Have you ever wondered why most companies don’t take customer service as a priority? When, in fact, managing these interactions can be the single most important factor in retaining customers and building up a loyal fan base. Managers often get lost in the process and the system aspect of this department and they make sure that each complaint received an automatic reply. Yet, they might fail to focus on the quality of these responses.
Let’s say you decide to go to a café and enjoy a nice, warm cup of coffee. There is a café on almost every corner of your area and they offer the very same fresh brew what you get on the opposite side of the street. How do you make up your mind and decide where to go?
If you think of your favorite café right now it might not be the one closest to you and it might not even be the cheapest or the one with the most appealing interior design. Perhaps, it is that small joint that’s always full but you are ready to fight for the last available table in the corner just to have a quick espresso there. Why? Because of the experience. The way they greet you the moment you step through the door, the way they look after your special requirements. You feel that they actually care about you.
We pick our favorite products and services based on our experience and we are willing to pay much more for the company that offers the very same thing like many others if they make us feel special. Customer support can influence this experience in two ways: improving your team’s interaction with your customers and enabling the flow of feedback to other teams.
Your customer has a name
There is one word we like to hear the most in the entire world, backed by science, and it’s our own name. It’s worth taking your customers’ names along with their email addresses at the stage of list building and then implementing them into your automated responses as well as in the subject lines of your emails. Even better if they have the chance to talk to your team over the phone and hear their name a couple of times from a friendly representative.
I.Am.Not.A.Robot.
When your customer opens his inbox he might see a message starting with „Your request is being processed” or one that says „Thanks for your patience, John! We are working hard on resolving your issue as soon as we can! Have a beautiful day!” Which one sound more appealing to you?
Make sure that every touchpoint with your customers looks like a human interaction and not a struggle with a heartless computer. It’s that simple.
Don’t forget about your internal customers
If you expect your Customer Service team to smile and spread positivity all day long you have to keep them happy first. People strive on appreciation, so make sure you highlight good practices and achievements regarding not only the quantity but also the quality of their responses. Let them experience the product as much as possible and share their feedback before talking to a single customer about it. You can even gamify the way they work and reward them with bonuses or lavish team building trips when they reach to the next level or set a new high score. Either way, they have to love their job in order to put a smile on your customers’ faces.
Optimize, optimize, optimize
Your staff and/or customer service representatives receive an immense amount of feedback every day and they can discover the repeating patterns in these queries that are worth more than any conversation with a focus group, hypothetical analysis or testing process. Make sure your team gets to know about these inputs as early as possible so that when you say “We are fixing the problem” you really are “fixing” the problem.
Go the extra mile for your customers and impress them with doing always more than they would ever expect from you. Make them feel special at all times and treat them as your best friend because if they feel appreciated your business is set up for success.
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