Imagine a situation where food has been ordered, the delivery boy delivers the food and asks the customer whether or not, he/she enjoyed the food. Yes, certainly the customer would not be in a position to answer the question since he/she has not even tasted the food. At the most the customer can comment upon the packaging of the food or delivery time or the way the food was served. But that would certainly not help the company understand whether the food supplied to the customer was up to his taste and met his expectations.

A similar practice of instant feedback is followed by a lot of call centers. Most call center executives finish their calls before transferring the call for the automated service quality audit questionnaire by asking whether they could resolve the customer’s problem completely. Though the question is not wrong, but the timing of the question is surely wrong. In fact, the company should know and understand whether their service executives could effectively manage their customers’ requirements and handle all their problems.

The question doesn’t serve the company’s purpose because the customer is unsure of whether the problem has been resolved or not. The customer needs to hang up and get things done to realize whether the problem has been resolved or not.

How can a Call Center correct this mistake?

Well, the experts in the field of telesales suggest different ways to understand whether a customer’s problem is resolved completely or not. Primarily, it is very important to understand that why did the customer face such an issue, in the first place? If this question can be answered, the call center needs to resolve the issue as soon as possible. This would reduce the efforts of both the customer and the call center (the effort of customer service executive, who would handle the aggrieved customer and his/her fury).

The call center and it’s executives need to allow for a certain time period during which, if the customer doesn’t call back again for the same issue, only then the customer complaint can be closed, and it can be realized that the customer’s complaint has been resolved fully.

The best thing for any business is undoubted, witnessing a significant growth in its customer base. As much as it’s gladdening to see your clientele expand like never before, the news also brings along a new set of challenges for your business operations to overcome.

It’s obvious that when your business has a wide patronage, it also has to find newer and better ways to manage it all. There will be an increased number of queries, demands, grievances and more to handle after all. Larger the customer base, larger is the opportunity to serve them the best.

Having an experienced and trustworthy contact center helps a great deal in this regard. However, you can’t always build your own call center as it takes a considerable amount of investment, effort, time and management. The best option available these days is to outsource your customer service division. Choosing the right contact center for your business can be a task in itself. To help you choose the right outsourcing partner for your business, we have listed some quick tips that might be helpful in your search of the right contact center partner.

Here are some quick tips for selecting the right Contact Center for your Business:

1. Test the Credibility: Since the Contact Center you hire will be handling the most crucial aspect of your business – your customers; you need to ensure that this team can be relied upon. Do check if your contact center partner is actually competent and certified for carrying out customer service operations. 

2. Sample their Service: It’s only prudent to hand over a relatively small assignment to a new team in order to test their performance and efficiency before you trust them with more significant projects. Only when the service provider lives up to your expectations and requirements with a small task, will you be sure that you can entrust them with your important projects in the future.

3. Technical Soundness: Carrying out and managing customer care operations, requires a sound and technologically advanced system. Therefore, you must check that the call center you are considering has a robust technology infrastructure so that you can be rest assured about a smooth and satisfactory customer service. 

4. Commitment of Regular Reports: Your call center team will generally be located at a distance from you. In such a situation you need to set a system wherein you can stay in the loop with all the operations and developments going on at the other end. Therefore, you should only hire a team that commits to sending you regular and updated reports of their work, including live monitoring systems. 

5. Financial Background Check: There are numerous Call Center Outsourcing Companies almost everywhere – many of which are not reliable. It’s absolutely imperative that you to look into the financial and legal standing of the call center that you shortlist for your business to be sure about whom you are going to trust with your pivotal tasks.

Social media today has gained an extremely powerful and wide reach, worldwide. This fact is well-recognized. It has gone way beyond just connecting long-lost friends, sharing pictures/videos and knowing new people. Today, this incredibly useful means is also being utilized for its immense customer care potential. It’s time to make the best use of this promising platform to reach out to existing and potential customers, to attract them, satisfy their queries and address their complaints, among a lot more.

