“Know what your consumers want most and what your company does best. Focus on where these two meet.”- Kevin Stirtz.
No matter which sectors your company belongs to, or what kinds of products and services you deal with, your consumer is the most crucial part of your business. Your business would cease to exist if you did not provide excellent customer service. That may appear to be a little dramatic, but it is not.
What is Customer Service?
Those terms may allude to the name of your team or department for you. On the contrary, customers may associate the words with hours wasted on hold, repeating information to agents, and unresolved issues.
Customer service is often ignored, yet it is unquestionably one of the most paramount requirements for any organization. It is commonly stated that the best type of marketing is good customer service. And every company should aspire to excel at its customer service. The present status of customer service is significant since, as it turns out, assisting your customers in succeeding benefits your organization as well. And pleased customers will always develop your business quicker than sales and marketing by informing their friends and family about it and referring others to it.
However, this is easier said than done. Customer service is a demanding, dynamic, and at times exasperating profession. This article will go over the most common customer service issues and how to overcome them. Let’s jump right into it.
Top Customer Service Challenges
- Recognizing Customer Expectations
- Exceeding customer Expectation
- A customer requests something that you are unable to provide.
- Handling Irate Customers
- Selecting the Best Channels and Tools
- Managing a Service Outage Crisis
- Recruiting and training Professionals
1. Recognizing Customer Expectations
A company serves a wide range of customers and every consumer is unique and has varied expectations. Their needs, goals, and must-haves are all very different.
Customers who choose an Apple iPhone over another phone brand, for example, have certain expectations regarding the device.
Remedy:
You must make a concerted effort to grasp what your consumer wants from you. And try to reduce customer effort. The greatest method to comprehend is to stay in touch with your consumers and listen to their worries. There are several avenues via which you may connect with your consumers. You can for feedback regularly to gauge your customer’s interest and expectations.
Here are some do’s and don’t for taking customer feedback.
Keep in mind that personalized messages or calls are the next frontiers of consumer communications.
Setting the correct consumer expectations first would be beneficial. Make it explicit from the outset if you do not give 24/7 assistance, solely email support, or have dedicated account managers.
2. Exceeding Customer’s Expectations
In this intensely competitive industry, you must go beyond simply satisfying your customers’ expectations. Instead, you should walk the extra mile to surpass their assumptions. However, one of the most difficult issues in customer service is determining how to do so proactively.
According to HubSpot, 82% of the users want businesses to respond quickly to marketing or sales inquiries.
Know the proven ways to improve customer satisfaction.
Remedy:
This might be as simple as delivering a freebie to a dissatisfied customer or extending the trial term for potential consumers if they are unable to utilize the authorized trial period.
Using customer experience management tools allows you to identify major concerns of your customers. If you consistently meet and surpass your customer’s expectations, the likelihood of them remaining loyal and becoming promoters increases. A word of caution: in your effort to exceed customer expectations, do not promise anything you cannot deliver.
3. A Customer Demands Something You are Unable to Provide
Dealing with unrealistic desires and demands can be a challenge.
For example, customers may want a price you cannot provide, a feature you cannot provide, or some personalization you cannot provide. These situations are common in customer support. So, how to tackle these kinds of situations?
Remedy:
First, you must determine if the needs of customers can be satisfied. If so, how much will it cost in terms of labour, effort, and funds? Finally, you must evaluate it against the amount the buyer will pay you. You may proceed if the equation is justified.
If not, you can gently decline the customer’s request while stating honestly that the service they are requesting is not economically possible for your company. Most of the time, they will comprehend.
4. Handling Irate Customers
Things go wrong, and consumers become irate. This is a regular scenario in the world of dealing with customers. Your natural reaction may be to shout back, be snarky, withdraw, hang up, or shut the ticket. However, in most circumstances, you cannot do so without consequence. The challenge is to treat irate consumers politely. Your reaction might make the consumer a favourable or terrible advertisement for your company.
How should you deal with an angry customer?
When you encounter an irate customer, make an effort to sympathize with them and maintain your calm. Remember that the customer is upset with the firm and its products, not with you. Take nothing personally.
Maintain a fact-based approach and constantly strive to provide a solution to the consumer. You can offer a free coupon to the buyer. Here’s a step-by-step method for dealing with angry customers.
Here’s what you should do to strengthen your customer connections:
- Allow them to speak first
- Recognize your customer’s feelings.
- Restate what they said to you.
- Change to the proper channel.
- Consider your options carefully.
- Determine your next moves.
- Maintain consistency.
- Investigate options
- Seek assistance
- As a final option, hang up.
5. Selecting the Best Tools and Channels
Choosing the appropriate channel and equipment is critical for any organization. You should not employ phone support simply because your competitors do.
Remedy:
There are various channels such as phone, email, live chat, self-serve, and community support. A good Customer Engagement Platform like QaizenX helps facilitate customer engagement.
For instance, you may also scale the channels based on how much money a particular consumer pays you. For example, you can offer self-service assistance and mail to free and low-value customers, live chat and 24/7 correspondence to mid-value, and provide voice calls, in addition to all the previous facilities to the high-value customers. Customer service is an expensive endeavour, and you should proceed with caution.
6. Managing a Service Outage Crisis
It is true to say that we depend upon technology to a great extent. When your service is down, you may face a crisis. You may face the fury of your consumers at such a moment.
So, what steps can you take to assure your customers?
You can’t do much in this instance except assure your customers that your staff is working hard to get the service back on track. It is reasonable to anticipate your consumers to become frustrated, but be sure you do not overestimate the issue.
Assess your tech staff and provide them with a clear time frame. Do not create a bogus claim which will only result in alleviating the customer’s frustration. Keep in mind, that the worst thing would be to make false promises and then fail to meet them.
7. Recruiting and Training Professionals
Customer service is a relatively dynamic career choice, with customer service specialists staying with one employer for less than 1 year on average. So, don’t recruit customer service representatives simply because they speak well. Hire them because they understand your company’s culture and can relate to it.
In addition to finding the proper people, teaching them to apply to your company is critical. You should educate them about your company’s culture, rules, business practices, and customer-service processes.
The right hires will save you more money than you imagine, so choose your customer service professionals wisely. They are your company’s face in front of customers.
The right hiring will save you more money than you might think, so pick your customer service representatives carefully. They are the public face of your firm.
There are countless other obstacles, but the ones listed above are the most common and significant. Customer service, like every other part of a business, has its problems, and we should strive to elegantly overcome them for the benefit of our customers and our organization as a whole.
When customers request assistance, the customer service staff is the organization’s face and the initial point of contact.
Final Thoughts
In today’s customer service world, the consumer has considerable influence. So, it’s up to customer support representatives to assist customers in succeeding. Remember that by assisting your customers in succeeding, you will allow your business to flourish by favourably benefiting both your customers and your bott.
Using a customer experience platform like QaizenX allows you to maintain contact information for customers and prospects, discover sales possibilities, record service concerns, and manage marketing campaigns all in one place – and make information about every customer encounter available to everyone in your organisation who needs it.
