A recent study of 139 franchisors turned up some interesting finds after mystery shoppers made telephone contact with the companies. Eight percent of the franchises actually didn’t have a phone number or had a wrong phone number listed on their company website! Only one in five companies had a member of the sales team on hand to answer the first phone call from that shopper. One in 10 of the phone calls to sales team members were not returned. However, all these numbers represent an improvement over the last time the franchises were surveyed in 2012.
Sales personnel at these franchises recently agreed that two problem areas were failing to take a customer’s phone number at all, for making a return phone call and, secondly, failing to give adequate instructions to a customer at the very end of their phone call, to help them understand what the next step in the buying process should be.
Is your business in danger of making some of these basic customer service phoning mistakes? A mystery shopping firm such as Customer Perspectives can conduct telephone “shops” to help you get a handle on whether or not key personnel are providing customers with information that will eventually lead to a sale.
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