When your customer service isn’t serving your customers

Image by S K from Pixabay

By Henry Brown

Customer service is a vital part of just about any successful business. It can produce good online reviews and turn one-time purchases into repeat customers. However, it requires real dedication to customer success, not just the bare minimum. If you don’t give customer service the attention that it needs, you can end up falling into one of the following pitfalls.

Being out of reach

You can’t be “on” 100% of the time. Even medium and larger companies have trouble with that. However, you should leave ways for customers to get in touch, such as an email address, when you’re not immediately available. Try to have an auto-responder give an estimate of when you will be able to get back to them, where possible. Unavailability is sometimes avoidable, but you should aim to minimize it as much as possible and ensure that the ways to get in touch with your team are very clearly laid out.

Not remembering your customers

Your customers want to feel like they matter. Furthermore, they don’t want to have to repeat information multiple times over the course of a day or even a week. To that end, CRM solutions like Freshworks can help your team better serve the customers they encounter by storing customer information. Customer relationship management tools can help save all kinds of information on the people your sales and support team talks to, including past conversations, sales, and issues they have experienced.

Putting barriers between them and their solutions

When you’re looking for help, few things are more frustrating than getting put in touch with people who can’t help you, only to be redirected again and again. Within your support team, it must be clearly established who can help with which types of issues. Then VoIP systems like Lingo Communications can make it much easier to quickly route the customer to the person they need to talk to. The longer you keep the customer waiting, the less likely they are to do so.

Automating too much

There’s no denying that automation has helped make customer service a lot more convenient on the business side of things, but there is a risk to relying on it too much. From the perspective of the customer, it can feel impersonal and even a little alienating. So, while you can automate the process of finding out what their query is and directing them to the right person, it’s important to make sure there are real people for your customer to touch base with.

Neglecting your team

Improving your staff’s satisfaction should always be a concern but your customer-facing staff should get a little extra attention. They can represent the company with the energy and enthusiasm they should a little more easily when their needs are also being met. This includes support in their role, the potential for development, and benefits that make the job worth staying in.

Give your customer service processes the time and attention needed and it can make it significantly easier to convert and retain your customers. Make the mistakes above, however, and you could be left wondering why you’re having a hard time keeping hold of them.

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Henry Brown is an online marketing executive. When he isn’t talking shop, he’s roaming the streets of London, uncovering the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.

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