Customer Service 101: Everything You Need to Know About Customer Service

Getting a great customer service experience starts with customer service 101. Every business, no matter big or small, relies on its customer service team. This is the team that speaks to your customers, understands their needs, solves their problems, and delivers the voice of your company. All interactions are important and form part of a longer customer journey that develops trust and leads to long-term relationships. Customers are the lifeblood of a business, so without them, we would not be around much longer.

Even if you have provided customer service for years, it never hurts to remember customer service 101 from time to time. Customer service, if done rightly, can also create one of the biggest revenue opportunities – referrals from happy customers. 

We cover some tips in this post that you can start implementing right now to ensure you are providing the best customer experience and keeping your customers for many years to come.

1. Hire the Right People

The first step is to hire the right people. If you want the job done right, you need people with the right attitude, personality, and skill set. The most important characteristic to look for is a can-do attitude. Customer service is not easy, and you need to have grit and positivity to get through it with a smile on your face. 

Ask candidates if they were able to persevere when they were stacked against them and remain enthusiastic despite obstacles. Did they remain persistent or give up? It is crucial that your team is able to stay positive throughout the day. In interviewing candidates, pay close attention to not just what they say but also how they say it. Are they appreciative of you? Make sure you feel comfortable talking to your customer service team. Let them tell you a story so you can get to know them. Is the candidate able to paint a clear picture in their story? Is the candidate thorough with their explanations, or do they skip over them quickly? 

Lastly, be sure to catch your candidate off guard with an unexpected question to demonstrate your ability to explain things logically. You can ask a question about something unfamiliar to them. Watch to see if they stay calm or become flustered. 

2. Train the Team For Success

Once you have found the right team, the next step is to ensure they fully understand your business. Do not jump to the details without considering the big picture first. Companies are more than just their products and services. They have a purpose and a mission. There is more to them than making money. This knowledge needs to be reflected in how they act and speak. A great example of how a company is more than just its products is Cox. It is known for its fast and reliable customer service. All you need is the Cox phone number, and your issue is made sure to be catered to in no time. 

Motivated employees understand the company’s mission and goals. Consider this to be the construction of a solid foundation upon which the remaining product knowledge can be built. After the foundation has been laid, it is time to delve into both the goods and services you sell and the systems and technology you use to provide support. Prepare for shadowing by having educational training first – presentations, webinars, speeches, tests.

 Hire your best customer service employee and allow your new team members to shadow this person. Observe how the new agents handle inbound requests, analyze how they record details, and understand the words and diction they use with customers. When your new team members start working, the choice of the right leader will have a lasting impact on how they interact with customers.

When you have the right team in place, it is time to learn the rest of customer service 101.

3. Pay attention to what your customers are saying

A question can only be answered correctly if it is understood first. Discover what the customer really wants. It is also important to note that what the client describes or asks may be different from what the client needs to accomplish. For example, the client may say they require a certain feature to use the product. You may be able to direct them to another feature in your system that does not directly address what they asked for but allows them to solve the same problem. Instead of just answering their question, assist them in finding a solution.

You can consistently increase your customers’ satisfaction by understanding their needs. Knowing what they need to hear is an important part of listening to your customers. Keep in mind that this may be different from what they want to hear. Your customers want to know that you will fix the bug as soon as possible or that you will build their feature by tomorrow. Your customers need to know that you have listened to them and are working on a solution. 

The customer service team needs to embrace complaints from customers, even if they are not your fault. Straightforward apologies go a long way when a customer is upset. It is sometimes difficult to hear, but it is valuable and provides us with the chance to grow. You should always welcome and encourage feedback from clients and ensure that you have a process in place to properly document this feedback.

4. The easiest way to succeed is to be responsive

Are you looking for a way to improve customer satisfaction right away? Be more responsive.

It’s no surprise that people care most about response time when they need help. You do not want people waiting on hold for 20 minutes, especially if they are unsure you can help them. Your company’s reputation will suffer if you do not respond within a minute or two to a customer who chats for support.

It is at this point that bots are valuable. Bot agents can help customers by responding to chat requests and gathering information about their issue, and seamlessly passing it along to the appropriate agent. Follow up on your promise to respond to emails within 24 hours if you say you would. Answering your chats in under a minute is great, if you do it. Your customer will not be disappointed as long as they know when they will receive a reply.

You can use chat support as a way to increase response times if you have a smaller team. You can direct your customers to chat with you. Providing mobile support is faster and more efficient for agents because they can handle a number of conversations simultaneously. Consider that.

5. Learn from complaints

Lastly, let us look at how we can leverage issues and complaints.

As we discussed earlier, customer service is the real face of the company. You can get the best insights into how your customers feel, what their pain points are, and what they love about your product or service from them.

Ensure your customer service department has a way to record and track complaints or requests when they are received. As a result, your organization will have a database of vital information that will aid all departments to make improvements. In addition to knowing what customers really want, your product team will know where sales are over-promising, your onboarding team will know what training curriculum to add, and so much more.

As long as your customer service team uses the data they receive every day, they will be the backbone for the company’s success.

Summary

That’s it for Customer Service 101. These tips will hopefully help you create a great customer service team. Other considerations for a great customer service team? Tell us what you have found to be effective in the comments below.