Using Call Centers to Build Stronger Customer Relationships

A key—and often overlooked strategy—to developing these relationships is through your call center. Call centers aren’t just for solving customer problems and upgrading customer accounts: they’re essential channels to develop customer relationships and loyalty. So, how can you do this effectively? Here are six tried-and-true strategies from our decades of experience in call centers and customer service.

Step 1: treat your customers like the valuable individuals they are. As the saying goes—your customers make your business. And though you may have a lot of them, customers want to be treated like more than just a number. Personalized and customer-centric interactions make a significant impact on the quality of your customer relationships. Consider an analogy: If you go on a series of first dates, and you start every date in the same way, without referencing anything personal or specific to your date, not even their name—you’re going to struggle to develop a relationship with the person you’re on a date with. The same is true of your customers! Personalization starts with understanding. If you understand your customer needs and preferences, you’ll be able to create experiences that are relevant, unique and personal to the individual or group of customers you’re working with. How do you get this data, though? For one, you can ask your customers directly—through surveys, individual feedback, and so on. But you can also use information they’re already giving you—through customer data, behaviors, purchase history, account preferences and more. Once you know your customer preferences and needs, you can also implement customer segmentation strategies to improve personalization at scale. When you sort customers by what they want, how they behave, and so on, you can market and communicate to them effectively, creating more relevant and personalized experiences. You can also provide more tailored solutions and recommendations, based on what makes sense for each customer or segment. This requires accessible customer data—but it also creates a stronger customer relationship, where the customer feels understood, known and taken care of by your brand. And of course, where customers feel known and valued, they will spend more—and the data backs this up:

The more you’re able to personalize your customers’ experiences, the better relationships you’ll be able to build—and the more loyal customers will be to your brand.

Back to our dating analogy: to build a relationship, both parties have to make an effort to reach out as well as to respond when the other does. This is Relationships 101, right? And yet, many companies seek to build better relationships with their customers without ever being the ones to reach out. Sure, they’ll send marketing communications or promotions for sales, but what about reaching out for feedback? Or sending along recommendations for getting more value out of their subscription? Or reminding customers when it’s time to order a refill? Reaching out proactively to your customers to engage with them with your service, provide support, and engage with your audience. What should you reach out about? Get feedback and follow up. If a customer has reached out for service or help, don’t assume all is well because the ticket is closed. Solicit feedback on their experiences with your support team, follow-up to ensure the concern is resolved, or get feedback on the process as a whole. By reaching out again to follow up, you assure customers that you are taking their concerns seriously, and not just checking them off a list. Offer proactive support and assistance. Outbound support adds another layer of engagement to your customer support team. Customer success teams—as outbound service is commonly known—engage proactively with customers to help them get the most value out of their products, services or subscriptions, and alleviate customer support requests by catching problems and questions before they balloon. Outsourcing your customer success to a team like Global Response can help round out your team with outbound support and give you the resources you need to proactively engage with customers. Provide timely updates and notifications. Sometimes proactive communication simply looks like providing updates to customers to keep them in the loop. If something’s taking longer than expected—whether it’s a hold while you run a report or a refund that’s processing—continue to communicate with the customer and provide updates on the process.

Resolving Customer Issues and Complaints. In any type of relationship, if there’s a problem, it’s best to resolve it proactively—and empathetically. If someone comes to you with a problem and you dismiss them, or tell them it’s their fault, the relationship won’t last long. Customer service works similarly. Since resolving customer issues is a key part of customer service, many brands focus on this aspect of relationship building above many other aspects. Still, there’s a few key tactics you should use to ensure you’re resolving customer issues in a way that strengthens and supports their relationship with your brand. Address any issues promptly. This includes issues that are brought directly to your service team, as well as indirect ones, such as ones found in online reviews or complaints on social media. But what exactly does “prompt” mean?

In short: the faster you can respond to customers, the better, in most cases. If you’re finding response times lagging in your customer service, you may want to consider outsourcing to speed up response times , improve CSAT and develop stronger customer relationships. Respond with empathy and efficiency. Speed is of the essence—but don’t miss the opportunity to empathize with your customers and build loyalty and trust during your customer service interactions. Practice active listening, demonstrate empathy, and use positive framing and phrasing to create experiences that leave your customers feeling cared for. Go the extra mile. Sometimes, building customer relationships requires doing just a little bit extra. Giving your employees flexibility to make choices and deliver solutions based on customer needs and preferences can help you “surprise and delight” your customers. Brands like Chewy have nailed this aspect of customer service, regularly sending flowers, handwritten notes, drawings of people’s pets and pet toys to their customers after a customer service interaction.

Think back to the other relationships in your life: when you have an experience or use a product or a service that would be relevant for someone you love, don’t you usually tell them about it? Maybe you’ll even let them try your product to see if they’re like it, or buy them one of their own. Cross-selling and upselling works in a similar way—effectively, you’re connecting customers with more products or services that would be valuable for them based on their needs, preferences, concerns, previous purchases and so on. In order to do this effectively, you again have to know your customers’ needs and preferences. Without clear and accurate customer data, you can’t recommend relevant products and services. But when you do have this data, you can increase value for the customer while also increasing business value. In doing so, you also make them feel more connected to your service or product. Amazon is a great example of a business that has maximized their cross-selling with targeted offers and personalized recommendations. Whenever you view a product page on Amazon, you’ll see the now-familiar, “Frequently Bought Together” and “Similar Products” recommendations below the product details—suggestions that are based on a combination of product, audience and personal data. Finding ways to leverage customer data and purchase history to provide more tailored recommendations strengthens your customer relationships, your value to your customers and your customer’s lifetime value.