The age of consumerism signals greater opportunities for businesses to grow and develop. But as the number of businesses grows, so does the competition among them.
In addition to creating increasingly competitive products and services, businesses are focusing on meeting customer expectations and providing excellent customer service. They are adopting a customer centric approach, in which they try to understand customer perceptions and expectations.
In this sense, it’s integral that you bring your business’ communications up to scratch. B2C communications is often the most overlooked but important aspect of brand perception. Without a solid customer service procedure, your business will be left behind the ocean of other competitors who keep customers at the core of their operations. This is why setting up effective aftersales SOPs are crucial to modern business success.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) plays an important role in helping businesses maintain customer centricity. Read ahead to learn what VoIP and customer centricity mean, and why VoIP is essential in the age of customer centricity.
What is VoIP?
VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol is the transmission of voice and video content over the Internet through phone and video calls. VoIP technology foregoes the use of landline telephones and allows you to make and receive voice and video calls over the Internet.
How does VoIP work?
VoIP converts your voice into a digital file that is sent over the Internet. To do so, your phone first connects to your switch in your Local Area Network (LAN). When you dial a phone number, your Internet Protocol phone tells your VoIP provider to call the receiver’s phone number.
Your VoIP service converts your voice into a digital file, compresses it, and sends data packets from your phone to the receiver’s phone. The data packets received from the phone on the other end are converted back into sounds you can hear. Click here if you’re interested in learning more about VoIP.
What Is Customer Centricity?
Customer centricity means putting the customer first, where good communication is key. Customer centric companies try to understand their customers’ interests, perceptions, and expectations to deliver products, services, experiences, and customer service that ensure customer retention and loyalty.
With the consumer culture focusing on personalization, customer centricity requires quickly adapting to customer values and changing preferences.
Why is VoIP a Must-Have in the Age of Customer Centricity?
1. Provides a cost-effective call solution for small businesses
VoIP phones cost less to install than traditional wired phones and the call rates are lower as well. In fact, using VoIP phones can save small businesses about 45% over traditional phones.
So VoIP phones allow small businesses to maintain communication with customers without having to worry about costs, allowing them to maintain good customer service.
2. Offers tools to gauge customer service effectiveness
VoIP phones offer a queue dashboard that allow managers to see what the customer support team has been up to. On the dashboard, managers can see how many calls were answered, call durations, how many callers hung up, and the average time it took to answer a call.
Using this information, the manager can make decisions about how to improve customer service to keep customers satisfied.
3. Can use a toll-free number at a low cost
Toll-free numbers help establish credibility for a business, strengthen your brand image, and let potential customers see that you are a professional organization. Toll-free numbers also make it easier for customers to call you since they don’t incur a charge on outgoing calls.
Businesses can use a toll-free number with VoIP at an affordable cost. This allows both small and large businesses to maintain a connection with their customers and emphasize their commitment to them.
4. Allows extensions and direct phone numbers to people
With VoIP, you can have direct phone numbers and extensions for employees regardless of the geographic location. While a landline allows phone numbers and extensions with an area code, VoIP phone numbers and extensions are available for different locations.
This means VoIP cuts down on wait times for your callers and lets them reach whoever they need to talk to quickly. This serves not only to get concerns resolved by relevant team members but also gives a personal touch to the customer service as customers can dial extensions for specific people.
5. Offers the Interactive Voice Response feature
VoIP phones offer Interactive Voice Response, which not only greets callers but also guides them to reach their concerned department or resolve their complaints using a series of questions.
Using IVR can streamline the customer service experience and help resolve customer complaints quickly and effectively, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.
6. Offers voicemail to text option
Voice over Internet Protocol allows callers to leave voicemails for employees who may be unavailable.
VoIP can then email the audio file to the concerned employee, who can answer the voicemails later on.
Using voicemail is useful to customers who avoid long phone calls and would rather have their query resolved in a quick, precise manner.
7. Ensures that no call goes unanswered
Finally, VoIP ensures that all your calls are answered — even if there are network issues on your end or there is a lack of employees available to answer calls.
The cloud-based system receives all calls from customers, and guides them through their queries to help resolve them.
Unanswered calls or being left on hold can cause a lot of frustration in customers, and having all their calls answered promptly can help them feel cared for.
