Are You Making These 5 Customer Support Mistakes?

Providing exemplary customer support can turn out to be a challenging task if you stick to conventional processes and fail to adopt a proactive approach for serving customers. Seamless customer support is one of the decisive factors for building lasting customer relationships, however, many businesses ignore its significance and end up losing customers. One common mistake that customer support representatives make is not taking responsibility for the mistakes and blaming other departments for a customer service disaster. A lot of businesses use outdated customer support software and have poorly trained staff to address queries and issues which result in customers being frustrated. Another common mistake is not focusing on the issue at hand and concentrating efforts on completing the paperwork or processes required for registering customer complaints. Not having a predefined strategy to deal with service issues is also one of the common customer support blunders.

Being Rigid and Not Owning Your Mistakes

When a customer receives a wrong order or bad service, the last thing that he/she wants to hear is it’s not our fault. Not owning up to a mistake can further annoy your customers to a point where they will either use abusive language or give your business a bad review on social media. So always apologize to the customers and admit your mistake, tell them you will do everything to rectify your mistake. Instead of blaming other departments for a negative customer experience; take responsibility, empathize with the customer and give a gesture that you would fix things in minimal time.

Using Outdated Software and Having Incompetent Staff

If you are using an outdated customer support software, you are likely to get more angry and frustrated customers. If your customer support staff is not properly trained they will not be able to facilitate customers in a competent manner. In order to serve your customers in an efficient way, choose a customer support software that is customizable and easily manageable. Conduct customer service training workshops for your support agents so that they can better serve customers. Give your customer support staff thorough understanding of your products, return, refund and exchange policies so that they don’t have to put customers on hold to check with the manager.

Annoying Customers with Time Taking Processes

Are you making your customers fill forms and run from one department to another for registering their complaints? This is one of the biggest customer support mistakes and is likely to damage your company’s image and customer relationships. Instead of annoying the customer with time taking processes, focus on resolution of the issue at hand. If for instance, a customer comes to you to get a defected product exchanged/refunded, instead of asking him/her to fill out a long form to request the exchange or asking that customer to come again after a few days, apologize for the inconvenience caused and offer an agreeable solution instantly.

Having a Reactive Approach towards Customer Service Issues

Another common customer support mistake is having a reactive approach towards issues. If you are not thinking about the impending service issues that can result in a disaster; you are likely to spend a lot of time and money to fix problems later on that could have been avoided. Therefore, being proactive with your customer service issues is likely to save you and your customers from a lot of hassle. Customer journey mapping will help you identify issues that can result in customer frustration and you can preplan an effective strategy to cope with them beforehand.

Not Going the Extra Mile for Frustrated Customers

Not going out of your way to help an already angry and frustrated customer is a bad business practice. Turning negative customer experiences into positive and memorable ones, and going the extra mile for customers is likely to get you brand advocates. If an angry customer comes to your support team complaining about delivering a wrong product, treat that customer exceptionally well to prove that you value your customers. You need to put in extra effort to please customers who are annoyed with you.