Let’s take you through 5 supremely-helpful Techniques for encashing the benefits of Social Media in Customer Service:

1. Train your Social Media Managers well: Almost all businesses hire a professional for handling and managing their social media operations. Before selecting a professional or a team, ensure that they are well-trained for the job, as social media is a double-edged sword. One has to be extremely prudent in its use to avoid unwanted trouble. It’s a path you should tread very carefully. If your managers are tech-savvy and are well-versed with all the pros-and-cons of this powerful tool, you’ll be better off. 

2. Establish a personal connect: No customer is ever interested in being greeted by an IVR or an automated response by a bot. Hence, it would pay you well to go that extra mile in order to establish that distinct human connect with your customers. If you give them personal care online through your retail call center, they would feel truly cared for and this will lend your business a good repute.

3. Be prompt in responding: Internet works at a supersonic speed, and everyone knows this well. Delayed responses or ignored complaints can harm your goodwill greatly. So if your business has a social media presence, then your managers or executives better be prompt in responding to your customers’ queries, complaints and feedback. The quicker the response, the better will be your PR.

4. Know the dangers out in the open: Since everything that’s there on social media is out there in the public spectacle, having your business presence there means tackling a constant risk of possible mud-slinging or mean allegations. Your social media managers must be smart and deft at handling irate customers through a private chat/message, or a pacifying phone call, so that the issue is resolved privately and no bad impression of your company goes out in the public eye. The Call Center Outsourcing Vendors must take care of this fact.

5. Employ a smart and reliable software: Although it is highly recommended that you get professionals for this job, it is also equally important that you provide them with an intelligent and dependable software for handling all your social media operations efficiently. Since it’s all technology-based, your managers will be rendered handicapped without the aid of a good system.

Happy customers are the base of every successful business; with loyal customers, any commercial organization can reach the summit of success even while dealing with stiff competition. However, it is not easy to build a force of loyal customers, who can boost your business and help you in establishing market presence. In today’s stiff competition, businesses have to work hard to stand out and grab the attention of potential customers. Apart from this, it is not easy to keep your customers satisfied; customers expect quality in your product or service because finding another better option is not a difficult task for them. There are many organizations, who can give you a tough competition with their expeditious services and quality products. So, in order to survive in the business domain, you should make customer satisfaction your prime focus. Businesses that keep customer satisfaction as their main objective can experience unexpected growth in a short period of time, while those who don’t can fall apart unexpectedly.

After reading the last paragraph, you must be wondering what the main ingredient to formulate customer satisfaction is; if yes then here is your answer. The main ingredient to build customer loyalty is expeditious customer support services. Any business cannot thrive without a force of customer care executives, who have experience and expertise to handle both voice and non-voice processes. However, hiring qualified professionals for customer support can be a costly affair for your business. It is better to get in touch with any of the call center outsourcing companies for building a growth-oriented customer support process. There are many organizations that are providing voice as well as non-voice customer support services. You can easily get in touch with anyone of them to avail call center outsourcing services.

Outsourcing Call Center Services

Customer service is certainly the most crucial process that significantly contributes in shaping future prospects for a business. In the dynamic and highly uncertain scenario of the business world, customer service is a crucial factor that can affect the profit earned by a commercial organization. This is the reason behind the fact that compels businesses to seek professional guidance to make their business customer-eccentric. Call center services not only help businesses in rendering proactive support to the customers but also aid in managing a plethora of incoming requests. Call centers in New Jersey and many other parts of the world are equipped to manage a myriad of incoming customer requests thereby making businesses customer-eccentric.

In case, you are still not convinced to outsource call center services then just think about the money that you will be saving with this decision. One of the main advantages of outsourcing call center services is operational cost deduction, which of course is beneficial for your business. So, get in touch with a call center vendor and outsource customer support services to scale new heights in the business world. We are one amongst the prominent call center service providers and we surely can deliver services that can exceed your expectations. For more information get in touch with our representatives right away.

Millennials are a self-service, tech-savvy generation influenced by the ever-growing sway of social media, instant gratification, and quick access.

Millennials, categorized as anyone born between 1982-2003, represent the largest consumer market for annual revenue growth. It’s for this reason that the “wow me,” factor is vital.

