We could never count on our fingers – all the countless jobs and businesses there are. In the age of technology, where everything is just a click or swipe away, we want to have some peace and joie de vivre in everyday life, especially in building the dreams we wish to establish for ourselves. As business owners, we never want to miss out. We want to get closer to our target market and understand their thoughts about our brand, products, and customer service. After all, nobody wants to be mistreated, not even you, which is why customer service plays a big role in establishing a business grounded on mutual respect, integrity, and service excellence.
If you want to know how to get close to your audience, potential buyers, and target market, read on and take notes! One of the best things you can do to build a foundation within your business is to create a rock-solid customer service system. From having an inbox with a quick response rate to fulfilling the promises you make to your clients, your customer service must have the capability and commitment to follow through with your company’s policies and goals. Read on to learn how to begin!
Table of Contents
What is Customer Service?
Why is Customer Service Important?
Different Types of Customer Service
Applying Your Customer Service Plans to Your eCommerce Brand
How to Deal with Unsatisfied Clients
How to Express Gratitude to Positive Feedback
Takeaway
What is Customer Service?
Customer Service is a one-on-one system where clients interact with a member of the company that they are purchasing from or working with. Some companies have a centralized department where their customer service team works. Others recruit third-party companies to handle the concerns they receive from their clients. Whichever option a company chooses, establishing its customer service is an integral part of ensuring that the business operates smoothly. Nobody wants angry customers knocking on their office – or social media platforms.
This area in the business referred to as “customer service,” is one of the most stressful among many business stressors. In the home of customer service, you will encounter different kinds of people. Some have a calm and peaceful aura, while others offer the opposite vibe. When you work in customer service, there’ll always be a ton of complaints, but there will also be an overflowing amount of appreciation and praise from your clients and partners. The important thing here is that when you work on your business’s customer service system, you research and understand how your clients and partners behave. If they are displeased with something, you better have a plan on how to speak to them politely without vanishing all hints of respect or credibility for your brand. Customer service is a difficult task, but there are numerous ways to ace your way in building the foundation of a good customer service system.
Why is Customer Service Important?
Remember this, your customer service – and however you decide to build it, will be a lasting reflection of your company. Whether you own a hat shop or a restaurant, you must build a good track record in your customer service. Building a gold standard for your customer service track record isn’t about going all Goebbels or, in layman’s terms – spitting lies to create a good image. We’re not propagandists here, so if we receive a displeasing remark from our client and we know that it is indeed a flaw, we acknowledge these faults and offer the sincerest exchange of sentiments and action according to plan.
Other than receiving good feedback and creating an exchange of mutual respect and sincerity of words and actions, customer service goes beyond that. It covers the areas of time and addresses products or service motion. For example, a client of yours calls in to complain about the delay in their order. You check the causes of delay, handle the situation, and inform the client as you set a timeline on which your company will provide to ensure safe and speedy delivery. For the timeline that you shared, ensure that you are providing truthful information accompanied by a timeline guarantee that you will follow through with your commitments.
Different Types of Customer Service
The term customer service is a big umbrella. There are different types of customer service that a company may explore. Some may apply to your business while others may not, or it is also possible that all types of customer service apply to your business. To understand you can start building a solid foundation for your client relations, you must begin by getting a glimpse of the different types of customer service. Below are five types of customer service and their definitions.
Telephone
This is by far one of the most conventional types of customer service. Having been around for decades, telephone support is the type of customer service that requires one to use a mobile device to contact the number of a company to seek customer support. Some companies hire a third-party business, like a call center, to manage the influx of their customer service requests. Telephone support is one of the oldest forms of customer service. This is where you will hear the loud or soft voices of your clients with something to say.
To have telephone support, your business has to have a landline or cellular mobile number that the customers may contact. Some customers prefer short-message service (SMS), while others like voicing their concerns, feedback, and recommendations. Telephone support is one of the trickiest of all types. If you are working the phone, be prepared to have a ton of patience. Customers can easily identify if you are staggered, unaware, or distressed by your voice. So, for telephone support, it’s best to have someone with a calm and clear voice on the phone.
Social Media
If telephone support was the oldest, then social media customer service is the newbie of all types. Despite social media being around for no longer than telephone support, it is one of the most famous. Since technology is right at our fingertips, the diversity of customers in social media support is the highest. Social media customer service requires a strategic plan of action.
Social media support covers applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and one of the latest social media applications – TikTok. Clients roam around the world of social media more than they do in real life, so if you’re manning these platforms, be ready to face a wide spectrum of clients with different kinds of concerns. There are also a couple of tools you can utilize in using social media for customer service.
