technician to come out and install wall jacks and handsets, you can just download an app, sign up, and get to work.
Cell phones aren’t even this fast to set up. Forget going down to your local Apple Store or Verizon store and dealing with some middleman to get you connected to a wireless network. You don’t even have to think about the cell towers in your area, whether you live in a reception black hole, or what operating system you want to pledge your allegiance to. Choose a virtual phone number provider, such as YouMail, select iOS or Android (depending on your smart devices), and go. You can even access your virtual phone number for your computer’s internet browser, Mac or Windows — it doesn’t matter.
Once you’re up and running, you can set up your virtual phone number as your primary customer support line and unlock the power of access anytime, anywhere. No matter where you are, if your support line is ringing, you can A) know the difference between whether your support line or your personal line is ringing, and B) answer it. With YouMail, you can even choose to let an incoming call get routed through an auto attendant — the caller receives a professional greeting that offers smart routing options and sends them to the destination of their choice. We even offer other smart options such as auto reply, call transfer, personalized greetings, unified inboxes, industry-leading call blocking, and more.
Better yet, our professional plans are priced for and suited to entrepreneurs, growing businesses, and established small businesses. So if you’re looking to improve your customer support and enjoy instant gratification, give YouMail professional plans a look.
