Crystal Rae
Did you know that one of the deciding factors for 90% of Americans about whether or not they’ll do business with a company is the experience they had with customer service?
Whether you know it or not, your customer support team is a big part of what is making or breaking your business. If customer support is an afterthought rather than the main focus, it’s probably time to reprioritize.
Are you wondering what customer support errors can end up costing you time, money, and business?
Let’s take a look at seven common customer complaints.
- Inadequate Customer Service Training
When your customer service team isn’t adequately trained, they aren’t able to act as an authority when your customers have a question. When they don’t understand the product or service like the back of their own hand, they will inevitably not be able to understand the needs and concerns of the customer.
You’ll want to provide excellent training for your staff so that they can handle anything that is thrown at them.
- Not Being Available to Talk With Customers
One of the most common customer complaints is about customer service that isn’t available frequently. It’s important to remember that your customers might be in a different time zone or operate on a different schedule than your business. If they want the issue resolved immediately, having short windows of customer support is a great way to alienate your customers.
When a customer is not able to reach you, they lose trust and your reputation can suffer when they aren’t able to get a hold of you. You need to have enough staff so that customer support queries are handled in a reasonable manner. You also might want to have a chatbot so that people can ask their questions at any time of day or night.
Make sure that your contact information, including your phone number, is right on your website and easy to see location. When you make it hard to find your contact information, it makes your company seem less reputable and maybe even a little sketchy.
Providing an excellent online customer experience can be a great substitute if you aren’t in the position to have 24/7 phone support.
- Not Hearing What Your Customers Are Saying
As a part of customer service training, make sure that your employees know how to be active listeners. The last thing you want is for your customer support team to respond to customers with answers that are not relevant to the question. This makes customers feel unappreciated and it reduces the sense of a human element in your business.
- Relying Too Heavily on Scripts
We’ve all probably had the experience where you call customer service and the support person is clearly directly reading a script. It feels more like talking to a robot than a person, and it doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence that they actually heard or understood your question.
Instead of telling your customer service team exactly what to say, hire people that you trust and respect. When you hire people you feel are capable and personable, you can empower them to respond to situations as they see fit. Talking to a customer service person who is reading word-for-word from a script almost feels like you’re talking to a hostage.
- Making Assumptions
Another common customer complaint is about service staff that makes assumptions. This is a sure-fire way to get poor customer reviews, as doing this is a sign of disrespect towards the customer. Your staff should find out what the customer’s problem is and what they are thinking rather than simply assuming they know what’s going on before they’ve been told.
- Not Building a Relationship
Have you ever been on hold with customer service and gotten endlessly passed between departments, with long hold times in between? Is there anything more frustrating than when you have to re-describe your question for the third, fifth, or twentieth time to a new staff member? No, there isn’t.
Customer service staff should review the notes on past calls with customers before picking up the phone. Rather than answering and demanding the customer restate their problem one more time, customer support staff can impress customers by knowing exactly what’s going on.
On top of that, customer support should really try to make a genuine connection with customers. While some calls are quick and to the point, others are more long and drawn out. Either way, staff should take the time that they have to personally connect with the customer.
- Not Understanding the Importance of the Role
Sometimes people feel like customer service positions aren’t that important, as they are sometimes some of the lower paid jobs in a company. However, this is actually one of the most important jobs of the business (and you might find raising the salary helps you find the quality customer support staff you’re looking for.)
This is the main avenue through which your customers communicate with your company. Customer service experiences can make or break a customer’s loyalty to a brand, so this is not the department where you want to cut corners and skimp.
Avoiding These Customer Support Errors Will Help You Keep Your Existing Customers and Get New Ones
Most business owners know that it’s a lot more expensive to get new customers than it is to keep existing customers. For this reason, you want to make sure you offer the support your customers need when they call, email, or chat for help. Enhanced services from www.kall8.com/VirtualPBX can improve business efficiency, diversify call handling rules for off-hours, and virtually consolidate a distributed team.
Did you find this article on customer support errors interesting? If so, be sure to check out the rest of our blog for more fascinating and informative content!
