Arguably, phone number testing is one of the most important aspects in ensuring an excellent customer experience (CX). Regardless of the industry you operate in, your phone numbers represent one of your most important assets.
Research indicates that phone calls remain the most used channel for customer service. While other contact channels, such as email, online chat, and social media, are crucial, a customer’s decision to call often signals something important.
The Value of Customer Interactions
Additionally, this touchpoint provides you with an opportunity to converse with customers. When managed well, it can boost brand loyalty. Salesforce research reveals that 80% of customers will forgive companies for errors, if they subsequently provide excellent customer service. They also found that 71% of consumers switched brands in the past year, with 48% citing improved customer service elsewhere as the main motivator.
Another important finding is that happy customers are more likely to make repeat purchases. Given that acquiring new customers costs five times more than retaining existing ones, it’s crucial to ensure excellent customer service and experiences across all communication channels.
Why is it Important to Test Your Phone Numbers?
Since phone calls are the most widely used channel for customer service, the significance of phone number testing is evident. If your numbers don’t function properly or have poor audio quality, delivering top-notch service often becomes impossible. In fact, poor audio quality alone is likely to lead customers to perceive interactions as negative experiences.
Instead of gaining a loyal customer or achieving increased sales, you may potentially lose customers forever. With it becoming increasingly harder to acquire customers, organizations can’t afford to lose a customer because of a non-functional or bad quality phone call. This is particularly significant because phone lines can be easily and proactively monitored. Doing so allows organizations to detect issues and rectify them before they can affect any customers.
What Can Number Testing Check?
You can test and monitor every phone number, regardless of the type of line or network you are using. But phone number testing is not simply about determining if your phone line is up and operating correctly. When you test telephone numbers, you need to evaluate them across various criteria and performance indicators.
Here are some of the aspects of number performance that you should test:
- Connectivity: Verify if your phone line is operational by dialing the phone number from an in-country server. Your team will receive an alert in the event of any connection issues.
- Audio quality: Utilize reliable indicators like the Perceptual Evaluation Of Speech Quality (PESQ) to assess clear communication between both parties.
- Dual Tone Multi Frequency (DTMF) functionality: Ensure that the phone line’s touch-tone functionality is operating correctly at all times. These touch tones enable callers to input information, such as their account number, through their keypad.
- Post Dial Delay (PDD): Monitor the time elapsed between dialing a number and when it begins to ring or provides the caller with a busy signal.
- Latency: Measure the time it takes from when one party speaks to when the other party hears the voice.
- Standard conference functionality: Replicate a conference call and thoroughly test all relevant conference functionalities to ensure correct performance.
- SIP route/dial out performance: Assess your dial-out quality by evaluating a specific carrier’s performance when dialing out from your network in real-time.
- Agent response test: Replicate the process and measure the time it takes for callers to connect with your customer service representatives.
Additionally, you can monitor other types of communication lines to ensure:
- Fax numbers are both sending and receiving messages correctly.
- SMS messages are being sent and received without issues.
The Power of Benchmarking
When your team receives an alert indicating a phone number problem, you’re immediately alerted to the problem. And with the correct monitoring tools, you have the information to swiftly troubleshoot and resolve the issue. However, assessing criteria like PDD or agent response times isn’t always straightforward. It can be difficult to determine what’s working and what exactly requires fixing.
For example, you might unknowingly employ complex DTMF functionality that makes perfect sense to your team, but not to your callers. This can easily lead to a negative CX. By comparing your results to those of other organizations through benchmarking, you can better understand potential issues that may be impacting your customers. These results and benchmarks will also help you to recognize any such challenges and make the necessary improvements more quickly.
Without the ability to benchmark, you might never uncover these issues and they could lead to poor customer experiences. While monitoring is essential, benchmarking offers you even more comprehensive insights that can bring these hidden issues to the surface.
How to Start Testing Your Phone Numbers?
You could begin by testing your telephone numbers manually, but this takes significant time and resources and does not produce consistent reporting and results. An alternative is to leverage Cyara’s number testing tool, which can perform each of the aforementioned checks (and much more) automatically and on a scheduled basis.
Additionally, Cyara saves all of your testing and results data to your customized dashboard. This allows you to analyze your results and promptly spot any trends or outliers. Furthermore, Cyara offers comprehensive benchmarks developed from years of testing in real-world environments. Comparing your results to these benchmarks offers truly valuable insights for your team.
Contact us today to explore how Cyara can assist you in proactively testing your organization’s telephone numbers.
