Consistency in the quality of operations is vital for all franchise businesses. It helps ensure that the brand message is clear and recognizable. It also gives customers a uniform experience from store to store. Chances are you’ve received guidance from the franchisor on how to maintain consistency in your branding and messaging. Following these guidelines will only help your business grow.
But there are some areas where consistency is a little harder to maintain. One such example is how your employees handle phone calls. As a franchise business owner, you’ve likely offered training about answering the phones. In addition, you explained company practices and shared tips on properly communicating with customers. That said, not everyone learns at the same speed or retains the same amount of information they’ve been given during training. So how do you know if each employee is following best practices? And how do you know if your team, as a whole, is providing a consistent experience for customers on the other end of the line?
Answer: you monitor recorded calls, listen in on live calls, and provide coaching where necessary. These options are available with modern call recording technology, such as Clarity Voice Performance Monitoring tools. In this article, we will highlight the key benefits of call monitoring and coaching and how these techniques result in empowered employees, satisfied customers, and business growth.
5 Benefits of Call Monitoring and Coaching
The overarching reason to engage in call monitoring and coaching is to guide your employees and provide a consistently good experience for customers. When you do that, you’ll also reap these five benefits.
1. All callers are treated with tact, diplomacy, and professionalism.
Every customer contact is a potential opportunity, whether it’s a chance to tell people about your company, answer questions, make a sale, or strengthen customer’s loyalty. Regardless of the topic of the phone call (or the outcome!), you want the caller to hang up feeling good about your business—that it’s a place where employees are professional and customers are respected.
Of course, this isn’t always easy for employees, especially when the caller is being difficult, shouting, or not being respectful themselves. One of the benefits of call monitoring is that you can review these calls and provide specific advice on handling calls like that in the future. In fact, you may even find some shining examples of how to handle challenging situations and use these call recordings to train new team members. After all, research by McKinsey found that 70 percent of the customer’s journey is based on how the customer feels they are being treated. With call monitoring and coaching, that is entirely within your control.
2. Accurate information is being consistently relayed.
Another one of the benefits of call monitoring and coaching is that it allows you to check in on what information is being relayed to customers. As we mentioned earlier, employees may not remember everything they learned in training. They also could have received incorrect information from a coworker or made false assumptions.
By listening to calls, you have greater control over what information is going out to customers. When you notice an employee giving incorrect information, you can reach out to provide them with the right details. When you see many employees giving inaccurate information about the same topics, you can schedule a group training session to review what they need to know.
3. Customer service quality is maintained and measured.
The management expert, Peter Drucker, famously said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Never was this truer than in the area of customer service. Measuring customer service quality is essential because:
- Customer Service Impacts Sales: A study by 1st Financial Training Services found that 96 percent of unhappy customers don’t complain; however, 91 percent will simply leave and never come back. If you’re not monitoring calls and providing coaching, by the time you find out about poor customer service, it may be too late.
- Bad Customer Service Hurts the Brand Image: This is crucial to franchise business owners. It means that bad customer service at your location hurts your business, and it could also tarnish the customer’s perception of the entire franchise.
- Measuring Can Promote Improvements: By measuring customer satisfaction via call monitoring, you will notice areas for improvement that will enhance the customer experience and grow your customer relationships.
By maintaining and measuring customer service via call monitoring and coaching, you can prevent lost business and reputation problems while also making improvements that will boost customer satisfaction.
4. Prospective customer questions and requests for service are being handled promptly.
According to HubSpot research, 90 percent of customers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important when they have a customer service question. That same research found that 60 percent define “immediate” as 10 minutes or less. One of the benefits of call monitoring is that you can check in to see if customers are getting answers in a timely fashion.
Call monitoring, as well as call tracking, can help you keep an eye on analytics like answer times, hold times, missed calls, abandoned calls, unreturned voicemails, and more. It can also help you provide additional training, so employees have the information they need to respond to questions and requests.
5. Employees’ conversational tone and tactics promote trust and loyalty.
Good customer service wins repeat business. Research shows that nearly 90 percent of customers trust a company whose service they’ve rated as “very good” to take care of their needs. Furthermore, about three out of five consumers report that good customer service is key to feeling loyal toward a brand. One of the benefits of call monitoring is that you can ensure your employees develop exemplary customer service skills and have effective conversations with customers.
Is your employee:
- Answering with a professional tone…or in a way that does not represent your business well?
- Starting and ending the call with enthusiasm…or do they sound annoyed, frustrated, or tired?
- Using common terminology…or are they using jargon or technical terms the customer may not understand?
- Listening to and clarifying the customer’s issues and concerns…or are they interrupting or belittling the customer?
For more guidance on evaluating employee-customer calls, check out our Call Quality Checklist here.
Finding the Right Technology
As you can see, there are many benefits of call monitoring and coaching, and they combine to provide your customers with a positive, consistent experience of your franchise business.
To reap the benefits of call monitoring and coaching, you’ll want to choose the right technology for the job. Clarity Voice Performance Monitoring tools can assist you, with features like:
- Call Recording: Automatically record inbound and outbound phone calls to monitor employees and use best examples to train new team members.
- Listen In Mode: Jump on a call and monitor your employee in real-time without anyone knowing a third person is on the line.
- Whisper Mode: Assist employees on what to say without the caller hearing you.
- Join Mode: Quickly join the call when the employee thinks the situation merits your immediate assistance.
Research by Zendesk found that more than 50 percent of customers—across all age groups—typically use the phone to reach out to a service team. This makes it the most-used channel for customer service and highlights the importance of franchise business owners choosing the right phone technology for their needs.
If you aren’t yet enjoying the benefits of call monitoring and coaching, it’s time to get started. With the help of technology, you can empower your employees to do their job well, provide a consistent experience for customers, promote customer loyalty and satisfaction, and grow your franchise business.
