Common Customer Service Pitfalls to Avoid

Long term business survival and profitability is correlated with providing quality service to clients. Customer satisfaction comes with time but customer service comes with the right attitude. A company cannot become successful at delivering high end services to its customers unless it truly understands the importance of dealing with customers. In order to increase customer satisfaction, encourage repeat purchase and improve brand image, here are some of the most glaring mistakes that businesses need to avoid at all costs:

Overcommitting and Under Delivering

Information Technology has empowered modern consumers and made them well aware of the choices available. Sales teams should therefore never overcommit with the customers and only promise what can be delivered.

Hanging Up on Angry Customers

Never avoid an angry customer. Social media gives customers a greater voice with global reach which can have long term repercussions for the brand. Besides empowerment, companies with strong ethics understand the needs of the customers. Therefore, customer service representatives should never hang up phones, ignore emails, or try to get away from customers because of their temperament.

Not Getting Back to Customers

Customers want to get a response to their problems immediately. Getting in touch with customers whose calls or emails went unattended will show that the company is concerned about them and interested in solving their issues.

No Quality Assurance

Learning from mistakes is imperative. Maintaining call records and customer feedback is key to ensuring client satisfaction. This will not only benefit the company to understand its customers better but would also help gauge other factors critical to survival like its brand image, overall market position and the improvements which are required in the product or service mix offered.

Conversations or Background Noises

Customers want themselves to be heard attentively without any distractions or problems. Therefore, the next time you hear a support representative talking on the phone with background noises, you better find a way to make that environment more peaceful and noise free.

No Preparation for Rebuttals

Poor product knowledge can often make things worse for a company. Make sure the representative does not interact with customers until he or she has a complete grasp over different problems that customers might face regarding the company’s product or service. The representative must be adequately prepared to answer all those questions.

Wrong Use of Open Ended and Close Ended Questions

Another factor which can lead to a delay in service is asking the wrong type of questions. There are usually two types of questions in support; open ended and close ended. Open ended questions may take longer for the customers to answer the actual query. For example, asking a customer, “How is your internet working?” is an open ended question and the amount of time it will take to answer that question is unpredictable. However, a question like “Is the yellow light blinking on your internet modem?” is a close ended question where the customer can say “Yes” or “No”, enabling the support representative to speed up the process of resolving the issue with the internet. Therefore, support team must have a structured set of questions which can help them understand and resolve the problems faced by customers within a short span of time.

Lack of Customer Care Culture

Culture of an organization flows from top to bottom. The belief in the company’s ability to be extra helpful to overcome all customer complaints has to be incorporated into each and every employee’s mind. Just letting them know about it won’t really seep in. The senior management must exhibit by example about the importance of taking care of the customers. For example, a senior manager of the company may take a few customer calls a week to show junior staff about how much the company cares about its customers by carefully listening to their problems, answering queries, and following up with different departments to overcome delays.

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