5 Tips On Customer Service

Posted on 14. Jan, 2012 by DoStartup in Branding, Startup Tips

If your business is in a domain where after sales service is crucial to your customers, in that case focusing on your customer service should be a top priority. It is a difficult job to maintain a good customer service for any company – big or small. The trick in improving the customer support is in understanding its intricacies. Use these 5 tips on customer service to ensure that your customers are kept happy.

Invest in good people

Cheap will always be cheap. Don’t try to be overly-mediocre when selecting people for your customer service. If you don’t have people who don’t know what they are talking about out when a customer presents them with their problem, then you have a big problems in your hand. Scrimping on talented people for customer service will cost you higher dollars in the long run and conversely if you have good people, then it will save you money in the long run.

Quality of customer service will be the deciding factor on how effective your company is. Moreover, what is the point of having a customer service that is incapable of helping customers properly.

24 X 7

The problem faced as customers is that the customer service will not be available at all times. It will be only for a fixed time, and also the timing may be suited for customers in a particular country. But the truth be said, it is sad to see if a web hosting company or domain hosts do not have a 24 X 7 customer service. These are industries where customers will need you at the oddest time of the day and from the most distinct parts of the world. The only solution in these cases are to make your customer support 24 X 7.

Options

Everyone may not be able to call your toll free number and it wont be toll free for everyone either. For people from other countries it will be very expensive to call your customer representative for support. At the same time, emails might be fine but it is a medium where the response time may go from a few hours to more than 48 hours depending on how good your customer service is. Another popular medium is Live chat which is perhaps the most convenient and user friendly option to provide customer service. It is always a good idea to provide as many options as you can to the users so that they can opt for the one that they are suitable and most comfortable with.

Personalize

Don’t make your customers feel that they are chatting with a bot while they ask for help. Always promote a sense of personalisation for your clients when they ask for support. And also avoid a lot of technical mumbo jumbo unless the customer asks for it. The idea is to keep them returning to your business by showing the simplicity and ease you offer. If you scare them away with geeky customer service and artificial chat lines, then you are basically harming your own business.

Follow up

Time and again, we forget the real power of follow up. A nice email asking if the customer support conversation helped solve the issue for them is going to be the big brownie points earning trick for you. Do it diligently,either automate it or personalize it, either way get feedback. And if it has not helped them in solving their problem, let the customer service take initiative to call upon the customer to help solve the issue.

Do this and ensure that your customer never leaves you. Even if you charge premium pricing for your services, if you can provide some kick ass customer service they will never leave your company.

How do you provide customer support?

Tags: customer service, customer support tips