5 Effective Ways to Build Rapport With Customers

In a call center environment, the agent and customer communication depends on the words being used and the context behind them. For a long lasting rapport, these words should add on to the trust and credentials of the service with every communication.

Once the communication has started, the most necessary part lies in the fact that the number of minutes spent on it should carry the idea of valuing the customer’s time. This can only be achieved if the agent is able to give appropriate responses to the customer’s queries.

Let’s look at other major reasons that support the agents to maintain a good rapport with the customers.

1. Understanding Your Customer

When a customer reaches an agent with queries, the only expectation that is bound with his call is to be understood. The overall satisfaction of the customer depends on the least gap between the customer’s need and the agent’s ability to tackle the problem.

For a better understanding, it is always formative to have a speculative and statistical approach towards the customer’s problems. With this approach, the customer becomes more predictable and further easily manageable.

2. Listening Actively

Understanding your customer beforehand to have a good judgment of the customer’s need is necessary. But when the conversation is on, the more important aspect lies in the listening part. So it is necessary for the agent to be a good listener.

An agent having good active listening abilities always has a good rapport with the customer because the customer is able to speak his grievances, if any, freely. This further helps to design the service in a better way.

3. Bearing with Patience

At times, the customer can be agitated because of the gap in the service or not so good customer support experience. In such circumstances, it is necessary for the agents to have a patient bearing during the conversation and keep the meaningful information communicated without delay, that could lead the customer to a solution.

An agitated customer gives many cues to fill in the service gap. So patience plays an important role because with patience, the conversation can reach a convincing point for both the parties, the customer as well as the agent.

4. Keeping up the Trust Factor

An agent is at a big time loss when he unknowingly or because of lack of knowledge, ends up the conversation with some misleading information. Losing trust at one point may lead to losing many customers. So when it comes to being trustworthy, authenticity plays a vital role.

A misled customer is always deterrent to avail the service again. Trust is built by helping the customer with the best solution in the least time. Trust comes with the fact that the agent is aware of every aspect of the service that the customer is seeking.

The agent represents the service in the forefront. From the moment, a customer is interested in the service and decides to go ahead with the service it becomes a responsibility of the agent to maintain authenticity with his words. Trust comes, on its own.

5. Making a Good Use of Resources

With the arrival of cloud-hosted call centers, it has become easier for the agents to make full use of the available resources. Cloud technology gives many forward-looking options that help agents to execute customer service in the best way. So it is always advisable to go for cloud technology and build a robust support system for the customers.

In a cloud contact center, most of the information for the agents is kept handy and features like toll free numbers, IVRs and good CRM integration help to maintain a good rapport with the customers.

Keeping in Touch With Your Customer

It is essential to maintain a perpetual contact with the customers. Customers reach out to the agents in the time of needs but it is the responsibility of the agents to keep in touch with the customers with a meaningful conversation that speaks out about the customer benefits. Maintaining rapport with customers is like maintaining a valuable relationship.