Designing a ‘zero friction’ call flow for small businesses

Have you ever called another business and been annoyed when dealing with their automated phone tree? Maybe they ask you to input information multiple times, or you can’t quite figure out which department would best help with your issue.

It’s frustrating, and a lot of the time it’s down to the business who set up the phone tree. There’s an art to creating zero friction call flows for customers and learning the ins and outs can help your business better serve your customers and keep them coming back.

Below, we’ll go through helping you figure out if your phone system has friction and how to design a better one if it does.

How friction-filled call flows can hurt customer relations

Automated phone trees like virtual receptionists or interactive voice response (IVR) systems are convenient for businesses, but if they’re not set up in a way that benefits customers they can have a detrimental impact.

Only 14 percent of customer service and support issues are resolved with these systems, according to a Gartner survey of 5,728 customers. For context, 73 percent of customers used these systems to try to solve their issues.

“Customers feel frustrated by self-service journeys that feel too rigid to deal with the complexities of their service issues,” said Eric Keller, Senior Director in Research for Gartner. He says companies need to work to make sure customers’ needs are understood and responded to.

The survey found that customers feel a disconnect between the issues they need to solve and the capability of the call flows they’re encountering. For example, 45 percent of customers said the call flow options they were presented didn’t understand what they were trying to do. In 43 percent of cases, customers couldn’t find content in the call flow that would be relevant to their issue.

Gartner also found that customers were experiencing friction at each step in a call flow, whether that was misunderstanding what option to choose or having to input their information multiple times in the process.

In a customer experience survey by JDPower, caller satisfaction scores were 150 points higher when they don’t have to input the same information multiple times.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the best experience in a call flow is a customer having their problems addressed on first contact, according to the JDPower survey, with satisfaction scores 200 points higher when this happens. However, first contact resolution (FCR) is also measured differently by companies and customers, according to Gartner.

Companies often measure FCR within a customer service channel. For example, only looking at the FCR within online chat. However, customers tend to have a holistic view, considering any channel their first contact. That customer might have gotten their issue solved in online chat in their first contact, which the business would consider a success. What the business might not know is that the customer may have gone into a physical location or made a phone call first and not had their issue resolved.

How to design zero friction call flows

We know some of this may feel overwhelming. How are you supposed to solve your customers’ issues quickly and efficiently when you’re not even sure what problems they might have? There are even some scenarios that no one would have ever thought could happen, but they do.

On top of that, we’ll be honest: The stakes are high. Only 14 percent of customers who experience high-effort customer service, which is when a customer feels like they have to do too much to reach a customer service resolution, are likely to continue doing business with that company again, according to Gartner.

However, a lot of this can be solved by just taking some time and going through things slowly. Below, you’ll find some essentials to keep in mind:

Successful call flows are about how callers feel, not what they hear

It can be really easy to start thinking about what a customer wants to hear in call flows. Maybe you think they want to hear about your hours or special promotions, or about all the different departments you can transfer them to.

Just remember that it’s in the name itself: call flow. You need to focus on what a customer is feeling when they call. They’re likely frustrated or disappointed by whatever happened to them. Maybe they’re a bit anxious because they have other things going on in their life and calling a business for a problem is the last thing they want to do. As Gartner notes, they’ve likely already done some research from third-party sources like Reddit or asked people they know.

Try to put yourself in the mind of your customer and go through your call flow yourself. Even better, ask friends, family members and even regulars for their feedback. You’re going to want to look for these potential friction red flags:

• A greeting longer than 20 seconds

• More than five menu choices

• Asking for the same information multiple times

• More than one phone transfer

• Not giving customers a clear path to a person

• An unhelpful after-hours message

• The point at which your callers abandon the interaction

You want to make sure you’re getting someone help as fast as possible, which means a short greeting, fewer menu options and getting them to their final destination efficiently. The average consumer is spending 18 minutes when they engage with customer service, according to JDPower, and 40 percent of the time they must provide the same information multiple times.

• Law firm: A short greeting to thank clients for calling them and then menu options to choose the attorney they would like to speak with. Make sure there’s also an option to talk to a receptionist about scheduling or billing issues.

• Retail: A short greeting with hours and then a menu option that lets callers choose the department they need to speak with.

• Restaurant: A menu that allows callers to choose between ordering takeout, hearing restaurant information or making reservations.

• Call center: A menu with splits between customer service, sales, billing and general information.

• Dental office: A menu that either lets you hear office information or transfers you to front office staff for appointments and billing.

• Construction: Menu options for a receptionist, new bids and estimates, field crews and subcontractors, project management, and accounting and billing.

• Automotive: A short greeting with your shop hours followed by a menu that splits into repairs and service, parts and inventory, billing and finance and a live receptionist.

Invite your reps and associates to help you design your call flows

If you have employees who regularly interact with customers, helping them with their customer service issues, then they have first-hand experience that you could benefit from. Have them contribute to how you could simplify or change things. After all, they have likely heard directly from frustrated customers about what the problems with your call flow are.

Proactively anticipate customer needs

Many business phone systems nowadays, like Ooma Office, integrate with other software that can help provide more information on your customers when they call. For example, Ooma Office integrates with NexHealth for dental practices.

This would allow staff to view patient details when taking phone calls. They would be able to see a patient’s name, date of birth, their last visit, their next visit and family members. This keeps customers from repeating information and allows staff to better anticipate how to help a customer. For example, if a dental client is calling shortly after their last visit, their issue might be either dental or billing related. If they are calling a long time after their last visit, maybe they want to schedule an appointment.

Simplify customer interaction paths

Consider a castle with multiple entry points for a second. If a king were to defend this castle, they would have to make sure each of these entry points was properly defended, potentially spreading their forces thin. The fewer entry points to the castle, the easier it is for the king to defend.

It’s the same idea as having multiple customer service pathways. If you have a phone number people can call, a separate chat on your website, and you respond to direct messages on your business’ Instagram, you have many ways for a customer to contact you. This could potentially spread your business thin. It also creates more points of contact that affect your FCR. You may not be able to easily keep track of when a customer initiated a support problem with you.

Consider simplifying those pathways down to what makes sense for your business. Maybe you only need a phone number and Instagram DMs. Or maybe you see a lot of people visiting your website so a chat would be helpful. You can even consider getting a business phone system that unifies pathways. For example, Ooma Office features Shift-to-Text, which allows customers who call you to shift the experience to text message if they prefer that rather than having a separate chat bot.

Always keep assessing

This one is important! Just because you’ve created a zero friction call flow that seems to be working doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels. You should continually assess and improve how it’s going. You can ask both customers and employees to raise potential red flags in your call flow that you can address.

The best design is invisible

Designing zero friction call flows is far simpler than you may assume, and a lot of it is down to trying to help your customer efficiently. The more you ask your customer to think, the more likely you’re introducing friction into their customer journey.

Take that mental load off their shoulders with a call flow that doesn’t make them think. You don’t want them to make choice after choice; you want them to get to their destination quickly so they don’t even realize they’re in a call flow. You can do it with the help of an advanced business phone system that has features like integrations and virtual receptionist that enable you to help your customers better than ever.