Every business wants to be popular among its customers, and a customer service department can play a vital role in making that happen.
If you continuously strive for excellence in customer service, then you are on the right track. But sometimes, companies fail to capitalize on that and, as a result, deliver low service quality to the customers.
What exactly is customer service?
It is an experience that a company delivers to its customers. It is a way to continually improve your brand and customer relationship to make them feel comfortable when they are doing business with your brand.
The customer service department’s job is to demonstrate the desire to satisfy customers and exceed their expectations with impeccable service after a sale is complete.
That is why customer service is at your business’s very heart and can evoke emotional connections with your customers.
Factors That Influence the Performance of Service Departments
There is no denying that humans represent service departments, and people tend to make mistakes once in a while.
But if you can identify the factors that affect your service department negatively, then you can curb them in their tracks and continue delivering excellent service.
So, if you wish to deliver exceptional service to your customers and become known for it, let’s take a look at the factors that affect your service teams’ overall performance:
Availability:
The mode of service is not a significant factor, but the availability of the same is. Whether you are attending to the customers via chat, phone, or email, it is ideal to be available for them as much as possible.
It is understandable if you cannot offer 24/7 support being a small or medium scale business, but that even that time constraint should not stand in delivering excellent service.
Specify the active hours to your customers and send automated responses across all mediums when they send a request during non-active hours.
But make sure you address the requests, or else the customers might feel that you do not care and will stop giving you repeat business.
Minimize automated responses wherever possible and always provide your customers with a timeline to resolve their issues. While you are at it, keep your live chat option active on your website.
Personalized Responses:
If a customer feels that they are having a robotic conversation with a computer, they tend to lose interest in your brand. Most of us prefer talking directly with a service representative and expect to have a friendly conversation.
If you keep sending them canned responses and treat everyone the same, you will be more likely to lose customers while addressing their concerns.
Please do not stick to scripts as it represents the low quality of service. When you go candid with customers, they feel that you can take responsibility and help them resolve their issues promptly.
Lack of Training:
While scripts might not help, efficacy training does. If your team has doubts and concerns about their job, then they are not ready to assist customers.
Please give them a hand and improve their training. High-quality service requires regular programs that will teach the representatives to take responsibilities.
Responsibility, Respect, Resolution:
These should be the three keywords of any customer service department. Your team should take responsibility for the tasks assigned, professionally treat their customers, and deliver resolution in record time.
When you follow these three ‘R’s religiously, you retain your customers’ trust and build a strong reputation for your brand.
Ignoring Customer’s Needs:
If you do not let the customer feel important, you will likely lose them sooner than later. Giving them attention is critical in keeping them satisfied, and there are no two ways about it.
Many customer service representatives take the customers for granted, which can be detrimental in more than one way.
You should know that it costs around five times more to acquire a new customer than retaining an old one. So, don’t let them lose faith in your brand, or else they will switch to the competition in no time.
Value their feedback, reach out to them promptly, and improve their experience with the brand at every opportunity.
Lack of Team Spirit:
Believe it or not, but a customer service team can only succeed if all the members work together.
One issue might require multiple team members’ attention, and if there is no healthy interaction between different departments, then the customers suffer.
While the internal bickering continues, your customers will take their business elsewhere.
Negligible Social Presence:
A lot of customers tend to reach out to brands via social media. They are vocal about their positive and negative experiences, and many people listen to what they have to say.
If you are not active on social media, you probably lose a lot of business. When people see a brand respond to customers, they respect it and appreciate being listened to.
They might also share their interaction on their account, giving you a positive word of mouth marketing without any significant investment.
To Wrap Up
In a nutshell, customer service departments are critical to your organization’s success. And the only way to have an effective team is to keep them motivated.
But that is not easy, or is it? Dealing with customers all day can be frustrating at times and you might find your team trying to gather their wits by the end of the day.
However, it all depends on you. Maybe you can schedule your team’s tasks properly and engage them regularly to keep their morale high. So, what can you do to make things easier? Automate them!
If you didn’t know, you can now automate the employee engagement process for your service teams and bring all employees on board to share their inputs constructively.
Are you wondering how to do that? Book a free consultation and find out more about NextBee’s engagement programs.
