Many businesses are so concerned with promoting their brand and getting customers through the door, that they forget to nurture the relationship with the customer when they bring them onboard. A fundamental and costly mistake for any business. Your customers are what makes or breaks your business, so it is important that you take care of them and provide them with the best possible service. These are some ways you can improve your customer service to help ensure you retain your customers and increase the likelihood of referrals.

When you run a funeral or care business, you know just how important it is to offer a professional, expert and sensitive service to your customers at a time when they most need support.

There are many benefits to outsourced customer service, from taking the weight off the shoulders of in-house operations, to leaving the telephone answering service function in the hands of the experts. But how can you tell the pros from the amateurs? What are the hallmarks of customer service experts, based on the performance of their agents? Here we look at some ways of spotting the best outsourced customer service agents.

The statistics indicate that retaining customers can be up to 7 times cheaper than attracting new ones. A key way to retain customers is by ensuring you provide an expert level of service to your customers' needs and requests. Outsourcing your customer service function to an efficient call centre can help to satisfy your customers, keeping them happy and ensuring they remain committed to your business. Below we've highlighted some of the key benefits of using a call centre to handle your customer service calls. Benefits of using a call centre

Great communication is a contact centre agent’s most useful tool and the best agents have the knack of quickly establishing a good relationship with their customer. If you struggle to build a quick rapport, the outcome of any conversation is not likely to be the one you are hoping for. Building rapport over the telephone.

When someone dies, it’s a difficult and upsetting time for family members, and sorting out funeral arrangements is at the top of the grieving relatives to-do list. This can cause problems if the death occurs during the holiday season, outside of office hours, or if you are abroad in a different time zone at the time. That’s why it’s vital that your funeral home is able to provide a rapid and sensitive response to enquiries any day, any time, all year round.

Any job that involves taking and making customer calls requires excellent customer service agents on the phones, but within a care industry such as support for funeral businesses, it is critical. Customer acquisition and retention rely on the contact the customer has directly with your team as this is the first real idea they have of how the company sees and values customers during difficult times. Here are some of the behaviours an excellent call centre agent will demonstrate within these areas to help you to ensure that you are making the right decisions for your business.

When a loved one dies, everything becomes emotional and challenging. That’s why it's important when providing a funeral call service that you say the right things. When you’re providing a service, it is imperative that you are both sympathetic and supportive. Unfortunately, saying the wrong thing could be seen as insensitive and could not only do harm to your business but could cause more grief for the bereaved as well.

In order to be able to build strong relationships with your customers, you need to be able to communicate with them. In 2011 the ONS carried out a Census focusing on what languages people speak, it found that 4.2 million people over the age of three spoke another language other than English as their main language

When you're handling calls relating to funerals, being 'human' can go a very long way. It might seem obvious, especially when calls are sensitive in nature. However, sometimes the stress of the situation, the volume of calls taken and the need to get the call right means it can at times start to feel robotic. It's important to remember that every call you take is a new person with a new level of grief and emotion. They're not just a phone number on a sheet. It's a difficult time fraught with complex feelings and often requires a greater level of sympathy and support

Automated messages and systems form part of the call centre experience in almost all organisations. Used intelligently, they help direct calls correctly and save time for both staff and customers

If your property management company or housing association is bogged down by the high level of calls you’re receiving, you may want to consider using a telephone answering service. Here are some great reasons why.

Answering a phone call regarding the death of a loved one is always going to be a challenging situation. For nearly two decades Frontline has been providing a compassionate and empathetic telephone answering service for several funeral call handling businesses. We are committed to providing the highest levels of customer care in these difficult conversations, and take several steps with our staff to ensure that every call we receive of this nature is handled as gently and effectively as possible.

In theory, "call escalation" can be the key technique in problem resolution. Should a customer have a question a representative can't answer, escalation is a neat way of diverting queries to more senior members of staff. Over many years, Frontline have developed a streamlined and effective escalation process that connects customers with the person who has their answers.

Whether you have just started up a new business or you have been trading for a long time, there are always ways you can increase your profits. Your business may have become a bit stagnant, maybe your reputation is far from perfect or you are struggling to get your business off the ground. Most businesses have these obstacles but fear not, there are some simple improvements you can make to increase your customer appeal, which will help you achieve real success.

As technology continues to evolve, an increasing number of businesses are turning to online forms for customer transactions, rather than providing a telephone answering service. However, although this may seem like an easier way to increase your orders, it can actually prove to be quite problematic. These are some reasons why a telephone answering service is a much more effective option.

There are many advantages to outsourcing your telephone answering service – from cost savings in staffing, to the peace of mind you’ll gain knowing your customers are speaking to expertly trained professionals.

It may seem a strange proposition – that a healthy, growing business needs to actively encourage customers to ring in to complain – but here are just a few reasons why that kind of feedback is vital

When you work with so many clients over the phone, you learn a lot about phone etiquette - including what not to do. From rude habits to impractical actions ...

The world of business is fast-paced and non-stop. There are so many things to do it can be difficult to know where to begin. Outsourcing your phone needs to a telephone answering service can free up a load of time and take a lot of the stress out of your day. Here are three great reasons to use a telephone answering service...