Often reps must ask customers to take action in order to resolve a problem or answer a question — respond by a certain time, complete an essential form, provide a missing document, etc.
This month in Customer Communicator, the training and motivation newsletter for frontline reps, authors Val and Jeff Gee say that the best way to get customers to comply with your requests is to have them commit to the action by saying “yes.”
A study of the language used to confirm appointments illustrates this point. When reps said, “Please call if you have to cancel,” 30 percent of customers did not keep their appointments.
When reps used the phrase, “Will you please call if you have to cancel?” and received an affirmative reply, only 10 percent of customers failed to keep their appointments.
By asking customers to agree to call, more customers called to cancel or reschedule and fewer appointments were missed.
More on guiding customers with the right words appears in the March issue of Customer Communicator.