Luckily, once you learn the tricks to winning over your Millennial market, their brand-loyalty is long-lasting.

With this young population drifting away from traditional call centers, and gravitating towards computer-based interactions, how does the art of good old fashioned costumer service fit in?

Social Media

Accessibility and convenience is king when connecting with Millennials. Therefore, bringing costumer service to the client via their social media channels creates a medium in which your company can connect, monitor, and influence the costumer to praise and promote your brand.

When it comes to social media, word of mouth spreads quickly. It is for this reason that a positive or negative costumer experience via Twitter, Facebook, Live Chat and Instagram is more critical than ever.

Social networks aren’t limited to a 9-5 schedule, either. Keep your costumers happy and loyal by always being present where they are. If your company isn’t proactive about contacting costumers and answering their questions quickly through social media channels, chances are you have already lost clients.

Mobile-Centric

Millennials use their cellphones for everything but talking. The Millennial population picks up their cellphone to speak to elderly grandparents, or when the delivery guy calls with a pizza. That’s about it.

Millennials want on-demand service. If they have a question, the answer is at their fingertips.

They don’t want to be put on hold, or go through fifteen different prompts to find the employee who can help them best.

Win the game by getting to the costumer before they come to you.

Create Online Self-Help Solutions

Your website must be at the forefront of the costumer experience for Millennials. This generation embraces the idea of self-service, rather than waiting for a call or email from a costumer service representative.

FAQ sections, troubleshooting guides, or a community forum in which other customers can ask and answer questions, helps create the experience Millennials want.

Keep your Millennial consumers connected by cutting the cord with antiquated costumer service call center methods.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Vcare Blog today for customer care best practices, industry news, and helpful customer service tools right to your inbox.

Outsourcing all comes down to value.

Outsourcing anything is hard. It requires a lot of trust. But if you pick a bad partner, you can always cut your losses and move on.

When it’s your customer service, though, it’s harder. It means you’re trusting someone else to care for your customers. If you pick a bad partner, you don’t just have to explain the bad investment to your superiors; you have to win back the trust of your customers.

There are plenty of myths about call centers and outsourced customer support. We’ll lose control of our customers! How could a partner know as much (or more!) about our products as we do! We don’t have an “outsourcing culture!” We’ve shown in the past why these beliefs just aren’t true today.

There’s also a dirty little secret about outsourcing that call center outsourcing vendors don’t want you to know. Once you know the secret, it actually changes how you search for a call center partner.

At this point, you’re really well equipped to find the perfect outsourced customer service partner.

There’s only one thing left for you to look for when comparing call centers. And it’s the most important thing…

Which of these partners will create the most value for me, my company, and my customers?

How an outsourced customer service partner creates value for you is the key to finding the right partner. If they can’t ensure that your customer service operation will be a profit center, and not a cost center, then this long-term investment in your customer experience will be for nothing.

So without further ado, here are the five questions to grill your next potential call center partner on.

The 5 Customer Service Metrics To Ask For

In your conversations with call centers and outsourced customer service partners, there are key data points that you should ask for. Forget fancy case studies, and ignore minor differences in hourly rates for a moment. These are metrics we use across the industry, and they will paint a clear picture for you.

I’m confident in how much value we create for our clients. So much so, that I’m happy to share our numbers so you can easily compare with other potential partners.

1. Conversion Rates

“What are your clients’ typical conversion rates?”

Across the industry, conversion rates of 10-15% are considered good.

Conversion rates for our clients are 15-20%.

2. Repeat Purchases

“How frequently does a customer come back to purchase again?”

This number varies more, depending on your industry, but Internet Retailer has indicated in the past that anywhere from a 30-50% repeat purchase rate is good.

Repeat purchase rates for our clients are 85%.

3. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

“What are your clients’ typical CSAT scores?”

According to many industry insiders, a SCAT score of 70% would leave most COOs satisfied.

Our CSAT scores are over 80%.

4. Project Management Costs

“What do you charge for Project Management?”

For an outsourced team of 30 customer service reps, a typical fee for Project Management may be $7,000.

We don’t charge our clients for Project Management. Zero.

