Great customer service no longer relies solely on products and purchases. The customer experience is what truly matters and it begins from the very first point of contact. When a customer calls, either for advice, to complain, to offer feedback or to ask a question, it's vital that your call handlers respond efficiently and appropriately.

There are many ways to ensure this is done well, but there are also some experiences that you should avoid giving your customers.

Have you ever noticed that you can hear whether someone's smiling or not when you're talking to them over the phone? Good customer service is about more than just numbers: it's about people. The productivity of call handlers can't be measured simply by how many customer queries have been resolved, but in qualitative terms: how happy were your customers with their service, and how did it leave them feeling about your brand?

Once considered a recession-proof sector, funeral businesses are having to use creativity and fast thinking to remain competitive.

Customers who shop around

The British public are now more willing than to shop around - they have greater digital ability to research options and make decisions based on their own comparisons and the reviews and recommendations of other.

Most people feel very awkward when talking to someone who has recently been bereaved. This is a skill that good funeral call handling centre staff members possess and they will happily give you advice if you ask them.

In the meantime, just what do you say to a grieving relative or friend?

Building rapport is the ability to generate a level of trust and understanding between the person representing your business and your customer. When speaking to customers over the phone, it's even more important to ensure you build a strong level of rapport, as you don't have the added benefits of being able to promote yourself visibly. To build rapport, you need to actively listen to your customers, empathise and understand exactly what it is they're asking of you. Once their requests have been clearly communicated, you then need to be able to explain clearly what solutions you can offer so that the customer feels confident their request will be resolved. Below we've listed out our top reasons why building rapport with customers on the phone is so important.

Although the internet has made businesses more accessible than ever, most customers still want to be able to contact companies via the telephone. In addition to this, standard 9-5pm business hours rarely meet customer expectations these days.

With many consumers willing to pay extra for a product or service if they receive exceptional service, companies can meet their customer’s needs and even increase their turnover by providing a 24-hour customer care line.

Ensuring your availability isn’t always easy to do, however, particularly if you rely on existing staff to provide around-the-clock service. Whilst companies could develop an in-house 24-hour customer service team in theory, this can be expensive.

When you outsource your customer service, you want to have peace of mind that the agents speaking to your customers are delivering the highest levels of service possible. At Front Line, we’ve been providing outsourced customer service solutions to a range of businesses for almost 20 years, 365 days of the year 24/7. Below we’ve listed out some of the key ways our staff continually deliver expert service to your loyal customers through our end to end telephone answering service.

There’s no doubt that having their enquiry handled by a ‘real’ person rather than picked up by an answering machine is something that your clients will appreciate. Consider the following points, and ask yourself if your business currently delivers a service that your clients are happy with. If not, you might want to think about hiring a telephone answering service

Nobody ever wants to need the services of a funeral service; it's something that we turn to after tragedy has struck and we're at our most vulnerable - which is why it's so important for funeral services to provide great customer care to anyone who has to get in touch.