Marketing
5 Trends in How Covid-19 Is Changing Business Phone Calls Written By JAYSON PEARL
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n response to Covid-19, brands are adapting their services, offering different products and deals, and introducing new safety programs and processes. As business owners work as quickly as they can to implement these changes, finding time to train their teams for handling phone calls from stressed consumers can be challenging.
How to help • To understand what callers value most, ask them about their needs. With first-time callers, take a moment to explain how your business serves customers. Let them know what information you need from them to best respond to their reason for calling.
Even if a business isn’t fully open, understanding the changes in today’s consumer behavior and expectations can help in planning as talk begins about a recovery. Training for the new normal will require abandoning assumptions, while building new skills calibrated to today’s changing caller needs.
• It’s more important than ever to ask the caller to take the next step. Front-line team members can’t assume that callers know how the business works with customers if they’re calling for the first time.
With data from ServiceScore performance reporting from thousands of incoming phone calls to franchise brands across the country, we’re sharing 5 trends – and the skills that front-line team members can use to build trusting connections with callers. 1. Call volume is lower, but quality is high • If someone is calling a business these days, they have an urgent need. With companies changing their hours, services, and ways of doing business, many consumers find themselves seeking new providers, which can be the start of a new customer relationship with your brand.
2. Price sensitivity is higher • With family budgets strained by the economic shutdown, customers today are more concerned than ever about price. They’re asking about fees and other costs for the service – and trying to negotiate those away. How to help • Share how your business is adding more value at this time. Some brands are suspending certain fees and offering financing. Services are being added such as phone or virtual diagnostics and pick-up and drop-off. • More than ever, it’s important to share the unique value of what you do. This is especially true if your differentiators have changed as your products and service delivery have changed as a result of the coronavirus.
FRANCHISEUpdate
ISSUE 2, 2020
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