How To Achieve The Maximum From Brand Advocacy In A Call Center Industry?

For instance, in the selling of the product supplements, your product helps people to feel better, healthier, fuller, etc. Additionally, your supplements are free from side effects.

Or you are in the legal service consultations business. And your job is to make the legal issues with an attorney or judge smoother and faster. You know the way how to solve a particular issue faster. And with the lowest fees. Thus your benefits in saving consumers’ time and money. 

If you are in the technical support business. You’ll achieve more brand advocacy when you tell exactly what the current problem is, what are the ways to solve them, and how much time you need for it. And you fulfill every one of these promises. 

Whatever your business is, whether it’s sales or customer support, providing direct benefits that improve customers' lives is the solid ground for future brand advocacy. 

In this article you will find:

How to fairly easily turn customers into brand advocates?

Prospects and customers are unable to become your brand advocates overnight. You are personally unable to become the brand advocate for a company, no matter how good your advertising is. Effective commercial, or first perception of the product.

The time, test, and confirmation of the goods or services' values are pillars for establishing natural brand advocacy. Of course, depending on the services this time is different, but in a majority of cases, it becomes pretty much fast. 

Once the prospects and consumers see your product performs, taking into account the price and the value, they’ll be ready to become the product’s advocates. 

How does the product’s price influence brand advocacy?

In these jittery times, the price is drastically influencing the purchasing decision. Consumers decide whether the particular services are the worthwhile price you are requesting.

Depending on the price, all people conduct a brief evaluation of the price-value factor among other goods and services available on the market. 

Despite the fact that low price usually wins in a short-time period. The best goods and services, even expensive ones, never suffer from complete shortages. Because in the deep of the heart, all people look for the best products and services, no matter what the price is. 

However, if you manage to provide the best service at lower than average prices on the market, you’ll be the unanimous winner in any kind of market, year in and year out. 

Talking about another factor of the price and decision, we need to mention another fact. The higher price, the more consumers are concerned of the fact regarding the product’s logical benefit that improves their lives. Take a look at the facts listed below.

Low prices, like $100 or so can get away with the emotional kinds of benefits for consumers. For instance, your product is about $100 per piece. And this is the health supplement, headphones, keyboard, etc. 

If the product is really working out its way by the features it has, that’s because of the price. Almost everyone in the world can spend an additional 100$ without losing much. These emotional features of products also include popularity, appearance, color, etc. Only the complete garbage, useless products - will never make their way.

However, if your product is $1000 or maybe $10 000 and more. Then your consumers will seek the real benefits that drastically improve their lives. And they’ll also compare your product and features with other products and features on the market. 

Of course, the higher the price - the more desire to achieve the real value. And brand advocacy could be much more powerful.

How often do customers become the opposite of your brand advocates? 

Most consumers that turn off your brand because of the lousy experience will share their negative experiences with everyone on the internet and beyond. Their negativity is triggered by thinking you've cheated them - took their money away yet not delivered the promise. Let's look at the real examples of both good and bad ones.

The first real example. You’re selling lawn movers for the price of $369.99 or so. And your promise is this: a 12-month guarantee for technical support and maintenance. Or the refund, no questions asked during the 12 months. Pretty strong and attractive claim.

Now, one of your consumers, calls you with the problem regarding the lawn mover's issue. For some unknown cause, the mover stopped working after 1 month of usage. 

The wrong way to do it: Perhaps this is because the component's failure or assembling mistake, doesn’t matter. Yet you refuse to provide the technical support on the prior given claim or to fulfill the money-back guarantee.

The result? Your consumers will be so angry that he or they will try every possible way to leave negative feedback and switch to another, more trustworthy brand.

The right way: Your customer support agent says this: “Mr. Jones, I noticed your troubles with the lawn mover, and we can address your problem immediately. We need to send our agent to you for an examination of the lawn mower. Once he will confirm the case, we’ll provide you with the new mover or give you the full refund, no questions asked. We do apologize!”

The second example: You are in the internet provider's technical support. On average, you’re charging the $100 fee per month for the 1 Gbps speed. The consumer addresses you to achieve the clarification of the service shortages and wishes to achieve prompt fixing. 

The wrong way: Your agent said that they are responsible-free for this trouble. Further, they don’t know when and how the current internet issue will be solved. 

In other words, they are not who is responsible for the internet shortages, even if they are the provider. If there’s a way to aggravate the consumers to the final extent, the example above is proven way and caught from the real world. 

The right way: Your agent must’ve been saying this: “Mrs. Miller, I see the internet shortage in your region, I haven’t clear data on your case, please give me 5 minutes to find out the reason. Can I give you a callback in 5 minutes?” 

That’s the example of cutting-edge customer service, all people are starving for. And if your agent really gives a callback and maintains to move towards solving the problem, your consumers will be capable to pay even more money in order to maintain the business relationships with your company!

