Tag: Customer

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Customer Support

When customer is Angry

At some moments customer service job can be a challenge. Dealing with different people and trying to meet their expectations is not an easy task. It takes patience, sharp intellect and I would even say wisdom to navigate through the various customer moods and still provide a professional service.There is a long list of advice spoken on this subject. And the reason is that it’s really not easy. Key is “Remain calm yourself”.

When customer is Angry

    1. Solution:
    1. A customer can burst out of anger but it is your job to find the right possible solution and provide satisfying service and help is provided in order to find the right solution. Ignorance is not at all bliss here. And, a fistfight on the phone/e-mail is a strict No-No, while getting too much defensive without providing any real solution is also a mistake. You can take a leaf from Disney’s book, as they have developed and harnessed the effective HEARD Technique.
    1. HEARD:
    1. Hear
      Let the customer tell their entire story without interruption.
      Sometimes, we just want someone to listen.
    2. Empathize
      Convey that you deeply understand how the customer feels.
      Use phrases like “I’d be frustrated, too.”
    3. Apologize
      As long as it’s sincere, you can’t apologize enough.
      Even if you didn’t do whatever made them upset, you can still genuinely be
      apologetic for the way your customer feels.
      (E.g., I’m always sorry that a customer feels upset).
    4. Resolve
      Resolved the issue quickly, or make sure that your employees are
      empowered to do so. Don’t be afraid to ask the customer:
      “what can I do to make this right?”
    5. Diagnose
      Get to the bottom of why the issue occurred, without blaming
      anyone; focus on fixing the process so that it doesn’t happen again.

When you’re faced with an angry customer, simply follow this checklist. Try and hear (or read) what the customer is truly upset about, without interrupting them. Express empathy and show them that you understand their frustration. Offer a heartfelt apology, even if you did nothing wrong. Do whatever it takes to resolve the issue, without being afraid to ask the customer what they feel the best resolution would be.
If you run a customer support team, you will always endure angry and fuming clients. It is the law of nature and it is bound to happen to each and every executive in your team. The issue and the challenge here is how you can pacify and calm them down—and ultimately solve the problem to satisfy all concerned.

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Customer Support

The New Definition of Customer Support

“We believe a customer service shouldn’t be just a department: It should be the entire company”
-By Tony Hseh,Ceo of Zappos

Customer support isn’t the same thing as customer service, although it employs customer service techniques.
And it’s not the same thing it was 50, 20, or even 5 years ago — the definition is still evolving.

The New Definition of Customer Support

To us and many other customer-driven companies, customer support means:
Timely, empathetic help that keeps the customer’s needs at the forefront of every interaction.
This is what informs our mission of helping you build a company people love. It’s why we train everyone at the company on customer support,why our support team has the power and authority to resolve issues as soon as they arise, why our customers’ customers, dont see anything but a normal email,and a hundred other decisions that inform a customer-driven approach to support.

 

Traditional Customer Service

The New Customer Support
Viewed as a cost center Viewed as the face of a company, a critical component of sales and word-of-mouth marketing
Disempowered agents who require managerial approval for tasks customers should be able to accomplish themselves Self-service first; skilled and empowered agents can help with more complex questions and requests
Requires customers to call during specified business hours and often wait on hold for help Round-the-clock help via multiple channels: documentation, email, phone, chat, social media, etc.
Call centers relegated to cubicles or outsourced to other locations/countries Works side-by-side with product teams, has a seat at the table in company decision-making
Dead-end job Myriad opportunities for growth and development
Operational metrics tied to cost-cutting: first response times, call resolution times, etc. Holistic metrics tied to company-wide goals:NPS,customer satisfaction etc.

The new customer support applies the principles of customer service in helping customers solve problems and make decisions, but in addition, functions as part sales, part tech support, and part customer success.
When 86% of customers quit doing business with a company due to bad customer experience,today’s subscription-model, customer-retention-oriented businesses need to approach every support interaction as an opportunity to acquire, retain or upsell as well.
In the self-service internet age, customers don’t need go-betweens to assist them with what should be simple functions, like canceling their account. And what’s more, people have grown to expect self-service — if you let them get to a point where they have to reach out, you’ve gotten in the way of usage and adoption.
“If the support team isn’t 100% embedded in the product you’re trying to market, support suffers,”
Customer-driven companies remove a lot of that friction by automating that which can be automated and freeing their most valuable resource — their team — to work on problems that can’t be automated away. Hence the shift away from hiring your average “people person,” toward hiring highly skilled, empathetic problem-solvers.

