What is a Caller Experience and How to Nail It

Many customer journeys start and end online. However, some people struggle to come to a buying decision or reach a resolution. According to a 2022 survey by Salesforce, 54% of customers prefer live calls and reaching out to a customer center directly. Meanwhile, 94% of customers say that positive customer service encourages them to purchase from a company.

Call routing systems are a staple of most businesses. Human engagement reassures new and existing customers, encouraging them to complete their journey. If someone has made the effort to connect with a company, it’s crucial that this engagement makes a solid first impression.

A good caller experience not only helps customers have a positive association with your company and product, but it can also add value to a business and improve brand authority. Looking to improve your approach to live call routing? Interested in learning more about how to fine-tune your caller experience? Read on for everything you need to know.

The caller experience explained

Customers want personalized service when they make a call to your center agents, not a by-the-numbers script that’s been designed as a one-size-fits-all solution. Caller experience involves personalizing customer engagements and using phone routing systems to put them in touch with the right department.

Ultimately, the caller experience is all about streamlining customer service. However, expedited service shouldn’t come at the cost of customer satisfaction. Whether you’re using cloud call routing or a more traditional system, enhancing the customer’s call experience can also benefit your business.

It provides an invaluable reference so companies can offer personalized products and services to customers in their native language. Furthermore, it can be used as a learning aid to inform caller engagement practices in the future.

Use call tracking to improve the customer journey and deliver tailored service

Call tracking is an easy way to enhance customer service and fine-tune caller experience. You can use it to quickly identify key metrics for swift call categorization. Identify why customers are getting in touch by logging conversation topics, along with important phrases and keywords. 

Call tracking also allows you to log the outcome of each customer experience. You can monitor any changes in sentiment and enthusiasm during the call. From this, it’s easy for a center agent to adapt engagement during an individual call. Alternatively, it can be used for quality assurance purposes, helping refine best practices in the future. 

How businesses benefit from a refined call experience

Businesses can use the caller experience to collect data that is unique to every customer. With this data in hand, streamlining the sales process is simple. What’s more, creating tailored experiences becomes a possibility. 

Interactive voice response (IVR) can also be used to ask further questions or provide callers with clear instructions. It also takes the guesswork out of call routing decisions. Customer callers are connected with the right department quickly, with reduced waiting times involved. 

IVR decision trees allow call center agents to resolve queries immediately, either by providing a solution to the caller or routing them to the right department. The result is that caller experiences become more efficient and are standardized for consistency. 

Key features of a winning call experience

Looking to improve caller experience? Whatever solution you choose, make sure it includes the following key features as standard:

Call recording localized

Recording calls is a useful tool for personalizing call experience. It can also be used as a valuable learning aid for your call center staff. Go for localized cloud storage so there’s no limit on the volume of calls you can archive. This also makes your recordings easier to access for reference and learning applications. 

On-hold messages

If customer support agents are busy, on-hold messages are essential. They can also enhance the call experience. Use them to provide everything from expected waiting times to further information that callers may need to prepare. Text-to-speech software can be used to provide customized messages in real-time. 

Simultaneous calling

To reduce waiting times and keep your callers engaged, you’ll need a call routing system that manages concurrent calls, without leaving your customers on hold for too long. You can route incoming calls to a queue or direct them to alternate contact points if all your call agents are busy. 

Native language call menus

It’s impossible to answer every phone call with a live agent, let alone an agent who meets the specific language needs of today’s diverse calling audiences. To give callers the best customer experience, it’s important to use automated voice recordings in your audience’s native language. This makes a big difference in a customer’s experience with your brand, products and services. 

To give callers the best possible customer service, it’s important to offer voice recordings in their native language. Although English is spoken by around 1.45 billion people across the globe, more than 1.08 billion of these are non-native speakers. If you’re serious about catering to international markets, a multilingual strategy like an automatic translation for instance, is essential.

Offering call menus in native languages can increase engagement with your brand and boost sales. Furthermore, it dramatically reduces the chance of miscommunication and gives you a significant edge over competitors still clinging to English-only customer service.

5 ways you can improve call experience for customers

There are many ways you can improve the experience for customer callers. Starting from scratch? Below are some of the most useful tools you can put to use to drastically improve customer satisfaction and enhance engagements. 

1. Actionable tracking of callers

By quickly identifying the context of a call, you can up your game when it comes to delivering tailored service. A context-based phone routing system brings obvious time-saving benefits for customer support agents. However, it also improves the overall caller experience. 

2. Real-time website customer experience data collection

Using webpage tracking is an effective way of identifying prospective customers. Tracking tools can be used to see what page content and elements site visitors are most engaged with. If an online visit translates to an actual call, this information can then be accessed to enhance call experience. 

3. Run interactive voice responses

Interactive voice responses can be a useful tool if your callers are put on hold. They can also be used to glean useful insights from your customers before they’re connected to a live call agent.

4. Create a call flow through context-based call routing

You can’t expect the same call flow to work for every caller. By using context-based live call routing, you can tailor call flow as you go.

5. Monitoring and follow-up of events

Sometimes, callers slip through the cracks. Make sure you’re reconnecting with missed callers or those who dropped off mid-conversation. Furthermore, customer support teams should be carrying out necessary follow-ups to complete deals, finalize sales, and reach out for any additional information. 

How to leverage call recordings to improve customer service

Creating a winning caller experience often means perfecting a flawless script. For businesses struggling to create one, call recordings are a treasure trove of inspiration.

For best results, identify all calls that ended in a positive outcome. These recordings should then be analyzed for keywords and phrases that stirred positive sentiment and engaged customers. These terms can then be used to refine your existing call scripts, increasing the odds of procuring more customers in the future.

Deliver a better caller experience with on-brand voices in any language

With decades of multilingual telephony recordings, BLEND is trusted by the biggest customer support enterprises worldwide to enhance their automated phone interactions. We offer friendly, natural voice personas that simplify self-service for customers, enabling contact centers to efficiently handle call volumes and quickly realize returns on their significant technology investments.

Ready to learn more? Get in touch with the team today to see how we can help you.

Karen Ford

As BLEND’s Managing Director of Contact Center & IVR Solutions, Karen brings over 20 years in the IVR and audio production industries to help global businesses give their customers the best service experience in their native language.

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