As you see similar cases of the sustaining of the brand advocacy or complete losing of the mood of the trust depend on how a company reacts. And of course how sales and customer service agents respond to the claims. 

That’s why it’s ultra-critical for managers and supervisors to check their agents by connecting to calls, listening to audio tapes, investigating cases, and doing everything possible to maintain the top level of service. 

Finally, an upset consumer is free to exercise their right to ask regulatory agencies such as the FTC to check on the legal. That's not in your best interest and never should be.

What is expected from your sales customer service team?

Prospects and consumers never expect the so-called “special treatment” from your team. All they need is a professional and maybe a little bit friendly-like tone of voice. That will be more than enough to sustain perfect business relationships.

However, we need to clarify what’s exactly the meaning of the professional and friendly-like treatment of your agents to prospects and consumers. And here’s what’s it all about

Preparation of the agents with the knowledge and state of mind

Knowledge is the first kind of quality, every person will look in your company to solve their issues. It’s the obvious thing, your agents must have a good-enough level of knowledge to deliver the perceived value to consumers. 

In the technical service, each agent must know the most obvious inquiries, how to solve them, when to transfer the call, etc. 

In the sales teams, agents must know the most common benefits of the products and services, how they differentiate from other solutions on the market, and why consumers must act now. 

Do you think good-enough knowledge is everything you need? No. The moment you think likewise, your agents will start to underperform. Because it’s a proven fact that either professional in the call center industry becomes better or they decline their proficiency. 

Promises fulfillment and why it’s the only proven way to sustain brand advocacy in the long run?

Your company already made the promises in the advertising, commercials, website, etc. Now, your job to sustain the brand advocacy is to fulfill the claim. It’s that simple in words and sometimes challenging in the practice.

The rule is this: if you’re unable to deliver the promise – never promise particular benefits. It’s really better to say nothing than something that will aggravate consumers and drop down your reputation or brand image.

Consumers sometimes behave smarter than companies in this case. Once they see the claim, they start guessing whether this claim is trustworthy or this is what the balloon company wants to present without any evidence whatsoever. 

Thus always fulfill even small promises and never claim without the option to deliver.

Be the pro even with the hard customer and tension inbound calling volume

Well, the customer service teams know exactly what we are talking about. Not only do they struggle with the challenging inquiries throughout each of their shifts. They meet hard customers once in a while.

And the only way to maintain professionalism in a situation that sums up stressful and tense work is to know how to do it. Fortunately, there are ways to sustain professional behavior.

First. Agents must know the fact that no matter how good they are, they can meet the hard customer with a high percentage of possibility. Thus they prepared for this kind of conversation and never responded with aggression. 

Knowing the fact of the existence of angry consumers in their market and that these cases are merely incidents rather than the rule, which means they are rare. It will tremendously improve their stress-absorbing capacity.

Second. Building a fast rapport. Means not so much the pleasant tone of voice and right script. Yet the fast understanding of the consumer's purpose. For instance, agents can quickly understand, based on their knowledge or experience, that a particular call is regarded as a technical issue that the company must solve. 

Or the particular call is regarding the personal issues of the consumer. And agents quickly differentiate these types of calls from one another. 

Third. Agents with the help of their managers and supervisors constantly re-shape their capacity to maintain top-performers by achieving more knowledge, data, and solutions based on solving previous inquiries. 

Solving these three issues listed above guarantees a good-enough level and the perspective to achieve great professional patterns in the future. 

Solve issues by providing long-term positive effects in opposite to the short-term one

Customer service teams almost always keep providing the fastest-possible service. And there's logic in this. The consumer demands the fastest service, no matter what. However, the question that stands before the company is this: whether this particular issue is long-term and positive or short-term and soon will become negative? 

Once the manager will answer this question, perhaps the agent will quickly build the blueprint on how to provide a long-term positive solution. Moreover, even if a consumer wants to achieve the fastest service, the company needs to make a decision toward a better solution. Сonsumer appreciates the long-term decisions and consequently more positive reactions even when the solution takes some time.

Want to achieve the tool to foster brand advocacy today? It's easy. Nail every kind of customer service call, and improve customer experiences with the call center software at a hand. And you can get it today. Just contact the Voiptime Сloud office. 

Sound loud and clear on all channels customers prefer

The phone call is the most frequent channel for communication your customers will use. Calling is fast, easy, and gives a lot more information than chatting or SMS messaging. However, SMS, live chat, social media, and email are still the channels consumers prefer to use.

Every business benefits from establishing clear and loud communication not only through phone calls but with the help of all other texting channels. Of course, the benefit of these channels is the zero cost. While phone calls require some money for outbound and inbound conversations.

Who knows, perhaps prospects and consumers wish to save extra money and contact you not only through the phone. 

By the way, phone calls sometimes are a very tough routine in case consumers are in loud places such as supermarkets or squares. They are just unable to contact the company when it’s important for them.

