There should be no such as a business that doesn’t have an approach to customer service (including customer support.) At some point, your customers are going to need some help, whether it comes to making purchasing decisions to troubleshooting products. Here, we’re going to look at a near-comprehensive approach to customer service and customer support. We’re going to look at both the different approaches to how you resolve customer problems and help them, as well as the essence of what makes them successful.
Give them the means to help themselves
Believe it or not, most customers would rather not have to get in touch with a member of your team unless they absolutely need to. To that end, you can help them solve their own problems by making sure that you have resources available for them to use. This can include tools as simple as FAQs but, especially for more technically oriented industries like software and electronics, you can also set up a forum where people can share issues, swap advice and solutions, and your team can interact on a regular basis. This page has more advice on setting up the resources that your customers need to be more self-sufficient. Just make sure that your only option isn’t “help yourself.” If someone needs your help, you need to be there, too.
Prepare resources for your team as well
Just as your customers can benefit from resources they can use to help themselves, you should start building a customer service bible that your team can follow as well. Not only can it offer them common solutions to the most common problems, but you can also ensure that it’s open for them to input their own solutions, as well. As such, you can make sure that they’re not acting on out of date information, but that they can share tips and resolutions with each other, as well. Of course, active efforts should be made to replace out of date information, but you can democratize the process using the help of those people most likely to use it.
Ensure they can find you easily
Sometimes, it seems like some websites, especially some of the biggest and most popular, actively hide their customer support and service pages. If customers have to jump through several hoops to get in touch with a human being, then you’re only going to end up frustrating them more by the time you’re in a position to help. Make sure that you have multiple methods of getting in touch, a contact us page, and a support page that all feature instructions on how to get in touch with members of the team. The more barriers you put up between customers and the processes that are supposed to help them, the more likely they are to simply give up on the idea and go.
Be there as soon as you are needed
Aside from making your customer service channels accessible, you can make them proactive. There are a host of websites that are making great use of live chat software. This page has more information on how to integrate them but, effectively, they are chat windows that pop up as the user is browsing, offering to help with anything they might need. You don’t want to make them too interruptive to the experience just in case the customer is making their way through the site just fine. However, when a customer is starting to feel stuck, that little notification in the corner of the browser can help nip their issues in the bud and make them feel cared for.
Follow along with them
Another frequent complaint, aside from finding it difficult to even get the support needed in the first place, is when customers have to explain their situation time and time again. There’s really no excuse for this happening in the course of a single call or email chain. However, you can even prevent it from happening in the long-term. Remember your customers, remember their past interactions, and remember what solutions you offered in the past. This site gives more details on how customer relationship management software can help you keep records on just about every engagement you have with your customers, allowing your team to quickly get up to speed on how to best help.
Be ready to help them
Your customer service process is most likely to fit the description as being a series of touchpoints, each of which aims to help customers get closer to the resolution they need. However, the fewer touchpoints it takes to help, the more likely you are to satisfy them. It can difficult to resolve it in just one, as often you need to take the time to narrow down what, exactly, the problem is. One of the best ways to expedite that process is to use co-browsing tools. This way, you can quickly see, in real-time, what their issue is which allows you to better understand it and more quickly find a solution. AI chatbots can help with this, as well, as they will incorporate things like browsing history on the site into their responses, not just what the customer tells them.
Make sure your team is prepared
For a lot of companies that don’t invest very much into their customer service, their idea of training is teaching their team how to use a computer system that connects to customers and giving them a script to read from. Simply put, that’s far from enough. Instead, customer service training is about ensuring that your team can recognise patterns in customer behaviour and have the right emotional response, as well as being able to find the right resources and answers, to satisfy them as best as possible. This means they need genuine customer service training from a professional trainer. The better trained they are, the better they can handle the unexpected situations that often pop up in customer-facing roles.
Keep your team happy
If you’re paying your customer service team minimum wage, encouraging them to work overtime, and stuffing them in a cubicle environment then, simply put, you should expect bad customer service outcomes. You can’t expect people to invest the time and energy necessary to really work with customers and to enthusiastically engage with them if there’s nothing to motivate them other than the risk of losing a low-paying, low-worth job. There are plenty of ways to help improve their motivation, and not all of them have to be expensive. For instance, it can actually be more cost-effective to work remotely with them, allowing them to set their own hours, and in the environment that suits their needs, best.
Teach courtesy
Aside from the right methods of solving your customers’ problems, your team should also keep in mind how important it is to offer service with a smile (or at least a warm tone of voice.) From your perspective, this means that keeping them happy is essential. However, you should also encourage your team to develop a good understanding of customer psychology and offer scripts that show positive and warm language. Some people don’t naturally gravitate towards being warm and generous in their language, but this doesn’t mean that they can’t learn it with your help.
Anticipate their needs
Even better than responding to customer needs as and when they make them clear is learning how to better anticipate them. This comes in the form of creating an online experience that benefits from the various insights you can get from website metrics and analytics. Your website, and other websites that index them like Google, can share a plethora of data that shows how customers use the site, what pages they go to, what links they click, and how long they stay on each site. You can use this information, such as juxtaposing bounce rates to find which pages need to be spruced up, for instance. A good user experience is customer service before they even know that they need it.
Get feedback on it
You shouldn’t simply assume that just because a customer says “thank you” and hangs up or leaves the chat that you have done your part in ensuring satisfactory customer service. It’s important to always be looking back and looking for room for improvement. One of the best ways to do that is to ask customers what they think of the service. Rather than asking immediately after the session is over, however, you should send an email after they have had time to process. After all, most people want to stop talking after they’re done working through their issues with you. They don’t want to then go on and explain the whole process over again in a new window.
You, naturally, don’t have to incorporate every single piece of advice listed above. Different methods of customer service and support will be more or less effective depending on the nature of your business. However, you should be able to find at least one element you can implement in your own processes.