Do you have a plan for how to handle your customer service?
Posted 17th November 2014 at 01:38 PM by Logan Chierotti
Customers will make or break your business and without good customer service your company will fail. Customer service is one thing that can make one business stand out from another, beyond product or price.
Good customer service can be a new business magnet as well and the key to a loyal customer base.
You may recall a customer service phone call that went viral this past summer, where a representative of a cable giant aggressively stonewalled a customer who wanted to cancel services. A lot could have gone better in that situation yet it highlights the importance of having proper organization, processes and structure to ensure customer satisfaction. There’s a saying that good news travels fast, and bad news travels faster. You want to be on the well-deserved path of good customer service news.
Does Your Customer Service Scale?
When your business is small, it’s pretty easy to keep a handful of customers happy - you do anything to keep a customer, at any time. The problem is that doesn’t hold up when you start scaling up to 5000 customers, 100,000, or even a million. That’s why it’s important for any business to come up with a road map that focuses on handling customer service.
Tools of the Trade
There’s a number of tools that can help you on this path and it makes sense to identify what tools and resources you will be using to handle this process.
1. CRM - One of the most important tools in customer service is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. A CRM is a database of all your customers, their history, contact information, account information and more.
2. Helpdesk – Consider a helpdesk suite, which is a system that rates, tracks, manages and communicates progress on customer service issues.
3. Customer Service Staff - A properly trained customer service staff that work under a metric-based system is another critical piece.
4. Metrics - Metrics and reviews are critical to understanding how customers feel about the customer service they receive and how they feel about the agents handling their issues.
5. Reviews - It is important to survey your customers and ask them to rate their experience as it is an important tool that helps you understand how your customers are being treated.
Strategy and Planning
Strategy and planning are never bad things, so it makes sense to structure everything you can in advance. Customer service is no different. One place to start is to set up a customer complaints procedure and ensuring that members of staff know what they can offer. Make it a point to follow up complaints with a phone call, email or maybe even a letter of apology. Finally, ensure the problem is addressed permanently and make it a point to always fully inform the customer of what was done in every transaction.
Fast responses and personal service are critical to meeting customer service expectations. Set the service expectations from the beginning and focus on over-delivering and constant improvement. The service you provide to customers is crucial to your business success and it makes sense to have the right tools, processes, and people in place to support that.
The Extra Mile
Finally, even though you may have grown, you can still go the extra mile for your customers. When you put customer satisfaction as a top priority, the rest is easy. Great customer service gets around, especially if you have exceeded customer expectations with a proper plan and have a system in place to do it over and over again.
Good customer service can be a new business magnet as well and the key to a loyal customer base.
You may recall a customer service phone call that went viral this past summer, where a representative of a cable giant aggressively stonewalled a customer who wanted to cancel services. A lot could have gone better in that situation yet it highlights the importance of having proper organization, processes and structure to ensure customer satisfaction. There’s a saying that good news travels fast, and bad news travels faster. You want to be on the well-deserved path of good customer service news.
Does Your Customer Service Scale?
When your business is small, it’s pretty easy to keep a handful of customers happy - you do anything to keep a customer, at any time. The problem is that doesn’t hold up when you start scaling up to 5000 customers, 100,000, or even a million. That’s why it’s important for any business to come up with a road map that focuses on handling customer service.
Tools of the Trade
There’s a number of tools that can help you on this path and it makes sense to identify what tools and resources you will be using to handle this process.
1. CRM - One of the most important tools in customer service is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. A CRM is a database of all your customers, their history, contact information, account information and more.
2. Helpdesk – Consider a helpdesk suite, which is a system that rates, tracks, manages and communicates progress on customer service issues.
3. Customer Service Staff - A properly trained customer service staff that work under a metric-based system is another critical piece.
4. Metrics - Metrics and reviews are critical to understanding how customers feel about the customer service they receive and how they feel about the agents handling their issues.
5. Reviews - It is important to survey your customers and ask them to rate their experience as it is an important tool that helps you understand how your customers are being treated.
Strategy and Planning
Strategy and planning are never bad things, so it makes sense to structure everything you can in advance. Customer service is no different. One place to start is to set up a customer complaints procedure and ensuring that members of staff know what they can offer. Make it a point to follow up complaints with a phone call, email or maybe even a letter of apology. Finally, ensure the problem is addressed permanently and make it a point to always fully inform the customer of what was done in every transaction.
Fast responses and personal service are critical to meeting customer service expectations. Set the service expectations from the beginning and focus on over-delivering and constant improvement. The service you provide to customers is crucial to your business success and it makes sense to have the right tools, processes, and people in place to support that.
The Extra Mile
Finally, even though you may have grown, you can still go the extra mile for your customers. When you put customer satisfaction as a top priority, the rest is easy. Great customer service gets around, especially if you have exceeded customer expectations with a proper plan and have a system in place to do it over and over again.
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