Author: Dreamhost Vendor

A Complete Guide to Creating a Customer Phone Survey

The average American checks their phone 344 times per day. Sometimes this is to aimlessly scroll through social media or check emails. This gives you the perfect opportunity to get people’s attention and conduct a phone survey.

Phone surveys let you connect with the population and collect data on their preferences and experiences. This data in turn can be used to help guide your marketing strategies and improve your bottom line.

Keep reading to learn more about the benefits of customer surveys and how to create your own phone surveys.

What Are Phone Surveys Used For?

A phone survey is a quantitative research tactic that marketers and researchers use to identify trends. The data collected helps marketers build a marketing plan.

Phone surveys are also used to determine public opinion on a particular topic or measure customer satisfaction rates. Through list segmentation, the survey can gather valuable insights for your organization.

How to Conduct a Phone Survey

Conducting a phone survey can help you and your organization make informed decisions based on your consumer base. Whether you opt to conduct your survey in-house or outsource you will need to follow these steps.

Build Out Your Sampling Strategy

It isn’t likely that you will be able to interview the entire population or an entire demographic of people for your survey. That is why surveyors and data experts use sampling to track trends and collect data. A sample is a subset of the population that is large enough to show reliable trends in the data.

Phone surveys can’t automatically be applied to the larger population. However, they can be generalized if you use a representative sample. A representative sample looks to collect representative voices within a larger community.

Due to their low cost and ease, in-house phone surveys are typically done using a non-probability sampling method. In a nonprobability sampling method members of the community are chosen based on certain characteristics. By hand-selecting people, you can meet the needs of certain demographic groups.

Design Your Questionnaire

The questionnaire is a structured way of organizing an interview. To obtain accurate responses you need to consistently ask the questions from person to person, as this ensures that you aren’t leading the interviewee’s responses.

When you are crafting your questionnaire, you need to keep your goals in mind. The wording you choose when making a survey can make the difference between accurate and inaccurate information. Depending on your phrasing you may subconsciously be eliciting a particular response.

Pretest Your Survey

Before you do a significant push on the phones, you must pre-test your survey. Pilot testing will let you iron out any kinks in your line of questioning and develop the most consistent form of surveying possible.

Knowing that you’re working with a high-quality and tested survey can give you more confidence in your findings.

Collect and Input Your Data

When making the phone calls for your survey you need to constantly keep track of this data. By keeping all your information stored in statistical software, you can quickly understand trends in the data and make data-driven decisions based on your findings.

Viewing all of the data in a centralized location will also let you pick out key outliers in the data and assess trends.

Start Conducting Phone Surveys Today

Phone surveys unlock valuable pieces of data for your brand or business. By doing customer surveys and phone surveys collecting insights from your consumer base you can learn to better target them and achieve your organization’s mission.

Contact us to start conducting phone surveys today!

7 Ways to Improve Your Customer Support

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Improved customer support is an essential part of a business model and overall experience online. A company with exceptional customer support is always improving, so if you don’t know where to start you may fall behind.

Customer support is a way for companies to answer incoming questions from customers through email, phone, text, social media, and other avenues. If you want to answer questions, you need to have a strong and effective strategy in place to capitalize on your business model and product.

Here are seven legitimate ways to improve customer support.

1. Continue to Learn the Product

It seems simple, but it often goes overlooked. Customer support is supposed to have the answers customers are looking for.

If you’re relying heavily on the documentation you’ve been provided to answer questions without additional research, you’ll fall behind in customer care. Knowledge of a product gives you the ability to really understand the customer’s questions, but this takes effort and time.

2. Address Customers By Name

To create a personalized experience in customer support, use the customer’s first name if you know it. A friendly approach like this makes the interaction feel “more human”.

Using a person’s name makes the words you’re saying feel more personal and caring. Instead of another customer, they’re involved in a unique experience tailored to them.

3. Provide Efficient Customer Support

Free time is a luxury that most people don’t have.

One of the number one complaints from customers regarding customer support is long wait times. About 73 percent of adults that use online retailing say that a great customer support team values their time.

Make sure you’re taking this into account if the conversation is running over by thanking them for their patience.

4. Track and Manage Activity

A great way to prioritize customer support messages is by using software that sorts incoming tickets based on the issue.

This provides business services with the ability to sort through issues and provide easy answers. The software will sort tickets that take up a lot of time and distribute them across the team. These tickets can be picked up by someone that is experienced in that area or has extra time.

5. Turn Questions Into Sales

When you’re answering a question from a customer, one of the best ways to capitalize on the conversation is by recommending a product that fixes their problem.

This recommendation could lead to a sale and increased revenue for the business.

6. Use Negative Experiences

Every customer support conversation is not going to be a positive one.

Use this experience to develop your customer care process. What went wrong during the conversation? Were you able to fix the problem even with customer reluctance?

These are all opportunities to grow your role and provide better customer support the next time around.

7. Ask for Feedback

If you want to improve in the customer support space, you need to know how you did it.