5. Onboarding Costs

“What do you charge in the first month or so to get the team off the ground?”

Typically, call centers will charge around $15,000 when onboarding a new client.

We don’t charge for onboarding. Our team gets right to business.

A Bonus Metric

When it comes to driving repeat purchase, customer satisfaction, and reducing costs, we outperform the pack. The final metric that should be on your mind? Ah yes, the magical Hourly Rate. I’m more than happy to share what ours is (spoiler: it’s lower than the industry average).

Reach out to myself, or one of our Care Specialists today, and we’ll talk you through our numbers. At the end of the day, we create more value than any other outsourced customer service partner in the industry, and we’ve got the numbers to back it up.

And don’t forget to subscribe to the (v)WeCare Blog today and get customer care best practices, industry news, and helpful customer service tools right to your inbox.

I have a confession to make. The call center industry has a dirty secret.

Like most, you might think that all call centers offer the same services. If you search for a call center partner to handle some or all your customer service volume, you’re met with similar sounding pitches, similar pricing, and similar business models. On-brand support! Omnichannel coverage! White-gloved service!

If that’s the case, then what’s the factor you’re most likely to rely on when picking a call center vendor?

“Do you work with companies in our industry? Have you worked with a company just like ours before?”

It is natural to try and separate similar options based on an intimate understanding of your industry, your business, and your products.

But the dirty little secret is that a call center is a call center. If it’s run well, then it doesn’t matter if your potential partner has a laundry list of industry-specific case studies. Even if a great call center doesn’t already have experience in supporting transactions of luxury handbags, wind turbines, or last minute flights, a top tier call center should be able to ramp up on your industry and inventory almost overnight.

Not only that, but a well-oiled call center will even perform at parity with another partner who has worked in your industry for years.

How is this possible? The truth is, a great call center is a machine built on great processes. From hiring and training, to goal-setting and measurement, to team morale, to scalability, the process makes a top-tier call center. If there are great processes in place, then a call center’s performance for a new client will be identical to that of existing clients, regardless of the industry.

And the biggest differentiator that businesses should be using to determine which call center partner they select is flexibility.

Are you talking to a partner, or just a supplier? Will your call center team be flexible when it comes to contract terms, training, and schedule changes? Now that’s a great partner!

But these true differentiators take a little bit of digging to find. If you don’t look for them, then all you see is a field of similar call center partners.

And call centers know that this is a natural reaction to perceived parity. They play up the fact that they’ve worked with companies in your industry, selling products that may be exactly like your products. When, in reality, that fact won’t impact your bottom line.

Here’s the key thing that you already know: your company is unique. Even if a partner has experience within your industry, that doesn’t mean that they will perform better based on your unique products, services, and business operations.

You’re either working with a great call center who will measure themselves against the metrics that matter – like customer satisfaction, Net Promoter Score, and up-sell/cross-sell revenue – or they won’t. It’s that simple.

I know, it’s hard to believe. But I’m sharing this secret with you so that you can make better decisions for your customer support team in the future.

So remember, when you are comparing call center outsourcing vendors, look beyond the case studies. Try to dig into the call center’s processes, how they hire, how they train, and how they measure success. And try to gauge how flexible they’ll be with your team. In this business, flexibility builds trust, and trust ensures a successful partnership.

Now it’s your turn! What do you look for in a call center partner?

Believe it or not, your customer service experience is actually your most powerful marketing channel.

Wait, what??

Not direct mail? Not Super Bowl commercials? Not email newsletters? Not social media?

That’s right. Customer service is your #1 marketing channel.

Nothing builds your brand as effectively; nothing drives repeat purchases more quickly; nothing increases the value of your products and services more efficiently than your customer service.

Why is this? Well, for one, it is 5x easier to sell to an existing customer than to find a new customer – so keeping your customers 100% satisfied is actually a business growth strategy. And how do you keep existing customers happy? Through stellar customer service.

Think about the last experience you’ve had with a luxury brand. Maybe you stopped by the Louis Vuitton storefront on 5th Avenue last time you were in New York City. Or maybe you had to have your Lexus taken in for a tune up. Or even the last time you flew first class.

