Have you ever had a horrible customer service experience with another company? You aren’t alone, and your feelings are valid. But if you want your customers to avoid that scenario, you need to try the following things.
Look for Experienced Reps
One of the easiest ways you can make your customer support services better is to hire the right people. If you’re looking to grow your customer service team, look for people with experience. Make sure they’re comfortable taking calls or chats or whatever it is you need help with. While you can hire people with no experience, that will require more time. They will need more training, and that can slow things down for you and the rest of the customer service team. You’ll still need to train people on your process, but they’ll already know the basics.
Develop Standard Procedures
Even if you hire the best team of customer service representatives, you need to know how you want them to conduct themselves. Draw up a plan for how people will communicate with customers. You can create a script you want people to use so that the greeting is consistent. Make sure employees know who to contact when they need help. For example, customer service people should have the contact information for the billing department. That way, they will know who they can transfer the call to for more specialized service for the customer.
Provide Ongoing Training
You may hire only the best customer service reps you can find. And they might have years of experience in the industry. But you should still consider training those employees regularly. Training is particularly useful when you release a new product or service. All of your employees should know how your products and services work. That way, they can answer common questions without having to bother you or another manager. They’ll be able to save time for themselves, you, and the customer. And that can make your business much more appealing to customers.
Upgrade Your Technology
Another way to improve customer service is to use the latest technology. If your team is using computers from a decade ago, the devices may run slowly. That can be frustrating and a big waste of time for everyone. So think of ways to upgrade your technology. If you’re tired of scam calls reaching your customer service team, you might invest in enhanced caller information. That way, you can make sure your representatives are only speaking with real customers. And you won’t have to worry about wasting time or money on scams.
Offer Multiple Methods
Maybe you have an excellent phone support team, and you serve plenty of customers that way. But think about offering customer service in other ways, such as email, chat, or even social media messages. That way, you can give your customers options. Customers will be able to contact you when and how they want. Then, you can resolve more issues, and you can provide services that people need. Plus, you don’t have to worry about people trying to talk on the phone and focus when others in the office are talking.
Create a Knowledge Base
For the next few weeks or months, have your customer service team record the questions they get. Then, take a look at those questions to see if there are any trends. If you get the same set of questions over and over, put those questions and their answers into a guide. You can upload the guide to your website where it will serve as a knowledge base. Customers will be able to look there for basic questions. Then, your customer service employees will be able to spend more time on bigger issues, such as complaints. And they won’t have to answer questions like when you’re open.
Running a business involves a lot of parts, but none of that will matter without good customer support. Luckily, you can do a few things to make sure your employees make your customers feel good when they contact your business.