Finally, your consumers will be delighted for the opportunity to contact you through the most comfortable channel. Plus, your sales or customer service team always has extra time when consumers text them. Thus the stress pressure will be much less and the service much better.   

Stimulating programs for attractiveness and brand advocacy

Companies are striving to make their offers more attractive by adding various kinds of stimuli. And as to statistical data, they are working towards betterment and velocity of the sales. Let’s take a look at them closer. 

Discounts

Since each product or service has its average price on the market, regarding its segment, you would like to consider the discounts, seasonal or not, to improve your product’s attractiveness. 

The reason why discounts are so popular is simple. For instance, a company offers a 5% discount on its products. From the beginning, it seems that the company is lowering its price in comparison with other companies. And consequently, lose the revenue.

Your discount policy can be for “prime members”, those who already ordered a lot of goods and services from your company and consequently attached to the incentives.

A wisely attached discount means increasing the revenue just because more people are buying the product. 

Bonuses

Want to add an extra opportunity to your product? Consider adding bonuses to your offer. As a bonus, you are free to add the products with the extra features or additional goods.   

For instance, you can have a kind of cashback for your regular and prime customers. Thus once your customers enter the group that is entitled to the bonuses, such as cashback, that will drastically make the relationships with your company more reasonable.

Keep your customer closer and check them once in a while

Yes, all consumers want is professional-like services, great product quality, and timely customer service. Well, you can improve relationships by adding something special to these relationships. Take a look.

Phone calling

Do you have a new consumer or the regular one? Why not call them, let’s say once a month to ask this question: “Good day, Mr. Smith, this is the company (your company’s name). Please tell me if there is something our company could do for you or maybe you wish to share with us”. 

Do you know what will happen to your customer? Your customer will be positively astonished by this call. And this is what the most successful companies around the globe once did and earned undying love from customers because of this kind of treatment. So try out this technique to keep your consumers closer through phone calls.

SMS

SMS messaging is a popular and handy way to communicate not only between people yet between people and companies. Thus providing your consumers with a timely or “thank you SMS” you could really stand out from the crowd. Because nearly always, consumers read their SMS messaging. 

Why not use SMS to share your information with thousands of your consumers around the globe in seconds? You inform them about the delivery, product issues, changes, and so on and so forth. And all this without distracting your agents from their challenging calling responsibilities in the office-based or remote call center.

Email

Busy to give a call or an SMS? Why not send the email to your consumers with the “thank you note”. For instance, collect the emails from your consumers via website or order forms. You can also do it by asking them directly to send you the email. Then separate these emails if you have a lot of consumers, let’s say your database consists of 100 000+ consumers. 

Then you can send the “thank you note” to your consumers. The purpose of this letter is to highlight your appreciation they chose your company as a vendor of the goods and services. 

The result will be fabulous. Your consumers will read the letter, and remember what you’ve written.

Further, the benefit of all these actions is this: you are free to make the follow-up of the sales through additional emailing. It works as follows:

• “Thank you note” letter;
• The letter with the relevant content for the consumer: materials, articles, white papers, and newsletters, which allows your consumers to benefit from;
• A follow-up letter asking for purchasing your new products or goods.

Notice this. Sometimes you need to make (step 2) two times or three times before you can ask for the additional sale. Yet it depends on your products, market, and consumers.

New consumers and existing one

Remember the rule: it’s easier and much less costly to keep the customer than to acquire the new one. This rule worked a few decades ago, works today, and will work decades ahead. And here’s why.

Your regular consumers are constantly generating revenue for your consumers. In fact, all companies have 20% of the “core”, regular consumers that generate the 80% of their revenue. 

The percentage could differentiate depending on the market, yet no more than 5% less or high. Thus your goal is to keep an eye on your core audience and constantly address their needs, when necessary, whether from relevant newsletters, content, or services. 

Now, your intentions are also to expand your services to new customers. And you’ll do everything to attract these customers. What you need to remember is to always provide the relevant treatment to both of the categories. 

Those companies that manage to serve new consumers, as well as the existing ones, will always prosper more than companies that deliberately aim at one category either new or existing consumers.

Brand advocacy is easy

You’ve just read the workable blueprint on how your call center whether it’s the sales or customer service could easily address your consumers. And turn them from the occasional consumers to the brand advocates that promote your company to peers with the word of mouth, on social media, you name it.

That’s what all businesses, in any niche around the globe desperately need to do – provide the cutting edge service and turn consumers into brand advocates. Consequently, these companies will never be poor.

Here’s what the Voiptime Cloud wants to say at the end

The Voiptime Cloud company is a call center software vendor that operates around the globe for more than a decade. We’re glad not only to provide our customers with the relevant call center software for the small, mid-sized, and enterprise-like call centers. We are also glad to share with the independent counsel the various aspects of sales and customer service. Stay with us for more relevant content, soon.