In this age, when most companies are baffled-by the ever-changing customer needs and expectations, it not much to want to settle the question once and for all – what do your customers want when they contact your customer service department?
There is no one answer to that. Each customer has his own needs and expectations. But when you scrutinize all your interactions? They fall into two segments – they either call you with a query or have a problem that they want to be resolved.
One thing is for sure; they are not here for a delightful chat. So, trying to delight your customers with over-the-top customer service should not be your goal. When they contact you, all they need from you is to be more responsive, resolve their queries and issues at the earliest, and offer them an experience that makes them feel satisfied. How can you do that? Here’re a few tips –
Be Quick To Respond
Your customers do not call your customer service for a pleasant conversation. They have queries and issues and want the brands to resolve at the earliest. Therefore, you need to fulfill those expectations by offering an immediate response.
Sure, it is better to offer a resolution at first contact. But, if the issue is critical and your agent needs to do some research on the same, it is alright to give the customer a tentative timeframe by which you will find a solution and call your customer back.
In case of emails or social media posts, the customers expect you to respond as soon as possible, in most cases, within an hour. However, most businesses still take a few hours to respond to emails and social media posts.
Work On Reducing Customer Effort
Even today customers have to put in a lot of effort to get an answer – contacting you more than once to get the answers to their queries, waiting on hold for a long time, or navigating through IVR to talk to a live person. All these are bound to make a frustrated customer even more frustrated. As a result, by the time their interaction gets over, you have a customer who does not want to go through the whole process ever again and is already looking for other alternatives.
Don’t want your customers to leave you over a customer service interaction? Work on reducing their efforts and provide them easy access to the solutions. Focus on building a good self-service platform, store all customer data in a centralized unit so that your customers do not have to repeat their problems to a new agent. These things go a long way to satisfy your customers and enhance their experience.
Train Agents To Practice Empathy And Deal With Customer Emotions
As a brand, you should care as much about your customer’s feelings as the problems they are facing. When your customer is frustrated, your agents need to deal with their emotional side as well. Showing them empathy and just lending a patient ear to their problems will make them feel better.
Minimize Channel Switching
Customers hate switching channels as, in most cases, they have to repeat themselves every time they switch channels. Therefore, you should take adequate steps to minimize channel switching, including providing he agents with all necessary customer data to resolve the issue, strengthening the self-service platform, offering your customers the option of callback, etc.
These will minimize channel switching and provide your customers with a hassle-free experience.
Use Negative Feedback To Reduce Customer Efforts
Not all customers are going to be satisfied with you and provide you with positive feedback. However, it does not pay to ignore ones. You can learn a lot about the hassles your customers are facing, reading the negative feedback. Negative feedbacks highlight the areas you can work on to improve customer experience and significantly reduce customer effort.
These are some useful tips to satisfy your customers and provide them with a good experience when they contact you via your call center partner. Having vast experience in the customer service industry, Fusion can be your ideal call center partner. To know how Fusion can offer your business the customer service your customers need and expect, contact us today!
