Marketplaces today tend to be incredibly customer-driven. Unlike previous decades, we notice a shift in business orientation and focus. That is, it is not price and product quality that stands alone on the top of the hierarchy. It was such when customer service departments were almost absent. However, they now occupy large parts of the companies. But how to provide excellent customer service over the phone?

The power of great customer service is widely studied:

• 73% of customers feel great about a brand and lean towards staying loyal due to a friendly customer service representative.
• 93% of consumers are likely to make repeat transactions with businesses that have outstanding customer support.
• Acquiring a new client is 6-7 times more expensive than retaining a current one, and to make up for one bad experience, it takes 12 positive customer experiences.
• 62% of clients want to connect with businesses through email, 48% through the phone, 42% through live chat, while 36% through “Contact Us” forms.
• A customer is four times more likely to buy from a competitor if the problem is service-related rather than price or product-related.

Moreover, the importance of building professional customer support leads to developing more digital systems and strategies to carefully take care of these departments. For example, customer relationship management (CRM) to lead management and sales with the provision of the information about your customers and how they interact with your business, including past activities, conversations and purchases.

Now, the overall customer experience is influenced by any decision a brand takes, whether it is related to marketing, analysis, advertisement or any other number of fields. This is why, in the business world, customer service is such a central topic.

You need to look further for one more digital technology that can help you drive your customer management into new levels which is virtual phone numbers.

What Is A Virtual Phone Number?

A virtual number is a telephone number with no telephone line directly connected to it. It can be used to make and receive calls just like any other phone number. These numbers are typically programmed to forward incoming calls to fixed, mobile or VoIP phones in an attempt to help solve customers’ problems faster and to make it super easy for them to reach them.

Ways to Use Virtual Numbers to Enhance Customer Experience

1. Local/ International Key Point of Contact

It is no joke that serving your customers the best is an engine for your sales to rise, for they won’t only come back to do more business with you, but also, they will bring others with them along the way. How to provide excellent customer service over the phone?

Just reduce the number of steps the customer had to take to reach your company by providing multiple international numbers that any customer wouldn’t think much of the big distance when calling you. Not to mention the global image these numbers grant your company with and help boost your business performance.

2. Let Your Individual Customer’s Issues Matter

“Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient,” says Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, considering the leading customer-centric company. The keyway they never give up on when dealing with customers is personalization. Why?

1. Because, indeed, more than half of online shoppers agree that retailers who personalize their deals provide a valuable service.
2. 45% of customers are more likely to shop on a site with personalized offers.
3. Not only does this kind of personalization improve customer satisfaction, but it also drives loyalty and repetitive purchasing.

How to personalize your customer experience?

Among the great online ways helping you to help your customers feel special and important whether through notification, emails, etc., via the data you collect about your customers (age, location, gender, education and online shopping habits, interests, etc.) you can use your suitable virtual phone numbers to call your customers. But, how to provide excellent customer service over the phone? Get to talk to them individually to promote your products, show your special offers, coupons to them or get their feedback. You can have these numbers as the preferred channel to stay in contact with your international people at local rates.

 3. Route Customers to The Right Agent

Give your customers the specific number of the department they need to reach with ease and virtually with no other equipment. When you provide in your business profile the number of each concerned department without the hassle of going through a number of agents before getting to the one you need,

• Callers will easily get answers to their questions because agents speak the same language or have enough information about the goods, services or other issues that the client calls about.
• Address questions and concerns typically within the first call and without having to experience the hassle of going through multiple agent transfers for the very same reason.

Forward the call to a particular function, so that you can save time and efforts of both you and your customers with an extra bounce, customer satisfaction. Also, the great part is that you do not necessarily have all of your departments in the same place. You can have your marketing office in Spain, while customer support in Dubai. Well, still you can guarantee to get more yellow stars for your service/ product.

4. Secure Your Customers Phone Numbers

Many companies prefer to outsource their call centers to third-party organizations because they can’t handle any extra budget in buying new telephone lines to call customers and unable to handle the heavy costs of the international calls to foreign customers. However, this puts the customer’s personal information at risk of being compromised for their phone numbers are considered a valuable database that can be sold to competitors.

However, by using a virtual number, you have a potential solution to prevent this. In other words, instead of exchanging the original phone numbers, they can build their own virtual customer support with no need for external resources or hardware tools. This protects the privacy of the customers and saves the trust of them.

5. Better Understand Your Clients’ Needs

You might presume that you were providing what your customers are looking for when they buy your product. But with your product, are they happy?  Beyond just collecting basic statistics on the most common problems, getting to them on the phone help:

1. Identify the cause of new issues and allow you to be proactive in finding solutions.
2. Enrich your website with specific cases, documentation and direct quotes to improve the FAQs for them.
3. Optimize your clients’ use of your product and know how to reach your clients via the best marketing techniques and tactics.

6. Customers Should Call Your Business, Not Your Cell Phone

You can organize your employees’ work in the customer support team by providing your customers with your business hours. Now when someone calls you out of business hours, it can be to your dedicated business voicemail, not your personal voicemail.

7. Just Remain Accessible

A) Via Toll-Free Numbers

Make sure that you provide your customers with sufficient channels to reach out for fast solutions if a client has a problem. Therefore, toll-free numbers have become very common for customers nowadays. A toll-free number is bound to increase customer calls simply because it does not cost them a penny.

But, do you really need a toll-free number? You first need to check out some data regarding your business size, customer base, and the needs of the business itself. It would just be the perfect solution when you have a large base of customers and you want to make sure not to lose them by providing them with a cost-free way to contact the business.

B) A Customer Support Channel, WhatsApp

Activate your WhatsApp business with a virtual number to expand your customer contact and create a permanent link with your customers.

Why WhatsApp is a Win-Win for Your Brand & Customers?

• Secure a spot among your customers’ friends
• Answer multiple incoming chats while customers are simultaneously typing replies to your messages.
• Set automatic replies that help customers remain engaged and aren’t left hanging.
• WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption fits perfectly with your customer relationship
• It allows you to amplify your communication with rich content like pictures, videos, locations, and more.

• You can set-up quick replies, indicate opening hours, show your address and link to your website and many more tricks.
• It offers integrations with other channels. That is, you can add a button or phone number to your social media accounts that go directly to your WhatsApp. This helps organize your customer service channels for your team.
• Keep your original WhatsApp Messenger on and safe with your real number secure.
• Use WhatsApp Web Version to manage all customer notifications and inquiries on a larger screen.

Bottom Line

The greatest differentiator that modern-day companies can have against cut-throat competitiveness is customer service. Thus, phone support is the most popular platform when it comes to delivering customer support. How about when it is a cloud-based phone system? A virtual phone system pushes companies to set up, manage and scale a phone support channel when the business volume spike up.

So, go ahead and leverage for your company the power of a virtual phone system. In all success metrics, you will undergo a great transformation and significantly increase customer satisfaction levels!

Download Numero Now!