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Customer Service: The Ultimate Guide
With the word customer service, you might think of your department or team that is doing the best to make the public happy with the customer service best practices. But for the customers, it is not the same. When a customer sees the word customer service, they would remember the worst customer service that they had.
Almost every customer has experienced issues like the repeating of information to representatives, the number of hours they wasted waiting on hold, and still they not having their issues resolved. These are the reason why they tend to take customer service as a bad thing.
For such situations, we cannot blame the customers since there are many customer service teams that are not there to help the customer solve their problems. These teams treat the cases as numbers and not like people which is why the customers then get annoyed after a while.
Why is customer service best practices needed?
The customers are normally forced to come across complicated phone trees and utilize lengthy forms to get assistance that they need, instead of the process to be a straightforward and easy one.
And the worst situation in this is that the customers do not have any power to succeed; instead, they get questions for answering and no help or method to have their situations solved. Looking at the current situation of customer service, it feels shameful since many of these team are not aware that the customer service best practices would help your company grow as well.
As a matter of fact, there was a recent survey which showed that those organizations that make the customer success a priority have a faster-growing revenue. It is obvious since happy customers would buy more from the company which would increase the revenue and this is used to make the company grow. All in all, the customer happiness begin with the customer service.
So, with all that has been explained above, you have a much better idea regarding why excellent customer service is important. Not sure what the best customer service looks like? This guide would help you learn all about the customer service best practices that would help your company grow at the end of the day.
Let us understand what customer service to understand all better.
What Does Customer Service Mean?
In simple words, customer service is the service where the company helps in solving the problems that the customers have with the product or service that the company offers. Customer service also helps in teaching the customer how to use a product and answers their questions to make them have all their problems solved as well as doubts cleared.
In short, customer service is the service of serving the needs of the customers with the customer service best practices. There are many types of customer services which range from downloading software to troubleshooting the product installation to even processing a purchase return.
The interaction of the customer service takes place when a customer contacts the company’s customer service team to note a complaint, ask a question, or make a request. On the other end, the customer service representative attends to the demands of the client to offer assistance, expertise, and support.
The overall quality of the customer service of the company, whether bad or good, plays a huge role in the success of the company. When a customer is happy, they would spend more money and even refer their family and friends about the services that your company offers due to the customer service best practices that you used.
On the other hand, the customers who are not happy due to the bad experiences with your customer service tend to spread the word in their network. With this, you can lose a few of your customers, and this would eventually affect your company’s reputation both in-person and online.
In case you feel that the customer support or the customer service is something where the customer’s success is not for you, you need to think again. When you excel in other parts of the business like in sales and marketing where you feel building a customer relationship is important, you tend to forget that the customer support is linked to it.
And interaction with the customers is the critical building block of helping customers succeed, which is why the customer service best practices are stressed on a lot at many places.
Customer Success & Customer Service
The most significant difference between them is that while the customer service is normally reactive, the customer success is proactive. Yes, these two are very different terms. The customer success manager usually reaches out to help the customers with the right goal-setting and strategy. On the other hand, the customer service representative responds to the troubleshooting and individual problems.
Let us understand the various kinds of customer service to comprehend the matter at hand and learn all about the customer service best practices that would eventually help your company grow.
Types of Customer Service
The customer service best practices can be delivered to the customers in various ways by different companies. Let us understand them better:
Social Media
One of the customer service best practices that are up and coming is the social service one where the customers are able to communicate with the company efficiently and faster. There was a survey that asked many customers which were the best type of customer service that made them satisfied, and about 24% had selected social media and out of that, 80% were happy with the service.
The customers are able to obtain easy and fast responses to any query they place on any social media account which includes Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Moreover, the social media also allow the businesses to have a little more fun as well. A few of the brands have separate accounts just dedicated to the customer support best practices.
This can also be an option of offering customer service to your customers from your business. But you are not restricted to selecting one; you can choose two or three of the customer service best practices to incorporate in your business and get the best outcome from all of it.
Messaging
Another customer service best practices include the messaging which is considered a good practice and take many forms such as the direct messaging on social media (explained in the previous point), messaging apps, and text-based messaging (explained in the 5th point).
