Ensuring Customer Satisfaction: 10 Rules Our Virtual Receptionists Must Follow

We love giving everyone a behind the scenes look into our digital call center. Today, we showcase the top 10 rules our virtual receptionist team must follow when handling the telephone communications for businesses nationwide.

Read on to learn about our top rules that help us in ensuring customer satisfaction with our customers’ customers. Perhaps some of our rules can help you improve your customer service as well.

How Our Call Center Ensures Customer Satisfaction: 

1. No Cellphones at Workstation

Our virtual receptionists are required to turn off their personal cellphones while actively working. In our industry, we have to constantly be available every single second of the day. If an employee is texting or checking their Facebook feed, they may miss a very important call. 

By prohibiting cellphone use, we are ensuring that the millions of call transactions we perform each year get our undivided attention. Our professional virtual receptionists are so wonderful in their respect and understanding of this necessary rule.

#DidYouKnow: In a recent CareerBuilder study, it was learned that the biggest productivity killer in the workplace surrounds employees cell phone usage.    

2. No Food or Drink at Workstation

We have a no food, no drink policy while our team is in the operator room. There are two primary reasons for this rule:

1. 1.) No one likes to call a business and have someone eat and slurp during their conversation.
2. 2.) Due to the state of the art technology we provide, this rule ensures that accidental liquid spills do not harm our equipment.  

Head on over to our Facebook Page and check out the many photos our team posts while enjoying the onsite breakroom.

3. Gum is Prohibited While Working

While many employees may enjoy chewing on a stick of gum while working, in our industry, it’s impossible to do. We are virtual receptionists and as you can imagine, we’re on the telephone every minute of every day. It’s important that we reflect our customers’ businesses in the most professional light.

Just like the annoying sounds of chewing food, smacking on gum is a major telecommunications no-no.

4. Adhering to Break and Shift Schedules

There are roughly 525,600 minutes in a year’s time. And unlike other industries, our digital call center is required to be available for every single one of those minutes. Some in-house receptionists have the ability to leave their desk at any moment of the day. Since our job duties require us to answer a business telephone in two rings or less, we must diligently follow all scheduled breaks and shifts.

Adhering to strict schedules ensures that we will always have adequate phone coverage for our customers.

5. Confirming Vital Information

Ensuring customer satisfaction requires customer service agents to be 100% accurate in taking down key information from callers. Before ending the call, all of our customer service reps are required to confirm:

• • The correct spelling of a person or business name;
• • The caller’s contact telephone number and/or email address;
• • The phone message being delivered, as well as the name of the intended recipient.      

There’s nothing worse than getting a wrong telephone number for a lead or calling a current customer by the wrong name. We ensure that our clients get accurate information to avoid delays and misunderstandings.  

6. We Are Never “Just” the Answering Service

A phrase that we hate over here in our Orlando-based office is when a virtual receptionist says, “We are just the answering service.” Before answering the telephone for our customers’ lines, each of our virtual receptionists are required to go through a training period.

In our extensive training program, we teach our new team members to fully understand what their role as a virtual receptionist is. We’re here to be as helpful as possible; acting as an extension of our customer’s team. As such, we instruct our reps to never pass off a request or question from a caller by stating that they’re just the answering service.       

7. “I Don’t Know,” Is Not in Our Vocabulary 

When a customer calls a business’s telephone number, most of the time, they’re actively searching for an answer to their question. You don’t want the person answering your business line to make a negative first impression by saying, “I don’t know.”    

We admit that we can’t possibly know every detail of our customers’ businesses, but we’re fully trained to handle FAQ-type calls. Instead of saying, “I don’t know,” our virtual receptionists are trained to respond with one of the following phrases:

• • “May I take down your name and telephone number so I can have someone call you right back with an answer?”
• • “May I place you on hold for just a moment while I research the issue you’re facing?”
• • “May I take down a brief message and have our client relations manager call you back?”    

8. Encouraging Callers to Take Action 

The hairs on the back of our neck stand straight up when we hear receptionists telling their callers, “Well, she’s not here. Can you call back later?” Our experts are trained in award winning answering techniques that include guiding the caller to take action by the end of the call. 

Since our customers are able to customize their accounts with us, desired calls to action vary from business to business. Our customer service agents will never ask someone to call back; that’s not our style. We’ll encourage callers to:

• • Leave a telephone message for an immediate callback;
• • Visit a specific website page to access answers to FAQ’s;
• • Provide the direct extension or email address for a specific employee; or,
• • Wait on hold while they’re transferred to the employee or department they’re calling.   

9. Constantly Securing a 24-Hour Business Answering Service

Security is a high priority for our 24-hour digital call center. We’re open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year; it’s vital that we have strict security rules and procedures. 

1. 1.) Securing Our Building to Ensure Our Employee’s Safety

To gain access into our digital call center, you must have a keycard or know the building security code. Further, we have cameras installed near our parking lot, entrances and exits. Our staff’s continuous safety is very important to us.     

1. 2.) Securing Our State of the Art Technology

We have numerous applications and firewalls to protect our information, as well as the confidential information of all our customers. Each of our virtual receptionists are required to sign a non-disclosure and confidentiality agreement prior to answering the lines for any given business. We have onsite backup equipment and generators in the event of a power outage, disaster or emergency.  

10. Always Strive for Courteous Customer Service 

Our virtual receptionists are required to provide courteous, helpful and professional customer service to all callers. Constantly ensuring customer satisfactionis no easy feat. 

We have a very intense training program that all new hires must pass before answering our customers’ business lines. We have a management team that consists of long-term employees that supervise the daily telephone interactions conducted. We also enter numerous customer service competitions throughout the year to have our calls recorded and graded by third-party judges.    

Let Our Answering Service Team Help You Ensure Customer Satisfaction! 

From everyone here at A Courteous Communications, we hope you enjoyed taking a peek at some of the rules that have ensured our business answering service’s excellence for the past 30+ years. 

If you’d like to bring our services to your business, give us a call at 1-800-785-6161 or fill out an inquiryto discuss how we can help.