Improving the Language You Use With Customers

Posted by Ahmed Macklai on October, 31 2019 7:29 pm

The way you speak to your customers is the backbone of how your business functions. When it comes to customer interaction, the call center relies almost exclusively on conversations. The language you use with your consumers - whether they are callers in an inbound center or clients in an outbound calling facility - can make all the difference in how you are received.

Here, we will discuss how language impacts customer interaction - and the role of training and technology in preparing your agents for success in using it to its fullest potential in your center.

Common Customer Interaction Mistakes

Call center agents are human beings. They are going to make mistakes from time to time. However, some mistakes are all too common when it comes to interaction with customers - and also avoidable.

Teach your contact center agents to avoid the following missteps to keep from upsetting a customer or further flustering an already distraught consumer:

  • Telling someone to calm down. This undermines a person’s feelings and tells them that their opinions or perspective are not valid. Avoid this phrase, replacing it with solutions to the problem instead.
  • Admitting that you don’t know something. While it is important to be honest with a customer, a flat, “I don’t know,” is never what they want to hear. Instead, let them know you will find the answer for them.
  • Insisting that there is nothing that can be done about a policy or rule. While this may be the case, empathy is your best bet in these situations. Do your best to comfort and console a frustrated consumer and offer solutions that can help them through a difficult situation - even if you can’t give them the answer they want.

Delighting Your Customer with Language

Now you see what doesn’t work in the contact center setting - and how important language can be when it comes to customer interaction. So, what does work? What types of words and phrases are the best to employ when dealing with frustrated, confused, or angry customers, and how can you use language to create positive customer experiences?

The key is to think of the way successful brands utilize language as an aspect of their customer experience in and of itself. A popular fast-food restaurant chain is well known for their over-the-top pleasantries and bend-over-backward customer service - and they fully embrace that part of their brand. In many of their advertisements, they let consumers know that they should expect that superior service, and as a result, customers flock to their locations nationwide.

This brand understands the importance of language in customer interaction. Their products are well-received, but their service is just as important to their success. They don’t just serve customers promptly and efficiently. Employees delight their customers with politeness and pleasantry. By using language, they make consumers feel welcome, attended to, and taken care of. It keeps people coming back, day after day.

You can’t employ exactly the same techniques as a chicken restaurant in your contact center’s exchanges with customers, but you can learn something from them. By using the words you say and the way you say them, you can create a superior experience for your customer. You can make them feel not just efficiently served, but delighted with the service they receive. That delight is the deciding factor between good customer service and an amazing customer experience.

Training Your Agents Toward Success

While it’s important for your management team members to know what kind of language is best used with your customers, it is even more important for your agents and frontline staff to understand these techniques. Training is a key element in success when it comes to creating a consistently positive customer experience for your callers or clients. When you want to ensure positive customer interaction, train your agents toward that goal - and provide them with the information they need to provide excellent service and memorable experiences for every consumer they speak with.

Integrating training into your agents’ everyday routines isn’t always easy. There are numerous approaches to training your staff; none are the absolute correct choice. You have to find what works for your center and your employees.

Many of today’s most successful centers benefit from training opportunities that are built into their regular operations. Using software that prompts employees who are not actively engaged with customers to undergo short training sessions, this type of training reinforces concepts and refreshes your staff’s memory on important information that they need to succeed in providing great service to your customers. It also doesn’t detract from their workday or take them out of their seats for out-of-office training sessions, a major benefit that many management team members enjoy.

The Role of Technology in Great Customer Interaction

Outfitting your operation with the best possible technology is important, but it probably doesn’t sound like a crucial factor in language-based customer interaction. However, those who understand the importance of training your agents to use the right language with customers - and reinforcing those concepts regularly - know just how important technology truly is.

The easy-to-employ training mini-sessions mentioned previously are only possible with the right technology. Deploying them manually - without software that launches them automatically for the agent - would be time-consuming and distracting. What’s more, it would negate the purpose of their use- to fill the time an agent is not actively engaged in serving a consumer with something meaningful to their development.

At ChaseData, we offer the software solutions that today’s contact centers and business processing centers are looking for. Not only do we equip facilities with the basic tools for success - from dialers to workforce management and more - but we also help management team members provide training opportunities to their workforce. Providing this training is the best possible way to keep agents sharp and well-versed in the ways language impacts customer interaction - and help them continue to provide great customer service.

Give us a call today to learn more about putting this technology - and these techniques - to work in your facility.

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