Nothing is more important than customer service. If you can make the people you’ve already attracted happy, you’ll have lifetime repeat customers who will probably buy anything that you offer them in the future. But first, you must fix the problems that many customer support people face every single day.
* Lack of Continuity – It’s important for companies to integrate all the ways that a customer communicates with customer service in one place. You can accomplish that with a robust CRM solution. A solution that tracks all conversations for each customer with every agent is imperative to keep customers from the frustration of having to tell their story over again to each new person who is trying to help them.
Link to CRM software solutions – http://www.featuredcustomers.com/software/customer-relationship-management-crm
* Little to No Training – Many customer service professionals do not get the right training. They need product knowledge as well as an understanding of human nature. Plus, they need the ability to do what needs to be done within a particular frame in order to do what’s right for each customer and the business.
* Too Slow to Respond – Sometimes a customer service agent ends up with a hostile customer due to the length of time it took for the agent to respond. This isn’t the agent’s fault; it’s the system’s and owner’s responsibility. This can be fixed by using systems and agents that can get the message quickly and therefore respond quickly. If your response time is too slow, more than 24 hours, then you have a problem. It might mean you need more agents or a better system – or both.
* Smarter Consumers – Today’s consumers are brighter and more informed than ever. Before they purchased your product they will have asked a lot of questions in many places. They think they made a good decision. If you lose them during customer service, it’s your own fault. You need to be as proactive as possible and treat your customers like they know something already.
* Inability to Make Decisions – Customer service agents cannot help people strategically if you tie their hands. The best thing to do is create a threshold at which all agents can make decisions to refund money, upgrade a product, or even give it away free if needed to please the customer. Plus, they need to be given the go-ahead to deal with problem customers in the best way possible for the health of the company.
* Time Pressure – Some companies require customer service agents to only spend a certain amount of time on the phone with problems. This is counterproductive and can cause a customer service agent to get emotional and lose the customer. Instead, focus on the quality of the conversation and not how long it takes.
* Lack of Pride – Some customer service agents lack pride in the company they work for due to the way they perceive the company is treating its customers. But, people need jobs so they take them anyway. You want the customer service agents and anyone who faces customers to have a lot of pride in their workplace, and you can do that by being transparent, honest, and above board with them and consumers.
It’s not that difficult today to fix these problems. You can create video training that CSAs can complete before they serve customers. You can even create self-service for your customers that they can do on their own before escalating to an agent. In this situation the best course of action is to over deliver to both your CSAs and your customers.