Email support is one of the types of customer service that is prominent among partner companies and other large-scale transactions. Consider having a designated email address that will be the addressee of clients who wish to forward any concerns they may have. Aside from having a designated email address to which clients may direct their emails, create an auto-generated response that will help them confirm that you have received their email. These auto-generated responses will also serve as a receipt for both parties to signify that there is a transaction.
Email support may be difficult if you don’t use tools or applications that may aid in easing the load of clients who are sending their concerns through email. You may use applications that link to a survey they can fill out to mediate their concerns and have their responses filtered and directed to the right people in the customer service team. For example, if you have a client who is inquiring about payment terms, then your auto-generated email will have them fill out a form that will have them indicate their concern. The next task is to forward the concern to the right person in the customer service team to address the concern.
Live-chat
Here’s where the night owls and early birds are! Live chat in customer service is the 24/7 team. Of course, when you’re running a company, you would never want to exploit anyone and have them work non-stop; that’s just brutal – and illegal. When you’re running a customer service team with a live chat feature, make sure that your team takes shifts and still has a work-life balance. Live chat support can be one of the most exhausting types of customer service. So, if you’re looking to build your customer service with live chat support, recruit people who can work at different time slots. Some will have to work the regular 9 to 5, while others will work from 5 to 12 and 12 to 9 rotating shifts.
For live chat support, you might have to assign a point person who will have to monitor if the team is up and running. This ensures that your clients won’t be waiting forever to have their concerns attended to. Live chat can be difficult for a few hours since it’s likely that the business owner or manager will be up at 4 am, so go with a safe and strategic plan and appoint somebody who will handle the team during their respective time shifts.
On-site
On-site support, from the name itself, is having people at your main office or warehouse present at a given time to provide aid and support for your clients or business partners. On-site support is characterized by having a good chain of command and having complete knowledge of what to do when a predicament arises. Not everything can be done virtually. For example, the exchange for a replacement is one thing that cannot be accomplished without on-site support. Other instances include logistics management or delivery acceptance, or dispatch. These are a couple of examples where on-site support is needed at most.
Without onsite support, companies may not function effectively because of poor management. It is important that each company, especially suppliers, create a specific team and assign point persons for tasks that involve on-site support. This way, issues about logistics and physical management may be addressed or avoided at all costs.
Applying Your Customer Service Plans to Your eCommerce Brand
Customer service may be a tad different regarding eCommerce platforms and brands. Compared with physical stores, where customers can ask the personnel present at the store, online stores conduct customer service differently. From making purchases, online businesses offer a different layout of their products and offer their payment options with different payment channels, including bank transfers, credit cards, debit cards, and other transactions. This represents how vast a customer service line is.
One of the prerequisites of success for an online business is to have excellent customer service. It doesn’t mean just being nice to people; this means having the full knowledge of what to do and how to do the necessary things that you must take to provide the best solutions for your customers. You should know that customer service is one of the most important factors that affect brand loyalty. Should you fall poorly in this area, you might not be able to achieve good brand loyalty for returning customers and new customers who would like to purchase a product or service from your online eCommerce store.
On the other hand, raising your customer service expectations to a skyscraper height will not provide a realistic drive for the people on your team. If you cannot provide good support for your customer service personnel, then you wouldn’t be able to communicate with them effectively as you should. Know that it is more about driving your lines together and not leaving one task for another to perform by themselves.
How to Deal with Unsatisfied Clients
It is inevitable to always ace customer service. Have it stapled in your mindset that you will always encounter clients who have something negative to say about your product or service, despite all your efforts in making things run smoothly without halt or flaw – this is the reality of customer service. If you ever find yourself in a situation where your patience is tested, remember these seven steps. In the following steps, you can answer the commonly asked question: “Is the customer always right?”
Step 1: Have a professional mindset.
Before you speak, make sure that you modulate your voice and take deep breaths and hold your personal reactions. When working in customer service, you must always remember that you represent the company you are working with. Whatever you say may reflect the company you work with, and however, what you perform will contribute to the customer’s feedback about your company’s service.
- Take deep breaths
- Hold your personal reactions to yourself
- Keep a professional mindset
Step 2: Actively listen.
Listen in the same way that you want to be heard. When you’re working on your customer service tasks, make sure that you listen actively so that you won’t miss out on the details that your customer is explaining. It makes a huge difference when you immediately remember what the customer is explaining. You also don’t want to push the buttons of your customers and cause them to act more distressed than they already are. Remember, you represent the company you work for, so you don’t want to give a bad impression to any customer or audience.