How did you feel?

You were still at a retail store with four walls, or a dealership with cars on the lot, or in a cabin on an airplane. But there was something more…

The people there had smiles on their faces. They knew everything about the experience you were having. They helped you with something before you even knew you needed help. They surprised you with a bottle of water, or an espresso, or a glass of complimentary champagne.

In short, you were treated like royalty.

These are experiences that delight customers. They are the experiences that get shared with future customers. And they are they experiences that keep customers coming back for more.

How luxury brands create an amazing customer service experience

For luxuries, like Louis Vuitton, Lexus, and Emirates, the royal treatment is a necessary component of their customer service, of their marketing, and of their brand.

Product Knowledge

First, they have immense product knowledge. They know every feature, function, color, size, use case, option, and combination for their inventory. Customers like dealing with experts – they feel more comfortable with their decisions and they are less likely to feel buyer’s remorse when they know they’ve bought from someone who knows everything about their challenge and the products that solve it.

One of our clients, Hugo Boss, has a very large product catalog, with half a dozen brands across the company, including Boss Black, Boss Selection, and Hugo. Our team of Care Specialists has to have deep knowledge of the product lines and an understanding of pairings, combinations, and how to make recommendations for the customer.

If someone has a question about which suit to buy, then our Care Specialist has the product knowledge to ask probing questions about the occasion.

Is this an everyday work suit? A weekend suit? A nightlife suit?

For a business suit, the customer will want something very durable, that can withstand many wears and still look sharp. For a party suit, the customer will care more about the suit’s luxury feel and material than durability.

This enables the Call Center Outsourcing Specialist to become a trusted advisor, helping the customer along the way, and upselling and cross selling without seeming smarmy.

Brand Voice, Tone, and Attitude

Next, the Customer Care Specialist must have a core understanding of the brand voice, tone, and attitude. When they pick up the phone, respond to an email, or reply to a chat, the customer should have the same exact feeling as when they walk into a Hugo Boss store and are greeted by a store concierge.

Is this person that is welcoming the buyer into the Hugo Boss customer service experience exuding the brand? Customers will subconsciously pick up on this subtle branding, and they will know that they’ve just had a “Hugo Boss experience.”

Measurement

And the math adds up. Because they have big margins on their products and services, luxury brands don’t need to worry as much about traditional Call Centers metrics, like average handling time. They know that the extra time spent helping their customer over the phone, in a chat window, over email, or on social media will be paid back many times over by a lifetime of brand loyalty.

What if you’re not a luxury brand?

Now, what if you could create that effect without even being a premium, luxury brand?

Would you consider Amazon a luxury brand? Definitely not. But their customer service is legendary. They provide an excellent level of customer support, they’re incredibly fast, they carry through the Amazon tone and voice, and they surprise and delight their customers with faster-than-expected delivery and free returns.

Zappos, part of Amazon, famously doesn’t pay attention to average customer handling time – they once helped a customer on the phone for 8 hours straight! Now that’s white-glove service.

Every company can add some strategic flare to their customer experience. The key to it paying dividends in the long run is in having the concierge touch be reflective of the brand, and doing it consistently, in every single customer service interaction.

What can you do to create a luxury brand experience through customer service?

And don’t forget to subscribe to the (v)WeCare Blog today and get customer care best practices, industry news, and helpful customer service tools right to your inbox.

What if I told you that the call center could be one of the biggest revenue generators in your entire enterprise?

Today, the call center is seen by many COOs as a cost of doing business – a necessary evil – rather than as a revenue generating group.

This negative perspective didn’t start overnight. It’s the result of a much broader changing tide.

Five or ten years ago, core call center activities would perform efficiently and effectively. Take outbound sales, for example. You had a challenge, and the typical buying behavior was to reach out to a salesperson, or have them reach out to you, to discuss potential solutions.

Today, though, consumers do their own research on the web, talking to salespeople as a final step (if ever at all!). Customers are also more interrupted than ever, with a million calls, emails, and advertisements vying for their attention. They screen cold calls, ignore solicitation emails, and are harder than ever to get in touch with.

