Critical Metrics for Managing a Business and Retaining Customers in a Pandemic

Tollring has navigated its way through the current situation using a combination of its own iCall Suite and Microsoft Teams to ensure its people can manage effectively and in turn, deliver a good service to customers, and it is clear that if you have the right tools, you can understand how to handle any changes that come your way. In addition, with real-time analytics, you see immediate insights to help make the right decisions, improve operational efficiency and deliver a more structured way of managing customers. This also requires everyone to be flexible and agile enough to act on that information to deliver the best internal performance and external experiences.

Tony Martino, Tollring CEO, stresses the point that customer support has been Tollring’s primary focus since the pandemic began. “With such a massive upheaval as we’ve all experienced, you need to give customers full confidence that whilst everything has changed, you can still deliver the high quality of services that they expect.

“We receive incoming queries across all of our different systems. The make-up of these enquiries has been much the same as it was pre-lockdown-just as many support renewals, new sales enquiries and support calls as before-but admittedly fewer new on-prem sales for some industries. Our partners are either inundated or very quiet, depending on their end customer core verticals.”

“We have been dealing with lots of questions relating to the end users working from home for the first time, and how analytics can help them do that. Our advice, particularly for those with a supervisory role, is that analytics and monitoring is absolutely critical.”

Using call analytics and recordings 

“Using our own iCall Suite tools, we can ensure our teams are coping and delivering a high level of service to customers. The analytics are used to understand call flows, to identify any changes or fluctuations due to Covid-19 and enable us to allocate resources accordingly.

“Our support team spends much of the day speaking to customers over the phone, so we need to ensure we have the right people available at the right time to handle any changes in call volumes. Managers are able to monitor business performance and can quickly identify any trends or issues. They can also ensure the right processes are in place to deal with customers needs, ensuring calls are answered in time and if necessary, directing VIP customers to higher level call handlers. And, as the situation evolves, they can monitor it closely and make changes that put them in the best position to succeed when we move closer to business as usual.

“With the move to home working for more staff, we also wanted to be sure that the quality of phone lines and the over-the-phone experience received by customers was acceptable. The call recording element within iCall Suite helps with this, as managers can listen to the recordings to check the quality of phone lines and ensure customers are getting the responses they need.”

Making the most of Microsoft Teams

For Tollring’s wider team, being at home meant only a minor disruption to their working days as they continued to use Microsoft teams with overseas colleagues. However, those in the companies predominantly office-based delivery and service teams were faced with the new challenge of remote working.

“Remote working was a totally new experience for some of our team, so we need to ensure that everyone could still work with each other remotely without feeling isolated or not knowing what others are up to. To achieve this, we created different channels on Teams to cover common office work scenarios that can be used on a daily basis. The channels also provide a space for everyone to stay updated on exactly what is happening across the different teams. And from a management point of view, we have visibility of what everyone is doing and can assign individual tasks.

“We have also integrated Zoho Desk with Microsoft Teams, so when a new ticket comes in, the relevant users get a direct notification on Teams. Notifications are also sent if a ticket is about to be escalated. This ensures nothing is missed. And when people go on breaks, they can notify each other so other members can continue to work on tickets.

“Going forward, customer habits will continue to change and we need to monitor and change to meet their evolving needs. Customer experience is already a major differentiator and will continue to become even more important. This means helping everyone in a company to perform to the best of their ability whether they are working remotely or not, and thus ensure a smooth and successful journey for the customer.”