How to Create the Perfect Phone Script
Phone scripts provide numerous benefits. Also known as call center scripts, they safeguard you legally, offer accurate company-endorsed information, encourage fast, efficient call handling, and boost customer response rates. In short, they provide a unified, accurate, and useful phone service for companies that use them.
But phone scripts also have their downsides. In other words, they can cost you business. Their stiff, robotic greetings and canned responses can make customers feel undervalued and underappreciated. They can also make your agent or call center representative seem rude, uncaring, and disingenuous.
That’s not the customer experience you want to provide. So how do you navigate between this rock and a hard place? By creating better call scripts—call scripts that not only use the spoken word and sound like a natural conversation but also provide the positive, highly personalized interactions customers expect and prefer.
Creating the perfect phone script, however, is a challenge. In fact, some experts on customer service consider it among the biggest challenges today’s brands face. Create a better script, however, and customers won’t even know your agent is using one, which can help boost sales and revenues while minimizing expenses.
Divide Project into Five Areas First
The first step in creating a script is to consider its basic flow. An effective way to do this is to break the script into five distinct areas. See below:
Objectives
Set the objectives of the script first. That way you have something to target when creating the script. In other words, determine the who, what, when, where, and why of the script, including the outcome you want to achieve.
Determine information needed
Decide what information your agent will need with this script and capture it in a user-friendly format. Also, consider what data you want the agent to report on to you.
Agent capability
Consider the skills the agent or agents will have to have to execute the script correctly. Are they veterans with polished skills or newbies that will need some guidance? Newbies will probably need more information than veterans.
Agent information
Using a script is often challenging for an agent. Reading, talking, and listening to all at the same time isn’t easy. Make sure your script focuses on the most critical selling or communication technique.
Data wanted
Decide what reports or analysis will you need for the script’s outcome. Consider them from both a company and a customer standpoint.
Doing this simple exercise prepares you intellectually and psychologically to start writing the script. Below are some additional tips on creating a better call script.
Best Practices On Creating Effective Script
A good script—one that does the job and fits your needs—serves as a guideline, not a fixed rule. It allows agents to make adjustments as needed on the fly. These tips below can help you create that type of script:
Use call recording to develop the script
Many companies use call recordings to identify problems, evaluate performance, collect statistical data, and so on consumer conversations. You can also use it to build and refine scripts, so they sound natural and conversational.
Give callers reasons to say yes
When consumers respond to something positive, they see the experience as positive. Use these phenomena to build scripts requiring positive responses. One way is to ask them their name, date of birth, address, telephone number, and so on. It creates a connection between your rep and the caller.
What does the caller require
Put what the caller needs foremost in the script. If they’re calling about an order, make sure your agent has quick access to your database with that information. In other words, make sure you prepare your agent for everything in advance of the call.
Use auto-cognitive devices
It’s not unusual for an agent’s mind to wander. That’s not good if the agent is handling multiple clients. Using auto-cognitive tricks, like creating bright, eye-catching scripts or using a company’s colors or trademarks, helps agents stay focused. It also helps them switch mentally to a new client.
Make scripts user-friendly and efficient
If you want to get the most out of phone scripts, you need it to be user-friendly and efficient. It needs to flow. Make it fluent so your agent can move through its stages quickly. Also, keep call durations as low as possible and use flowcharts to provide pictorial views of script pages and fluency.
Phone scripts are powerful tools that can help you shape positive customer experiences with today’s consumers’ demands. But be careful when creating phone scripts. They can make your company and agent seem rude, uncaring, and disingenuous.
But creating effective phone scripts is a challenge. Breaking down the effort into five areas first helps. You can then use the best practices above to create phone scripts that not only flow but also produce results, phone scripts that boost revenues and profitability.
