It's Customer Service, Not Rocket Science

I have done a lot of research lately about the customer service experience. The prevailing idea that it all boils down to is:

Providing great customer service is nothing more than treating others as you wish to be treated.

That seems simple enough. No great technical breakthrough, just plain old good manners and the desire to help. But how do you know if this is happening at your company?

In a word (well, two): Mystery Shopper.

That's right. Just like people are hired to sneak around retail stores spying on everything, you need to be a Mystery Shopper at your company.

• Try using the company website. Is it easy to use? What could be improved?
  
  
• Try to purchase something through the same channels available to your customers. Good, bad, or indifferent?
  
  
• Call in to your own customer support line and see how the agent you get treats you. Not only that, go sit in customer service and listen into phone calls for a few hours. Check out the emails customer service receives. Do anything you can think of to find out first hand how it feels to be a customer for your own company.
  

You can't fix what you don't know is broken. Define the problems. Find the solutions. Do this all over again in 3-6 months to see if anything is different.

Here is a solution to get you started:
www.phaseware.com

Four Ways to Ensure a Calm Customer Experience

The single most important factor in the customer experience is the way the customer feels during and after contact with customer service. This means that your agents must be well versed in relating to the customer as well as being experts in the product and how to maintain it. Especially for phone support, it takes a special blend of technical knowledge, communication skills, and patience to excel as a customer service agent. While other channels of communication have their own challenges, none of them are as immediate and as personal as speaking to a customer on the phone.

During a phone contact, everything but facial expressions will become the vehicle in forming an impression of your company. The tone of voice, the choice of words, the warmth or lack of it, all of this plays into the brief relationship the customer will have with your company through your service center. Here are four ways your agents can help smooth the contact:

#1 Quickly determine the mood of the customer in order to relate in a way that will not inflame what may already be a stressful encounter. Be sympathetic. Do not try to be funny.

#2 Be an expert in the customer's problem. At no time should customers feel that the company is not completely competent. If you truly do not know the answer, then by all means, tell the customer that a transfer is being made, but do not make the her repeat herself to even one other contact within the company. Learn to live log while speaking with the customer or otherwise quickly enter the information into the system for review by the next contact before transferring the customer.

#3 Translate the information the customer needs into language he can understand. Do your best to match your responses to the knowledge level of the customer. It can be tricky. Technically astute customers don't want things "dumbed down" but less technically inclined customers don't want to feel stupid because they don't understand at the higher level. It's a fine line that takes practice to walk.

#4 No matter how the customer sounds, respond in a professional manner. Do not allow your voice to show agitation during the contact. Breathe deeply, count silently to 10, or physically respond but make certain your voice remains calm. Certainly you do not have to allow abuse but a diplomatic end to the contact is preferable to the alternative.

These are all things that require practice and training. Make sure your agents have everything they need to make customer contacts successful. Make customers confident that your company knows what it is doing.

Visit www.phaseware.com for information on customer support solutions.

Research by the Aberdeen Group found that 75% of 150 companies surveyed have added a self-service option into their contact centers.This was last year. At the time a third were considering adding or expanding the option within 2 years.

As you can see, self service is the must have solution in customer service and support circles. But it won't do any good if it isn't done right. Well done self service retains customers and increases loyalty. Poorly done self service will lose a customer just as quickly as shoddy telephone support. And it has been said that when a customer is happy he will tell a few people about the experience. If a customer is made unhappy, he tells everyone he possibly can. And these days that could be a vast number if the unhappiness makes it into cyberspace. Not only is it disseminated more quickly, it will live forever.

It behooves you to offer well done self service.

Make the portal easy to navigate. Make the information easily searchable and accessible. Give the customer the tools needed to do the job or resolve the problem. Give the customer convenience and try to give the customer what he doesn't even know he needs. Build a community of customers.

Have a useful self service center and the world will beat a path to your door.

For an example of a self service center go to the PhaseWare Self Service demo.

To find out more about PhaseWare Customer Service and Support products go to www.phaseware.com