Effective customised greetings are integral to contact centre success. The greetings that callers hear when they connect with your contact centre set the tone for the entire interaction and are therefore directly tied to customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Establishing and regularly reviewing your contact centre phone greetings can make the difference between providing adequate customer experience and going above and beyond customer expectations.
Now, let’s look at the best customer greetings that I think most companies could adopt to have potentially successful calls.
1) Smile with your greeting.
No matter how hard you try, you cannot simply fake a smile even through the phone. Your enthusiasm should be felt by your customers through your smile and how you greet them. Customers want to hear enthusiastic words of greetings.
2.) ‘‘Welcome to…’ is the most popular call centre greeting.
This customer greeting phrase offers a unique opening in “welcome to…” and was less formal in using the phrase “how can I help you?” as an alternative to “how may I help you?”
3.) “Good afternoon!
You’re through to [Company Name]. My name is [INSERT NAME]. How may I help you today?”
4.) “Good afternoon.
You’re speaking to [INSERT NAME]. How may I help you?”
This customer greeting phrase uses two personal pronouns “I” and “you”, which help to demonstrate that the advisor wants to get personally involved to help the caller as an individual.
5.) “Hi! You’re through to [Company Name], how can I help you?”
Beginning with “hi” instead of “hello” removed the “fake” formality of the situation and allowed the advisor to sound natural and not as if they were reading from a script.
6.) “Hello, good afternoon.
[INSERT NAME] from …. speaking. How can I help?”
7.) ‘You have reached ……
Your call is important to us. Please hold while we connect your call.”
So, What Makes a Good Call Centre Greeting?
– First things first, a good contact centre is genuine. When interacting with customers, contact centre agents should always remember to be genuine about solving the customer’s problem and giving them the best customer experience to remember.
– A contact centre greeting should ideally begin with good morning / good afternoon
– A good contact centre greeting is what usually determines how the call will. If you get it right the first time; your customer is more likely to be calmer and will be open to engaging with you.
– Greetings are best kept casual – don’t try to be too formal
– Not everyone likes being addressed by their first name, without being asked first. Always keep it simple and neutral unless the customer states otherwise.
– Say “thank you for waiting” when you have long customer queues, as opposed to “sorry about the wait”. If you start with the interaction with an apology, you are put immediately on the back foot.
– The greetings I’ve touched on are a few of many and as we all know by now, to achieve greatness, one has to practice and that is where training comes in place.
For the contact centre agent to establish a connection with a customer – there should be implemented standardized training measures in place. If there is no standard taught, employees are left to greet customers as they choose, and their greetings may be inadequate. With training built into company procedures, it’s easier to ensure that customers get a standard first impression and to hold employees accountable for using acceptable greetings.