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Customer Support

Customer Service Skills

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”
– Jeff Bezos

There are certain customer service skills that every employee must master if they are forward-facing with customers.
Without them, you run the risk of finding your business in an embarrassing customer service train-wreck, or you’ll simply lose customers as your service continues to let people down.
Below are the most-needed skills to master this incredibly important position:

Customer Service Skills

  1. Patience
    If you deal with customers on a daily basis, be sure to stay patient when they come to you stumped and frustrated, but also be sure to take the time to truly figure out what they want — they’d rather get competent service than being rushed out the door!
  2. Attentiveness
    The ability to really listen to customers is so crucial for providing great service for a number of reasons.
    Not only is it important to pay attention to individual customer experience (watching the language/terms that they use to describe their problems), but it’s also important to be mindful and attentive to the feedback that you receive at large.
  3. Clear communication skills
    Make sure you’re getting to the problem at hand quickly; customers don’t need your life story or to hear about how your day is going. More importantly, you need to be cautious about how some of your communication habits translate to customers, and it’s best to err on the side of caution whenever you find yourself questioning a situation.
  4. Knowledge of the Product
    The best forward-facing employees in your company will work on having a deep knowledge of how your product works. Without knowing your product from front to back, you won’t know how to help customers when they run into problems.
  5. Ability to use positive language
    Sounds like fluffy nonsense, but customer service involves having the ability to make minor changes in your conversational patterns. This can truly go a long way in creating happy customers. For example:
    Without positive language: “I can’t get you that product until next month; it is back-ordered and unavailable at this time.”
    With positive language: “That product will be available next month. I can place the order for you right now and make sure that it is sent to you as soon as it reaches our warehouse.”
  6. Time management skills
    Don’t waste time trying to go above and beyond for a customer in an area where you will just end up wasting both of your time!
  7. Tenacity
    Call it what you want, but a great work ethic and a willingness to do what needs to be done (and not take shortcuts) is a key skill when providing the kind of service that people talk about.
  8. Empathy
    Perhaps empathy — the ability to understand and share the feelings of another — is more of a character trait than a skill. But since empathy can be learned and improved upon, we’d be remiss not to include it here. In fact, if your organization tests job applicants for customer service aptitude, you’d be hard-pressed to look for a more critical skill than empathy.
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Customer Support

Customer Experience Strategies

:”Customer Experience is the next competitive battleground.It’s where businesses are won or lost.”
-Tom Knighton

Customer experience (CX) refers to a customer’s perception of their overall interactions with a company.
Since customer expectations are higher than ever, customer experience has become a key driver of customer retention and acquisition. Comparatively, customer services refer to specific touchpoints within the experience, where a customer requests and receives assistance or help.

Customer Experience Strategy

  1. Understand your audience & create buyer personas
    To create the best customer experience, you have to first understand your customers – who they are, their motivations, and concerns. If your organization wants to deeply understand customers and empathize with them, you need access to in-depth intel.
  2. Work backward from the experience you want to deliver
    When planning your customer experience, it’s easiest to work backward. Apple is known for its premium customer experience, and for obvious reasons. Steve Jobs, who was responsible for the brand Apple grew to be, famously advocated his principle of “beginning with the customer experience and working backward to the technology”.
  3. Hire team players and get them invested in the process
    At the other end of customer interactions with your brand are employees, who are key to creating a great customer experience.
    Here are two tips to hire and initiate the right talent to enable great customer service –
    Focus on the skills that matter – interpersonal skills, the ability to interact and connect with people, presentation, hospitality, and the ability to maintain a cool mind through crises.
    Create a set of principles for your customer executive and sales personnel to follow, so their interactions with customers are smooth and pleasant.
  4. Be attentive to customer needs & use feedback loops
    How do you know what your customers’ needs are if you don’t ask them? How can you assess what your brand’s value is if you don’t ask your customers?
    That’s why it’s essential to create feedback loops. Here’s how you can –
    Use post-interaction, real-time feedback surveys. You can even follow up with customers over the phone for more details.
    Pay attention to what is being said about you on social media, this is where customers are usually the most honest.
    Customer experience is one of the biggest opportunities that businesses have to capture prospects’ interest, get them to act, and stay with the brand as loyalists. There is no limit to what a good customer experience strategy can enable, and this post is a great start.