Most of the time a customer won’t provide feedback, but you can use automated customer support feedback software to get more information. The program will send out a personalized feedback request that requires minimal effort. Once you’ve received the feedback, adjust your support and continue to improve by taking all these tips into account.

Use the XACT Method

If you’re looking for a way to improve customer support tactics, XACT can help.

As a premier provider of contact support and services, XACT boasts a hardworking telecommunications team that can improve customer satisfaction in your business.

If you’re looking to upgrade your customer care, take a look at our number of helpful services today!

The Ultimate Guide to Choosing Web Support Services for Your Business

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There are over 507,743,033 online domain names registered today, with 900,000 more added every week. They’re a crucial part of any business because they present a clear, accessible brand image to customers.

There’s a wide range of website services available today, including hosting, design, and more. Web support services offer several of them to give you all of the help you need.

Finding the right kind of support is possible with a bit of research. Read on to learn how to choose the best web support service for you.

Check What Services They Offer

Not every company needs the same type of help with their website, and it’s important to know what you need before you begin. Make a plan that details what you can handle yourself and what you want to outsource.

Web support services can include:

  • Online chat
  • SMS
  • Training
  • Scheduling
  • Resource and account management

Check the web support service’s services page. It should detail exactly what they can handle so that you know what you’re getting before you hire them.

Look at Their Qualifications and Reputation

One of the most important qualities of any web support service is its team. They should have a wide range of professionals that are specialized in the services they offer.

Reputation is another important consideration. Look for a portfolio of past work and check reviews to see what past customers thought of them.

Test Their Communication

82% of customers expect an immediate response from a brand when they have a question about marketing or sales. Look at past results to see if they improved response times for their other clients.

Remember that web support is also a form of business support. They should also be able to quickly get back to you whenever you have a problem or question about the website.

You should also look into how many communication tools the website support service offers. They should provide you and your clients with several options, including phone calls, email, and Skype. Support won’t suddenly become unavailable if one of them goes down.

Compare Prices

Check the prices of all of your web support options to see if they fit your budget. Carefully look at all the packages they offer and what’s included in them.

Paying a bit more for high-quality website support can be worthwhile, but only if you know exactly what you’re paying for. Look out for hidden fees or unnecessary services.

Where to Find Web Support Services

Web support became an essential service when using the internet became a necessary part of everyday life. It helps ensure that your website runs and looks the way it should.

Choosing the right service means researching all your options. You need to find one that has enough experience to handle the tasks you need help with and also offers quick communication for you and your customers at a fair price.

XACT offers contact center and telecommunications solutions to help you reach your customers. Contact us today to see what we can do for you.

7 Benefits of Having Telephone Answering Services for Your Business

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Poor customer service is the number one cause of lost customers, so your business should focus on improving its customer service satisfaction if it’s not as good as it should be.

Making your customers happy isn’t difficult, but it takes some work. One effective way you can do this is by ensuring that you answer every call your business receives from customers.

But how can you do that? The best way is by hiring a company that offers telephone answering services. Your business will never miss a call when you hire this out.

Keep reading this guide to learn about the top seven benefits of this service to understand why your company needs this service.

1. You Never Miss a Call

Telephone answering services are one of the most crucial business services you can get.

The first benefit is that your company will never miss a call. You won’t need an employee monitoring the phone lines, as the answering service will handle this duty 24/7.

2. Improved Customer Experience

Secondly, you can improve customer experience and satisfaction by hiring a company to answer your phones. Your customers will always have access to a live person with this service.

Finding ways to improve your customer satisfaction is crucial to building a business.

3. Fewer Staff

Next, your company benefits because hiring telephone services means you need fewer employees. If you don’t hire this, you must hire employees to handle all the incoming phone calls and outbound services.

Having more employees costs more and requires more space and equipment. You can eliminate these things by hiring this out.

4. Cost-Effective

As mentioned, hiring employees costs money. You’ll see a big difference if you compare the costs of an employee to the costs of phone answering services.

Telephone answering services are more cost-effective for several reasons. First, you won’t have to pay for the extra space and equipment. Secondly, you won’t have to pay an employee’s salary and other expenses.

5. Improves Consistency

Providing 24/7 customer support also improves your company’s consistency. Your customers will know that someone will answer the phone whenever they call, and the operator will help them through any issue they have.

Customers like consistency, and they like talking to a real person when they have questions or problems.

6. Boosts Productivity

Additionally, hiring a company to answer your phones lets your employees focus on their jobs. They won’t have to deal with phone calls that put other tasks on hold. As a result, you’ll see a boost in your company’s productivity.

Finding ways to boost your company’s productivity helps your company make more money.

7. Improves Professional Views

Finally, telephone service companies help you give your customers the right impression. They’re professional, consistent, and reliable, which helps you improve the professional views customers develop of your company.

Hire Telephone Answering Services for These Benefits

Hiring a company that offers telephone answering services offers these benefits and more. You can hire a company to try it out, and you’ll likely see quickly why so many businesses hire this out.

Contact us at XACT to learn more about telephone answering services. We’d love to hear from you today!