This guide outlines why management is key to improving customer service, and the 11 factors that help you improve it.
It doesn’t matter how great your product is or how talented your employees are: in the end, what customers remember most is the direct interaction with your company. In other words, your customer service is usually the face of your company, and how good – or bad – the customer experience is depends on the skills of this team and the quality of the service they provide. If you are not constantly looking for ways to optimize your customer service, your customer relationships will stagnate. This will leave your business in a precarious situation.
11 factors for improving customer service
1: Hire the right people.
Customer service employees should have certain skills so that every customer feels that they are in good hands and that they are competently advised. These include the following: Empathy and patience: every customer is different. Some have numerous questions, others start chatting, and still others are rude from the start. Good customer service should be prepared for different personalities and be able to deal with them accordingly. Empathy and patience are therefore important soft skills that improve service quality.
Organized: It is commendable when employees help a customer step by step through to the solution. However, good time management is also required for improving customer service. Customer support shouldn’t take too long while other customers are on hold. Here it is important to find the right balance.
Calm: In customer service, it is essential to deal confidently with negative feedback and to work towards customer satisfaction despite allegations.
Qualified: Customers rely on customer service to provide them with all the facts they need about the product. Therefore, the employees should be provided with the necessary knowledge or independently keep themselves up to date in order to be able to answer inquiries confidently.
2: Get customer feedback
To find out how companies can improve their customer service and whether the employees concerned have the necessary skills, customer surveys are useful. These can best be sent and evaluated using CRM software. In this way, companies quickly find out where there is potential for improvement in service quality. Find out what a good customer survey looks like online.
3: Pay attention
It is important to pay attention to the customer even after a successful problem solving. The employees can e.g. For example, improve customer service by making sure the problem has not recurred at a later date. This makes the customer feel valued and in good hands. In the course of this, companies can send you the customer satisfaction survey directly. You should also pay attention to your logistics and supply chain. Is that all working well? Do you need assistance to make the process smoother? In this case, you should look at 3pl Logistics for example. When you sort out the product line, then you can distribute them easier. This will also bring in more sales. Then you must focus on your customers directly.
4: Set up self service
FAQs and help pages are ideal to reduce the number of inquiries to customer service. Here customers can independently find the solution to frequently asked questions and save themselves a phone call or email. The customer service employees in turn have more time to clarify the individual problem cases and can thus offer improved customer service. The FAQ pages should be easy to find and clearly arranged. The following questions are available for setting up Customer Self Service:
- What is the delivery cost?
- When does my order arrive?
- What payment options do I have?
- How can I cancel my order?
5: Set up personal contact
FAQ lists and chatbots are not enough to improve customer service. Because some inquiries are complex and can only be processed by humans. It is therefore important to always set up customer service with competent employees. Customers also often post service-related content on social media. Choose a proactive customer service that responds directly to such issues. It is best for companies to provide photos and short biographies of customer service employees on the website in order to introduce their contact persons to customers.
6: Expand contact options
Each customer prefers different media to reach customer service. Therefore, companies should provide as wide a range of contact options as possible. You can e.g. set up the following channels to optimize customer service:
- contact form
- phone
- Social networks
- Live chat on the website
However, it doesn’t always make sense to cover all channels. Companies should know their target audience and choose the right customer service options. With the help of so-called omnichannel solutions, service employees have a better overview of all inquiries – even across channels. This enables them to quickly improve their customer service.
7: Establish customer relationships
In some industries it is advisable to provide a customer service representative as a personal contact for customers:
- The automotive industry.
- The healthcare system.
- The insurance industry.
This enables them to build a real customer relationship, knows their wishes and previous problems and can enable individual preferential treatment. The customer feels valued and has a competent contact person at their side at all times. For example, you do not have to describe your concerns to a different employee every time for a consultation.
8: Shorten response times
Users usually need quick help with questions or problems. Therefore, customer service needs to be improved so that it can keep response times as short as possible, e.g. by hiring additional employees or using software. Even the automatic response by email, which confirms the receipt and processing of the service request, can prevent early customer churn. The request must then be processed quickly but carefully.
9: Log customer contact
Employees should document every customer request in detail in order to improve their customer service. Because only in this way can you guarantee qualitative answers, e.g. when processing inquiries by several service employees. In addition, any product defects can be identified if, for example, Customer Service documents that different customers report the same problem. The following aspects belong in every request log:
- Time of customer inquiry
- Reason for request
- Contact medium
- How to solve the problem
- Answer to the request
Here, too, software can help to put all the important information together in a clear manner -especially when customer contact takes place via multiple media.
10: Motivate employees
In addition to the soft skills of the customer service staff, employee engagement plays an essential role in ensuring good customer service. Companies can improve their customer service in simple ways, including how they treat their employees. The following conditions create a positive employee experience:
- Attractive working environment
- Pleasant atmosphere between colleagues
- Training and advancement opportunities
- Work-life balance
- Fair salary
11. Improving customer service with software
How can customer service be improved with software? A customer service software documents all customer inquiries centrally through multiple communication channels. But you should also realise the importance of cyber security also to help your customers.
Hackers are above all opportunists who use the simpler levers to carry their attacks. However, email remains a major channel for the propagation of malicious code. According to the Verizon 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report, it appears that 91% of cyber-attacks use email as a vector of propagation. However, there are more than 1.4 billion emails sent every day. Don’t leave things to chance, for the sake of your customers!
