Sometimes it feels like we’ve talked how to give great customer service into the ground, without anyone taking to heart the things we say. Customer service is one of the most important parts of the customer experience, and as we’ve said a billion times now, it is your customer service and support quality that you will ultimately be judged for above and beyond the quality of your product or service.
That said, the fact that nobody takes to heart our advice on great customer service, and that of many other informed professionals, is rather disheartening. To say that you don’t care about improving your customer service is to say that you don’t care about your customer, and above that, about succeeding as a business!
Those who have actually wisely been paying attention might find this one a bit repetitive, but for the rest of you, listen up. Seriously. Below are the most important things to focus on to improve upon and ensure great quality in customer service.
#1 – Addressing the Call Center
The call center is sadly still the main venue for most customer service communications. This is simply because telephony was the first instant peer to peer communications technology, and by some miracle, the infrastructure persists even in the digital millennium.
So, the first thing to do is to ensure that this inherently awful channel is the minimal level of awful. The first measure here is to simplify phone trees or menus so that any navigation is less than three levels to go through. The second is to do away with the voice recognition, because it doesn’t work.
Finally, remember to focus on empathy, and to be sure to show a level of eagerness to facilitate a happy resolution to the problem, bearing in mind the customer was annoyed to begin with, and the call center is a chore to go through, adding to their duress.
#2 – Adding Alternative Channels
Alternative channels to call centers for people who hate telephones (there are a lot of these people) is a good way to make customer service excellent, as we’ve said eighty million times now. Adopting social support, help desks and email correspondence as ways to reduce the workload on that call center, and give people an option that’s more convenient to them is another thing that lends to excellence in service and support.
#3 – Adopting Customer Support
Finally, we’re going to hammer home once more the power of self service. When you use a guidance system like WalkMe that can guide users through a number of support and service issues that would be too complex or risky unsupervised, you’ve just made customer service convenient for the user.
They can just push buttons they are easily guided through using in stead of having to deal with the response times from agents. This is not only convenient, but a very modern sensibility and one that will register with customers as a sign of excellence unparalleled.
By now, if you’ve been paying attention to us, you should have long since learned how to give great customer service. But for those who just came along, or those who just haven’t been paying attention, this is how you do it, so take it to heart!