Because of these new customer behaviors, when today’s call centers do outbound sales, they perform very poorly. This means that those activities are dragging down the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall call center team.

But the other side of the call center – customer service – is blooming because of those same changes to consumer behavior.

Customers want on-demand support, constantly putting calls into the support team looking for help with their service. When they do, effective customer care specialists can upsell and cross-sell organically, offering advice around complimentary products or service upgrades, and doing so in a non-interruptive way.

If the customer is calling about the shoes they just purchased, a good customer care specialist will be able to weave socks, shoe polish, and insoles into the service conversation. Today, this is the most efficient and effective way to create revenue through the call center outsourcing services.

Call center revenue generation doesn’t happen without a detailed end-to-end process, though.

These are the three big concepts to consider when building out your call center process for real revenue generation:

1. Training in the Art of the Soft Sell

Selling is not the primary function of customer support, but that doesn’t mean Care Specialists don’t need to be good at the soft sell.

Ensure that you’re training your customer support team to get to the heart of the customer’s challenge, steer the conversation around cross-sell and upsell opportunities, know the inventory and catalog inside and out, and don’t apply pressure. Your training program should revolve around the power of support and suggestion.

2. Set Goals & Objectives for Clarity

While the aim is not necessarily to create a sales culture within the customer support team, clear goals and objectives do need to be set so that the team knows what they are shooting for.

How much should your Care Specialists be selling each month? Based on their volume, how does that translate into conversion levels? What’s the average revenue per call across the team? With clearly defined metrics in place, this level of tracking becomes easy, and by monitoring how individual Care Specialists are performing, then they can be strategically motivated through positive feedback, incentives, and end-of-year performance appraisals.

3. Supercharge Conversions with Predictive Analytics

Finally, incorporating big data. Your customers have very particular tastes – no two are alike. How then, can a Care Specialist know what products or services to recommend? The answer lies in the customer data.

By knowing what customers have purchased in the past, and knowing what products and services generally complement or follow a purchase, the Care Specialist can truly add value to the customer experience.

Amazon has been a long-time leader in this kind of predictive analytics, and every company investing in customer experience should be following suit. By being smarter with data, it’s going to be easier to sell, the team’s conversion rates will increase, and the cost per interaction will decrease.

The Big Picture on Customer Care

At the end of the day, the goal of the customer support team is to provide the best possible level of service. For the call center to start driving real revenue, instead of simply being a cost of doing business, Care Specialists need to strike a balance between creating a great customer experience and being on the lookout for soft-sell revenue generating opportunities.

To be able to do that, the customer care team needs to be properly trained on cross-sell and upsell skills, they need to understand their team’s goals and individual objectives, and they need the support of predictive care analytics to supercharge their conversion rates.

Is your call center simply a cost of doing business, or is it a revenue generating machine?

And don’t forget to subscribe to the (v)WeCare Blog today and get customer care best practices, industry news, and helpful customer service tools right to your inbox.

When it comes to their food, customers are very particular. For fast-casual or quick-service restaurants (QSRs), managing customer expectations is a task of ultimate importance. If customers’ expectations are much higher than the restaurant can deliver on, or if the restaurant dramatically misses the mark, the difference can be boom or bust for the business.

Today, more than 1 in 4 Americans orders delivery at least once a week – yes, mostly pizza. And when QSRs offer delivery services, which most do, then managing their customers’ expectations becomes even more critical because more variables are added into the experience.

And with delivery services, it can be very difficult for the restaurant to even know how well they’re meeting the customer’s expectations. Bruce Downie, COO of Planet Wings, says “It’s easy to see if customers are happy and your staff is doing well inside a restaurant. In delivery, drivers are taking food to customers, and you have no idea about the interaction.”

Thankfully, there are a few easy-to-identify areas where QSR customer service can fall short, and once restaurants understand them, they can be improved. These customer experience pitfalls fall into one of these three categories:

• Highly Personalized Orders
• Fast & Furious Expectations
• Creating A Consistent Experience

Highly Personalized Orders:

People are unique – and so are our eating habits. Some of us just have strong preferences, while others have allergies or dietary restrictions. This means that when someone orders a pizza with extra olives or no olives, it’s deliberate.

