Customer follow-up—it’s an essential part of great customer service, which is the lifeblood of your business. Responding to your customers quickly and effectively is one of the surest ways to boost customer engagement and keep your business on a good growth trajectory.
But what happens when you or your team can’t be available 24/7 for follow-ups? What if you don’t have the bandwidth to answer every call, even during business hours?
Read on for our insights on how to use voicemail transcripts to better follow up with your customers.
What is Voicemail Transcription?
Voicemail transcription is basically exactly what it sounds like. This voice-to-text service takes a voicemail audio recording and transcribes it into written format. If a customer call is missed, your support team can have a written copy of their voicemail to read before conducting a follow-up.
There are many benefits to using voicemail transcription to support follow-up with customers such as increased convenience, accuracy, and efficiency.
Customer Follow-Up is Everything
Appropriate follow-up can make or break customer relationships. When a customer calls in and doesn’t get the help they need right away, they’re going to expect a follow-up call, and you want to make sure this is done in the best way possible.
You’re most likely to receive positive customer feedback from those who receive a quick response from a team member who understands their needs and can provide a timely solution.
Being responsive is a core part of great customer service, and making each customer feel valued should be a top priority for any business, but this also can eat up a lot of time. Having the right tools for customer follow-up can save you time and make it easier to get it right, gaining a competitive advantage over others in the market.
Automating as many business tasks as possible can save you a big headache and get your team on the right track to follow up with customers quicker and better.
Enter: Voicemail transcription.
How Voicemail Transcripts Simplify Customer Follow-Up
Voicemail Transcripts Increase Productivity
Picture this: your team has been off all weekend and comes back to tens or hundreds of voicemail messages left by customers. Which customer should receive follow-up first? Not all voicemails are created equally, and it’s important to prioritize the most urgent customer needs.
But how do you know which is most urgent? We all know the pain of listening to a long voicemail, especially if it’s emotionally charged or chock full of detail.
Voicemail transcripts provide a visual overview so that your support team can get the gist of a message’s contents without having to spend an entire 2-3 minutes (or longer) to get the full idea. Your team can also use transcripts to determine which customers need a follow-up call, and which ones could be addressed through follow-up emails.
This makes follow-up so much easier because your team can target the highest-need customers first and in the right format, protecting your company name and keeping communication lines open. Don’t let time burdens lead to lost sales.
Context Makes You More Empathetic
Understanding why a customer is upset or why they called in can help you and your customer service team better address their needs and come to a solution more quickly.
Nothing is worse than misunderstanding a customer’s concern or being blindsided by emotionally charged customer feedback. Recognizing what a customer is feeling and what they need is pivotal for good customer interactions.
Your team members can jump into follow-up calls with a calm outlook and a prepared list of resources and solutions if they already know what the customer was calling about.
Providing voicemail transcripts to your team lets them scan the issue, emotionally prepare, and bring their best self to the table (or someone else on board, if necessary.)
Having transcripts of customer phone calls also allows you to quickly determine which person would be best for conducting the follow-up. That team member can follow up more quickly and effectively after having skimmed a voicemail transcript instead of having to listen to the full audio recording.