The messaging apps have over 6 billion worldwide users and the businesses are beginning to rely on them so that they can offer easier and quicker customer service and content distribution to the audiences. There are companies that use Facebook messenger to distribute the blog posts and even to provide the customer service and support leaving the customers satisfied and happy.
Self-Service
A lot of customers are not moving towards the DIY customer service methods since it is much easier to get the details they need without having to wait for the response on the phone or via the email, making this the customer service best practices.
Additionally, the companies are creating knowledge bases by publishing blogs and videos for explaining how to use their service or product, allowing the customers to seek out touchless customer service as and when they can.
This is also one reason why it is important to have a blog on your website that has complete guides describing the steps on how to use your product or service, or how to troubleshoot any issues. This would help a lot.
Even though the world is advancing and there are new customer service best practices, people still send emails and request for customer service via the email. This process might not get old soon since it does offer a human touch to it even though it is a conversation that takes place over the computer.
As a matter of fact, there was a survey taken up by Twilio, and the results showed that the second most preferred method for customer service was via the email. And the reason is that people can easily send an email at their time and convenience, and would not have to wait on hold. You cannot just create one and use it for every customer query. Hence, you need to have people employed to offer the customer service best practices to make the customers happy in the end.
Phone
A lot of companies offer the customer service mainly via the phone interactions. The company has a hotline, and customers call on it to connect with a customer service representative. This is the oldest customer service that is now becoming less popular. The phone service is now reduced due to the other methods mentioned above and below.
Texts
Twilio had a survey where consumers spoke about the messaging habits, and there were about 90% of the people who selected the option of messaging for the customer service best practices. And if we look at a larger scale, very few companies have the equipment for customer support via messaging.
From the outcome, it was understood that the customers want to connect to the company for things like coupons, surveys, status updates, reminders, and order confirmations. This is since every person mostly has the messaging app push notification turned on. So, to ensure that you have the customer service best practices in your business, you can add in this option as well as any other one that would help you serve the public in a better way.
Live Chat
Let us talk about the current and best option which is the live chat option that provides the customers with a speedy customer service. This method does not force the customers to wait on the phone for a long time, and the chat can be operated by robots (called chatbots with the used of Artificial Intelligence) or by human, or both.
Another way the customer service best practices is provided with the live chat is when the live chat widgets are launched on the website of the company to offer instant customer service and support. This is noted as the most convenient way of providing customers the support with the customer service best practices.
As a matter of fact, they need a proper commitment for it to run successfully. Hence, many companies have incorporated chatbots to run the live chat customer service in a much better way. And this has turned out to be the best outcome for many of the company’s offering services like this.
So, if you are searching for the customer service best practices that would bring the best out of your company’s customer support.
Good Customer Service
With every bad customer experience that a customer might have had, they would also remember the one business or customer service representative who did their best to go out of the way and offer the solution to the problem for that customer. And if you ever thought that spending time on the customer’s issues would not pay off for you, with all the details shared above, you might have understood that it does.
From all the details above, you know that happy customers mean more sales and with more sales, there is more revenue with which the company then grows. Hence, it is worth putting in efforts and creating a team that have the right dedication and the power of helpfulness.
What Are The Customer Service Expectations That Are Reasonable?
In the today’s world, customers are in control, where their expectations for any service is high. They can easily switch to another brand if you are not meeting their expectations and demands. The customers that you hold dearly would help you grow your business with a good amount of sales. The only idea to make this happen is that the professionals in your team should take up the customer service best practices and connect with the customers as much as humanly possible.
The customers do just expect you to solve their issues, they also want to be amused with above-and-beyond service. In short, the customer wants to get help when they want it, how they want it and without having to jump in hoops to get the service (like waiting on hold all day, or not begin responded to properly). Today. the customer has the power to make your company what you want it to be. So, a successful customer is what you need.
So, along with setting up your company, it is important to set up the best customer service as well. Ensure that you use the customer service best practices to make a good connection with the audience.
How can Inc Paradise help?
In case you are still at the point where you want to register your business and incorporate it, head over to IncParadise today to have it done at a reasonable rate. Check out the other services that we offer to order them today!