Tactics > small-business spotlight
Loving customers needn’t be tough
By Darren Langley
Reputations are built on customer relations, so here are 12 tips on offering a stellar service
C
ompanies can be made or broken based upon the customer support they offer. It is important to remember that people are far more likely to share a negative experience
than a good one. In fact, internet forums are littered with stories of bad support—not exactly a good advertisement for your potential customers. Here are some tips on loving your customers.
1. Be clear and upfront Don’t make it difficult for your customers to
contact your service department. On your website, list clearly all the support channels you offer. Also include the hours of operation and any costs if applicable.
2. Do as you would be done by Ensure your support team contains patient
people who can show empathy. I have always applied the rule, “treat others as you wish to be treated”. Follow this mantra and you won’t go far wrong. Remember: be open and honest with the customer, and always apologise when things go wrong.
3. Set expectations Publishing a service level agreement (SLA)
as part of your terms and conditions is a good idea. This helps to set the customer’s expectations. It also gives you something to measure the support function’s performance against and gives the team a target. If you say you will answer calls within two minutes, this is something you must deliver on. However, your support function must be able
to keep customer expectations in check. There will be a time when a client wants you to deliver something that just isn’t possible. The key here is to remain calm, state what you can do and don’t become defensive.
4. Supply the right tools You need to ensure your team’s equipment
is up to scratch, be it telephony systems, computers or software. Old, slow equipment just leads to frustration and reduces productivity.
5. Train staff Give your support team in-depth and regular
training on your products/services. There is nothing worse than a customer calling up a helpdesk only to find he knows more than the agent. Such a situation is also highly demoralising for the support operative and demotivated employees are unlikely to deliver their best to your customers.
6. Introduce a FAQ knowledge base To supplement the education programme,
consider setting up a knowledge base of frequently asked questions for your staff. You could also make the knowledge base available to your customers, thus reducing the need to contact support in the first instance.
7. Encourage sharing Encourage the support team to share ideas. If
team members discuss current issues, then in my experience they are likely to come up with a solution much faster than by escalating further up the chain. It also gives a sense of satisfaction to the team that they were able to deal with the issue “in-house”. Of course, a fine line has to be drawn; you wouldn’t want a support team member tied up for days if the issue could have been solved much faster by escalating— remember your SLA.
8. Appoint specialists
If you have a complex product you can allocate “specialisms” to individual members of the team. However, be careful, you also need to spread the expertise; it is no good if your one specialist is on holiday and you are swamped with queries.
9. Capture the detail The support team must keep accurate
records, on a central database, of all customer communication, and be able to explain them in a clear concise manner if they have to be escalated. There is another key benefit to recording
requests. It is likely that your support team members will be dealing with multiple issues at any one time, so a database enables another agent to take up the conversation if necessary. Invest in dedicated software for the recording
allows you to improve your offering. It is valuable feedback.
10. Use an escalation process There are requests that are complex and
can’t be handled by first-line support. Escalation could be to a manager, an in-house development team, or to a third party, such as your supplier. This will, of course, vary from business to business, but there needs to be a formal procedure for escalating issues and all members of the team must be aware of this. If an issue has to be escalated, this invariably means a delay for your client. Therefore it is important that you explain this to the customer, and give a timeframe for when you will provide progress updates. Now here is the key point—make sure you
update the customer without fail. Too many service desks falter at this point. Even if you end up solving the problem, the fact you didn’t contact the client when you said you would will stick in his mind.
11. Evaluate outsourcing Outsourcing your support continues to be a
hot topic. There are strong arguments both for and against. The main reason for outsourcing is cost. But remember that if the team manning the desk receives little or no product training, then the service delivered will be poor. That of course counts whether your helpdesk is in- house, or 4,000 miles away. If you do outsource, make the support team feel part of your organisation, rather than an outside entity. Have regular conversations with them and allow them to have their say. If you want them to represent your company, it is imperative they both hold, and practice, the values of your organisation.
12. Ask for feedback Finally, don’t be afraid to ask your customers
what they think about the support you offer. You could consider conducting telephone surveys of past support users, or following up all or some interactions with an email asking for feedback. If you do, don’t just bury the results, review and act on them.
Darren Langley is quality assurance team leader at ecommerce and EPoS specialist Actinic.
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