Reduce refunds to your customers (and keep them happier)
At Veritape, we constantly hear stories from our customers about great ways call recording is helping their business. One of the consistent themes is that call recording has a direct financial impact on a business, by reducing refunds paid to customers.
Why do refunds occur?
As you’d expect, the reasons for refunds differ widely across contact centres operating in different industry sectors. However, in general our experience points to:
- Miscommunication between customers and contact centre staff
- Genuine mistakes by customers or contact centre staff
- Problems with a company’s internal processes, which mean that the customer gets a different outcome than they were expecting
- (And also…) Customers trying to take advantage of the fact that companies usually have no way of proving what was said during a previous conversation
How can call recording help you?
Call recording can provide your business with easy, quick ways to resolve most of the above points. But the way in which it will help you the most is simply by providing you with facts. What actually happened during that call? Listen to the recording and find out. No more hearsay, no more ‘I said, they said’, no more disputes about the content of disputes!
But here’s the key thing: you must be able to find and listen to any disputed calls easily and quickly. Otherwise you’ll be unable to resolve a customer’s dispute in a timely manner - which can lead to further escalation and complication.
How does Veritape’s software aid call retrieval?
Nearly all call recording systems allow you to find calls using call date and time. Some give you an additional couple of fields: CLI and DDI. But in most cases, even with these data, finding individual, specific calls is still a slow and laborious process.
Veritape’s Call Tagging module changes all that. Call Tagging allows you to find calls instantly. For example, simply type in a customer’s reference number, and you will see a list of the calls which relate to that customer. You can play them straight away. No longer does finding calls need to take hours or days.
And as for finding your disputed call? It won’t take more than 30 seconds.
Now you’ve found the disputed call, what do you do?
We’ll leave that decision to you - it’s your business, and your circumstances will dictate the best course of action. But you may be interested in knowing some things that companies using Veritape’s software do with disputed calls, after having listened to them:
- Call the customer and say “I’m sorry”. (That approach may surprise you. It certainly surprises the customer. But if you discover a genuine mistake or fault on your behalf, how refreshing to be able to admit it, resolve the situation and move on.)
- Email the call directly to the customer, and then discuss it with them after the customer has had a chance to hear it. (In fact, an approach like this can often work: “Mrs Smith, I am investigating the problem you’ve had regarding your flight booking. Here at TravelCorp we record all of our calls with our customers, and I’ve located your booking call. I am going to listen to it in a few minutes, and I’ll also email the call to you so you have an opportunity to listen too. Once you’ve had a chance to listen to the call, would you do me the courtesy of calling me back so we can continue our conversation?” In this way, there is very little tension between the company and customer, and resolution can continue at the pace the customer is comfortable with. Which sometimes is not at all.)
- Start resolving internal problems which have created or contributed to the dispute - including by emailing the disputed call to the person within your business who has responsibility for your systems/processes/ordering/stock/etc. The fact that they can hear in a customer’s own words what went wrong is far more powerful than any memo you could write.
What impact can finding disputed calls have on your business?
Financially, the impact can be dramatic. One of Veritape’s customers, Autobuyer, reduced their customer refunds by 90% (and saved more than the cost of their Veritape software) simply by being able to play disputed calls to customers where necessary (although often just telling the customer that the call has been recorded is enough to amicably resolve a dispute). You can read more about Autobuyer’s experience here.
Improving internal systems and processes is another major benefit, and the impact of these changes will be determined by the current quantity of refunds and the efficiency of your business. But to put it in perspective: a major UK leisure company has recently used Veritape’s software combined with some staff training to save over £250,000 per annum by reducing their disputed calls to nearly zero.
But won’t playing calls to customers just annoy them?
Absolutely not. If your customers understand first-hand that you treat them well and act on their instructions promptly and correctly, they will have more faith in the service you provide. Being able to quickly and accurately justify your actions enhances your overall ability to serve your customers.