- Listen attentively
- Keep calm, cool, and collected
- Lower your voice when speaking
Step 3: Take note of their concerns.
Take note of the customer’s concerns and make sure you won’t miss out on the details such as their name, address, order number, contact number, and other necessary information that was shared in light of the concern that they have about their order. Find the median between needs and responsibility. Make sure that when working in customer service, you don’t act staggered and forget to breathe because of distress or fear of saying something you shouldn’t. Act professionally and calmly and continue to build rapport with your customers while addressing their concerns.
- Build rapport with customers
- Don’t miss out on the details
- Act calmly but remain professional
Step 4: Offer unconditional empathy.
We do not require anyone to “baby” the customers and give them anything they want. For example, if they want to return a box of duct tape because they’re saying it isn’t strong enough to patch up a house, we need to find a suitable rationale for addressing this concern. If they demand cement to replace the tape they purchase, we know more than enough that customer service and replacement methods don’t work that way. Make sure you are by the book when you conduct customer service solutions with clients, whether they are pleased or displeased.
- Treat the customer with respect (even when their reasons are beyond rational)
- Be on their team; let them know that you are on their side
- Remember your training on damage control, and protect your brand from anything that may reflect negatively on their name
Step 5: Present solutions.
Offer feasible solutions to your customer’s raised issues. Flee away from making false promises that cannot work, especially regarding timelines. For example, when a customer wants to have two thousand office chairs replaced within 5 hours, do not promise that you can replace them in 3 hours or less. What you must do is request their order receipt, verify the validity of their order, and follow through with contacting your logistics. Should there be available office chairs, then you must communicate with your team to ensure that there are. Afterward, provide a timeline that you can provide to your customers to set a good straw of information that will not leave them expecting too much from your customer service troubleshooting. Customer service isn’t about providing a solution to everything; it is about communicating effectively with customers to reach a common understanding.
- Look and act with urgency but at ease
- Make your customer feel heard
- Offer workable solutions
Step 6: Perform the solutions and set follow-ups.
When you have finally confirmed the order receipt of the customer who is requesting customer service solutions, then you can take the necessary steps that will guarantee the solution you presented to your customer. Make follow-ups with your logistics team and see to it that no step will be missed when it comes to acting on the solutions that you offer your customers. Do not simply rely on technology or the roles that your other colleagues perform, part of customer service is making sure that each step you take is well taken care of and will provide the customer with the results they expect or the results that are agreed upon.
- Make sure each solution step is followed
- Cross-check with your system
- Inform your team about extra reminders that they need to take note of
Step 7: Generate feedback.
The only way for you to know if you are doing a good job is when you receive feedback from the people you work with and your customers. Seek feedback from customers and team members to know which areas you perform excellently in and which areas you need to improve. No person in the entire world is perfect; even perfectionists make mistakes, so make it a habit to reflect on yourself as a team member in the customer service department. And when you receive good remarks from customers or fellow employees, remember those, and allow those remarks to boost your confidence in working better at what you’re doing.
- Obtain feedback from customers and fellow employees
- Use the feedback you receive to reflect on yourself as a member of the customer service team
- Continue the characteristics you are good at and improve on the things that were mentioned you need to improve on
How to Express Gratitude to Positive Feedback
Expressing gratitude to your customers may possibly fall into a grey area. You don’t want to express too many emotions, but you also want to give sincere appreciation. In doing so, you must remember that wherever you are, as long as you are working on your role as an employed member of the company, you still and always represent the company. So the next time you receive a positive remark from a customer, don’t promise them fifty boxes of pens; smile and say a sincere thank you. Some customers may also feel uncomfortable when they see how different you act when receiving expressions of gratitude and when you’re troubleshooting a situation. Know where the thin line is, and ensure you never fall outside the area of professionalism.
- Smile and be sincere with your expression of thanks
- Stay professional, and do not be over-excited
- Whether you receive good or bad feedback, always give thanks and recognize where you need to improve or which characteristics you may continue.
Virtual Thanks
With the different forms of customer service we offer, from physical to virtual, we must also be prepared to give thanks through our virtual channels, such as social media, email, and website. When we encounter a positive remark about our service, then aside from just giving thanks, we can send an email to our customers, expressing our gratitude for their understanding and kindness in working with us to achieve a solution. Sometimes we may also go as far as providing complementary discounts on our vouchers that they can use in our store to compensate for the trouble they experienced. Who doesn’t like discounts, right?
- Express thanks through the available channels of your brand
- You may choose to offer complimentary product discounts or service discounts for troublesome situations in customer service
- Be genuine about your remarks
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Takeaway
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