“When the VP asked me to start supporting customers over the phone, I told him no. “
In this series called “Slow the flow” we’re talking about different ways to reduce customer inquiries.
Today, we’re focusing on phone calls.
📞 There are likely 3 reasons you’re taking phone calls in customer support.
- Your industry requires it
- You’ve always had a listed phone number
- Your company wants to provide more ways to communicate with customers
While working for a software company, the software was installed into 3rd party hardware. 🎥
We were requested to provide 24/7 phone support, while we weren’t equipped to do that. No phone systems, only personal cell phones.
Also, it wasn’t our company’s hardware, so, we couldn’t troubleshoot hardware issues, only our software connection.
The VP said we need to post our phone number on the website and proactively give it out to customers so we could provide 24/7 phone support.
As the Director of Customer Experience, I told him no, we won’t be doing that. But, I had another solution without opening up phone lines and training our team on a new channel.
Here’s what’s possible:
Workflows can be created based around language used, options can be selected during the triage routing, or email addresses detected when the customer messages us.
This was our SOLUTION → We created Slack notifications between our support team and the hardware company’s support. So, when someone requested phone support, specific to the hardware but it was through our Intercom instance, we were able to figure out if we should call them, or the hardware company.
Because of this process, we got on the phone with a customer only 5 times per month.
If we added a phone number to our website, this would have easily increased phone support over 100 times the volume of the expected true use case.
If I allowed phone support, my decision would have flooded our team and burnt them out.
💡Here’s what you should know
It was important to me that our customers contacted us in the right communication methods for the right reasons.
I didn’t want customers calling our team about a software issue that could have been handled by chat.
.
Here’s an example of deprecating phone support ⤵
A non-profit organization gets roughly 30 calls per day and it’s the same question.
Where are the food trucks going to be today?
The information is listed in the knowledge base AND on the marketing site, but people call anyway because they’re likely repeat customers. This phone number is solely for responding to food truck questions. The answers are in an Intercom Article, so we’re going to automate the calls in English, Spanish and Mandarin with their AI phone system.
Can you imagine reducing 150 calls per week?
This brings me to a couple of points
First, if your industry requires a phone number and the responses are mostly informational, consider setting up an AI-first automated response to be your first solution.
Set key word triggers and actions to send to a human, while you can reduce the number of calls you receive.
Second, question the need for a phone number. Do customers really need to contact you via phone, or can they use another method?
To slowly ease callers off, start telling people about your support articles, your chat or other methods.
Conditioning existing customers to move away from phone support takes time, and it doesn’t hurt to start today.
Let me ask you this question
What would it feel like to know your handling customers in the right channels and in the right way?
If that sounds like the goal you’re aiming for, stick with me just for a minute.
Too many CX leaders, even the tenured ones, find themselves stuck, unsure how to move forward.
There’s already so much on your plate that it’s difficult to find time to figure out how to evaluate workflows, create new processes, or scale for success.
Scaling CX feels like an uphill battle. Does this sound familiar?
Staying stuck in this cycle isn’t sustainable and is costing you time, energy, and future growth.
The good news is you don’t have to figure this out all alone.
That’s why I offer you the opportunity to schedule a free 30 minute growth session.
This is a no obligation, no pressure call, and is your chance to explore how I can help you organize, prioritize, optimize or advise your CX strategy.
I’m working with companies just like yours, scaling their businesses and building predictable processes, so they can spend less time trying to learn everything on their own, while freeing up time, allowing them to focus on what they’re passionate about.
Your next big breakthrough might just be one conversation away.
