Who's Answering the Phone?

Also, consider your billing process. If your law office or technical support team begins charging as soon as your firm answers a call, clients will not appreciate paying to use an automated system.

If you use a voice recognition protocol, make sure the system can handle accents and differences in speech style, as well as regional variations in terminology. An East Coast client might want to ask about the case of “soda” they’re expecting, while a Midwesterner has a question about that order of “pop.” Ensure that the script your callers hear matches your software’s capabilities. Don’t ask callers to speak slowly and clearly if your software is designed to understand normal speech. And don’t automate the ordering process, Shockley advises. Clients who are spending money with you will expect to receive attention from an agent.

Some of your customers will always prefer to speak with an employee. Your system should make it easy for them to talk to an operator—don’t make them guess what key they need to press, or force them to wade through electronic menus before giving them the option of a living person. “The application needs a sensitivity to letting the caller continue to interact with the system, or speak to a call center agent,” Veldboom says.

Hixon says that a good system should automatically transfer callers to an employee after two unsuccessful tries at understanding the caller’s purpose. “Two queries, and that’s it,” he says. “You need to know where the line is between assistance and irritation. You reach a point where    the caller is ticked off, and that’s the last thing you want to have happen.”

Get the right system, Shockley says, and your callers won’t be irritated—they’ll be glad to get quick assistance from your company. “If you make the caller happier at the same time that you reduce costs, that’s a win-win,” he says. “It’s really about figuring out who’s calling, what they need, and getting them to the appropriate resource so it’s efficient for the company and efficient for   the caller.”