5 Tips to improve customer support delivery
The ethos that the customer is king still rings true today.
Therefore, it’s a logical conclusion to expect that everything should be done to provide customers with the support and experience they need.
In fact, stats show that 47% of B2B customers will stop buying from a brand after a bad customer experience.
Irrespective of a fantastic product or service, customers simply won’t patronise a business with lousy customer service.
Furthermore, considering the competitive consumer market, it pays to provide excellent customer support.
Customers want a brand that carefully listens and attends to their needs.
So what techniques do you need to learn to make your customer support the absolute best?
Keep reading to find out!
5 Tips to improve your customer support
1. Learn the Act of Copy Cat
Mirroring a customer’s language gives them the feeling you understand and acknowledge their challenge.
Such personalised response improves mutual understanding and builds a better customer relationship.
This way, both the service agent and customer can communicate and receive the information they need.
While it is vital to follow a response template, you do not want to come across as too robotic.
Strictly following a step-by-step guideline can make you lose touch with the customers.
Also, remember to use a pleasant tone irrespective of the channel of communication.
When a customer is frustrated, the agent needs to be patient because it can significantly improve their experience.
Since responses are sometimes quick, short, and incomplete, you want to use an audible, gentle, and informative tone.
2. Invest in Customer Support Training that Goes beyond Product Knowledge
Customer support is not an innate skill.
Customer service agents may have the potential to provide exceptional support to your customer.
Still, they’ll require comprehensive and continuous training.
This training needs to go beyond product knowledge.
It should involve hands-on training for positive interactions with both customers and technology.
It helps to develop soft skills—for example, problem-solving, communication, quick thinking, emotional intelligence, and resourcefulness.
An efficient customer agent should be able to show empathy to frustrated customers.
Besides teaching these skills, encourage the customer support agent to inculcate such skills.
It enables the support agents to quickly and efficiently solve customer problems. 93% of customers will likely make an additional purchase from a brand that offers a positive customer service experience.
3. Promote Mentorship and Knowledge Sharing
The paring of new employees with veterans is another learning technique in customer support training.
Aside from the independent training recruits may receive.
Watching firsthand how successful support agents interact with customers is an invaluable learning process.
They can shadow a customer support veteran for a while.
Then they start handling support tickets by themselves.
Building this kind of mentor-mentee relationships enables communication and knowledge sharing.
The new reps have someone they can ask questions when they need help.
Additionally, the veteran agent can observe the new agents and provide support and give feedback.
Such feedback is essential to the brand’s effort to improve customer support and satisfaction.
4. Learn the Specific Skill Required for Each Customer Service Support Channel
More than answering customer’s questions, excellent service also requires the mastery of different support channels.
Customers are spread across channels like text, live chats, and social media.
Thus, excellent customer support services mean the agent should be able to reply accordingly on each platform.
Remember, written communication skills are different from live chat, which is different again from phone calls etc. so make sure the agents are trained on the channel they need to support.
Phone:
When communicating via the phone, an agent should be mindful of the tone used.
You can convey different emotions through your voice.
So it helps to have a smile in your voice and mirror a positive customer tone.
Also, acknowledge and listen to customer needs.
Summarise the problem, and communicate hold times where required.
Live Chat:
Providing seamless live chat support requires phone and messaging skills.
So, speaking and writing skills will come in handy.
Live chats are conversational, and it is in real-time.
Thus, the customer agent needs to pay close attention.
The ability to multitask is also useful because you may need to chat with more than one person at a time.
Email:
An excellent way to provide customer support via email is to personalise the response.
Make sure that the email replies are timely, short, concise, structured, and error-free.
It will improve customer experience if you include links where they can get additional information or support.
Social media:
The use of social platforms is fast becoming the number one means of B2C communication.
Customer support agents need technology and advanced skills to provide social media support.
It is crucial to respond on time and follow social trends that can aid customer support.
5. Learn From the Customers Feedback
There’s no better way to improve on customer service than to learn from customer feedback.
Try to capture all the good, bad, and not so good experiences through customers’ feedback.
From this feedback, you can know the precise areas that need improvement.
It also lets you see where you have met or fallen behind customer expectations.
Make the use of a phone survey after each service call; send an email survey straight from your CRM tool or use a feedback form on your website.
Also, ask customers to drop feedback in the comment section or message box on social media.
Ask them to rate your services from 0-10 or using a very happy to very sad emoji.
You can likewise make use of credible customer reviews sites like Google Reviews, Amazon customer reviews, Yelp, etc.
The crucial takeaway here is to make sure that your reviews and feedback are genuine.
It helps you to discover real touchpoints and skills that require improvement.
Customer satisfaction should always be your primary focus when providing support.
Remember that customers notice and appreciate when they see you make proactive efforts to respond to their feedback.
Conclusion:
There you have it! The five tips for improving customer support that in turn, will help make your business successful.
Every customer wants to leave with a satisfying experience.
They want to have all the questions answered and their issues resolved.
You can only provide such services when you train and develop skills like listening, emotional intelligence, problem-solving, effective communication, etc.
It likewise helps to learn how to use technology and multiple support channels that enhance customer service.
Also, do not forget to collect and respond to customer feedback.
It is the best way to find out areas that require improvement.
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