5 Customer Support Tips That Can Improve Your Business’s Performance
Customer support is the delivery of exceptional service to clients prior, during, and post-sale. The perception of successful interaction with these clients is based on how employees “can adjust themselves to the client’s personality.” To do this they have to understand and interpret the client’s needs and wants. When done effectively, customer support helps create a positive experience for everyone involved.
The best customer support teams recognize that every interaction with customers requires some form of conflict resolution. Sometimes the easiest way to resolve a technical problem is to simply reschedule the appointment or offer an alternate solution. More often than not though, technical issues are more complex than this and require a different approach. In some cases customers will be frustrated enough that they will make a complaint in writing, which then needs to be taken care of according to your company policy. On the other end of the spectrum, customers may be completely satisfied with your customer service and bring in repeat business if you take the time to address their concerns in a courteous, professional manner.
Understanding the difference between helping customers and dealing with them directly is important. The focus of help in this instance should always be on helping customers identify and resolve their particular problem, instead of simply addressing the problem as a whole. Helping customers identify a specific type of technical problem is helpful because it helps to reduce the amount of “general” questions you receive in the course of doing business. For example, asking “what type of problem are you having?”
By taking the time to focus specifically on your customer services, you will notice a drastic reduction in the volume of general questions you receive. This leads to better satisfaction among customers, cost-effective satisfaction where there are savings on training and other resources, and a much more satisfied employee population. The ability to provide high-quality customer support is directly related to the level of satisfaction your employees feel when they are engaged and helping others.
If you want to provide high-quality customer support and the best possible satisfaction for your clients, there are a number of steps you can take to improve your level of satisfaction. First of all, you need to ensure that you are offering an appropriate amount of training to your team members and that these training sessions are relevant to your specific department. A lot of “training” regarding specific topics such as troubleshooting, common tech problems, etc., is rarely needed or useful. When training is not relevant and included in your core curriculum, it can create a learning gap between your staff and the people who use your products or services.
You also need to remember that just as you can’t solve every single technical problem, you don’t have to ignore the less important aspects of customer service. For example, simply because a site is down does not necessarily mean your customers won’t ever come back. If you’ve done your job properly, the site should be up most of the time. In addition, if you are offering information products to your customers, make sure those products are useful, interesting and useful. Finally, remember that you should always strive to exceed expectations and that your staff members will take any and all constructive criticism from customers very seriously.
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