The Call Center Outsourcing Companies needs to ensure that orders are entered into the system perfectly, and that the customer’s comments and notes are sent over to the restaurant or into the kitchen to minimize the possibility of an incorrect delivery.

And “personalized” does boil down to the root word – person.

If you’re greeting a returning customer on the phone, kick off a great experience by using their name, and perhaps asking if they’d like to reorder anything from their last delivery. Use their name when sending a confirmation email or text after they place their order. And, of course, thank them by name when the food is dropped off.

Fast & Furious Expectations:

As soon as the customer hangs up the phone or hits the Order button in their delivery app, the pressure is on. If the restaurant says the order will be delivered in 30 minutes, and the food hasn’t arrived 31 minutes later, the customer is going to be calling to ask where their food is.

And all those calls can add up over time.

This means that it’s critical for restaurants to set accurate delivery times and to staff up on call support for busy periods, like evenings, weekends, and certain holidays where deliveries see a huge spike, like the Super Bowl.

Creating A Consistent Experience:

Ordering Experience

When it comes to customer care, “consistency” can mean a lot of things. When the customer places their order, the experience needs to be consistent with what they get in the restaurant.

The Customer Care Specialist on the other end of the line needs to be friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful – consistent with how a customer would be treated in the four walls of the restaurant.

This also means Customer Care Specialists need to have a deep understanding of the menu, the ingredients, the specials, and the policies so that they can consult the customer properly, make recommendations, set expectations, and create the best possible experience.

Order Accuracy

Getting the order 100% right is critical, but the customer’s delivery address is just as important. If the location or unit number is just a little off, the whole delivery experience may be in jeopardy.

This also means there needs to be two way communication between the Customer Care Specialist and the delivery person, so that any potential confusion can be cleared up fast, without needing the customer’s involvement.

Then, once the food arrives, the Customer Care Specialist needs to be prepared for order accuracy issues. The customer may have ordered a cheese pizza, but a pepperoni pizza was delivered instead. The Customer Care Specialist should have the training, communication skills, and scripts ready to address that issue, and all of the potential issues with order accuracy.

Delivery Support

Even when the personalization, order, speed, and delivery location are perfect, sometimes customers will still end up unhappy. The french fries may be a little less crisp than the customer expected, or the burger a little smaller than anticipated. We’ve even had customers call saying there are fewer slices of pepperoni on their pizza than in the TV commercial.

These are, of course, customer issues that can be mitigated and managed over the long run. In the future, the french fry delivery packaging can be improved, the burgers can be bigger, and the pepperoni slices can be more plentiful.

But that doesn’t help this customer, and the complaint that they have right now. And unless your Customer Care Specialists are empowered, you’ll probably lose that customer to a competitor.

One way to deliver amazing experiences, even in the worst case scenario, is to empower Customer Care Specialists with the ability to offer coupons, free items, or refunds.

If a Customer Care Specialist is able to offer a coupon for the customer’s the next order, offer to have the corrected order delivered at no additional charge, or even refund the customer’s account on the spot for the incorrect item, they will be able to rescue a negative experience and keep customers coming back for seconds.

Delivering Customer Loyalty

At the end of the day, the customer doesn’t see all of the moving parts that get their pizza on the table – the corporate website, the franchisee, the Customer Care Specialist, the delivery person, the logo on the bag – the customer just has one experience with the brand.

And that experience is either amazing and cohesive, or subpar and disjointed.

All of this comes back around to creating loyalty through an on-brand customer service experience. The customer care team serves as the front-lines, fighting to make sure the customer’s satisfaction is met and overall experience is as close to perfect as possible.

As Thom Crosby, CEO of Pal’s Sudden Service, told QSR Magazine, “It’s customer service that will help people relate to the brand.” By setting the right customer expectations, training the customer support team, and providing friendly, helpful, and on-brand service, restaurants can truly deliver for their customers.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Vcare Blog today and get customer care best practices, industry news, and helpful customer service tools right to your inbox.