Nykki Yeager
Back in
the old days, customer service meant talking face to face with people who came
into your storefront. Real-life interactions were the original support
conversations, and doing customer service this way is something people have
done forever.
Then in
1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. It didn’t take long for
this new technology to spread into households everywhere, and with the
invention of the switchboard 20 years later, phone support was born. Per this
timeline, phone support has been around for over 100 years!
By
contrast, online service is quite new. In recent years, customer preferences
for online service have only grown, with chat being the preferred channel of
millennials.
Still,
few businesses have mastered the art of providing service through online
channels. Many customers are left underwhelmed, with one study showing
that 77% of customers reported a
bad experience in the last year.
If you
want to avoid underwhelming your customers, steer clear of
these five mistakes that lead to subpar support.
1. Lack of responsiveness
It
should come as no surprise that when a customer contacts you, they expect to
hear back. Yet up to 62% of businesses don’t
respond at all to email. And with technology shortening the length
of time it takes us to do anything online, customers expect to hear back soon:
37% of customers expect a response within an hour.
Great
customer service is about meeting and exceeding customer expectations. With
customer expectations for responsiveness being so high, how quickly you reply
really matters. A correct and helpful answer delivered in one hour is way
better than sending the same answer 24 hours later.
To be
responsive, you need to study where, when, and how often customers contact you,
then have staff in place to answer them. Not having enough people on the
schedule to handle the contact volume will lead to long wait times, cranky
customers, and burned out employees.
Depending
on your size and stage, you may not have the resources to get back to customers
at the speed of light, but one way to counter this is to be transparent about
your turnaround times. Let people know how long they’ll be waiting by posting
this information on your help site or including it in a confirmation message
when customers submit their requests.
When
you make a commitment to responsiveness, stick to it. So much of great online
service is turning up to do the job when you said you would be there. See also:
every household service ever.
2. Inconsistency
Many
teams are focused on creating the “wow” factor, inspired by companies like
Zappos who go above and beyond for their customers with things like their
legendary 10-hour call.
There’s
nothing wrong with wow. But it’s better to be reliably competent, providing
every customer with a good experience, every time, than to create just a few
extraordinary experiences with the rest being subpar.
In
fact, measuring satisfaction across all of a customer’s interactions is 30% more predictive of overall
satisfaction than measuring happiness for each individual
interaction. It’s really the sum of
experiences that count.
Inconsistent
service can lead to customers submitting multiple inquiries as they try to get
a reliable answer. Not only is this frustrating for them, it costs your
organization time and money to handle the redundant volume. More importantly,
inconsistency destroys customers’ confidence in your business and drives them
away.
Imagine
this: You go to your favorite cafe for a morning coffee and the barista insults
you, makes you a latte with dairy instead of with almond milk, and then refuses
to replace it with your original order.
I don’t
know about you, but insults and dairy tend to ruin my day. Maybe you love this
cafe so much that you give them a second chance, but even so, your perception
of the business has been lowered. And after another mishap, you’d most likely
be searching for a new favorite: 42% of customers stop shopping
with a brand after just two bad experiences.
Consistency
in support interactions can be driven in part by having clear processes for
your team to follow, as well as providing comprehensive documentation and
training. Clarifying and writing down procedures for common inquiries helps you
make them repeatable, allows you to identify opportunities for variance or
error, and gives everyone a common framework to reference.
Training
ensures that your team is equipped with the skills and knowledge they need and
gives them general principles to work from, allowing them to successfully
handle inquiries, even in situations where there isn’t any process
documentation. Customer service conversations will never fit 100% neatly into
the boxes you create for them. There will always be exceptions, and training is
what equips your team to handle the outliers.
3. Trying to win the conversation
Contrary
to the old adage “The customer is always right,” anyone who has worked in
support knows that the customer isn’t always right. Sometimes
they’re wrong. Sometimes they’re very wrong.
Often,
it’s because they’ve been misinformed by the company. Other times, it’s
anyone’s guess as to why they think that Internet Explorer is the right browser
for running your software. Then there are moments when the customer just isn’t
happy.
In
these times, some companies have gotten into public fights with their
customers. Spoiler alert: It’s never a good look. This restaurant ended up
deleting its Facebook account out of shame following a series of fights with
its customers:
The
Facebook account isn’t the only thing this business lost. No doubt, they lost
customers due to their behavior here.
Customer
support isn’t a competition between customer and company. It’s not a fight. The
only way to win is by working as a team. Unless a customer is being
abusive, in which case it may be time
to fire them, then it’s your job to work with them
to get to a solution.
Yes,
getting to a solution can be tricky when your customer is feeling angry. But
that’s why support people should make the
big bucks. Guiding your customer through a tough situation shows
them that you’re there for them even at the worst of times. This inspires
trust. In some cases, customers can become more loyal
after an issue than they were before it happened.
Remember:
Customer complaints aren’t personal. Don’t blame or shame customers or make
excuses for your mistakes. That’s what we do when we’re acting defensively
instead of focusing on a fix. Keep calm and support on.
4. Rushing to answer, not to understand
As
mentioned earlier, getting back to customers quickly is important, but not at
the expense of quality or comprehensiveness. When you rush to answer, you may
miss key details and not fully comprehend the issue at hand. This can lead to
unnecessary back-and-forth when the customer has to keep coming back to get all
the information they need.
Instead,
take your time and try to really understand. This requires active listening,
and active listening requires being present and paying attention. Ask yourself
what the customer might really need. Often, there’s an
underlying “why” behind the conversation that goes beyond the surface-level
issue.
When
you can address that underlying “why,” you can resolve the conversation in one
reply. When that happens, you reduce customer effort and increase satisfaction.
To boot, while first reply time is important, so is full resolution time.
Closing a conversation on the first reply means driving down full resolution
time, further boosting customer satisfaction.
While
you’re at it, take a cue from Apple,
a company renowned for their service, and try to anticipate what
the customer might need next. Will your response create more questions? What’s
coming for your customer? Think a few steps ahead, then be proactive about
giving the customer the information they’ll need.
5. Underutilizing support staff
Many
support professionals inherently know how to provide great service. With
training and experience, they sharpen their skills even more. But knowing how to
do something doesn’t matter at all if you’re not allowed to do
it.
To be
truly effective, support teams need to be empowered to do what they know is
best. Often times, support teams are both understaffed and overly restricted
with too many rules and barriers. They lack the time it takes to provide
exemplary service, and they lack the authority to make decisions.
Have
you ever been to a grocery store where the cashier needs managerial approval to
apply a coupon to your order? Not only is this a poor experience for you as the
customer, but it’s insulting and degrading to the cashier. It strips them of
their autonomy and ability to be useful. Many bad support experiences happen
not because the person you’re working with doesn’t care, but because they don’t
have the authorization to actually help you.
So hire well, train
well, then step aside. Trust that your support team are indeed the experts in
support, and let them work their magic. Also, set reasonable targets so
your team can spend the time it takes to resolve each interaction rather than
speed through.
Another
way that support staff get underutilized is by not being included in the larger
company strategy. Support spends the large majority of their days talking to
customers, where they learn about what customers need, what they like, and what
confuses and frustrates them. Support people know a lot about
customers. If leveraged correctly, this knowledge can be a vital asset.
However,
many companies put support in an isolated silo, a mistake that moves beyond the
support team itself and lands on the company as a whole. With that said,
support teams can be a catalyst for change by elevating their visibility and
highlighting their expertise, in part by sharing successes with
the rest of the company.
Support
teams can also utilize self-service, automation, and
other technology to handle repetitive, low-value conversations. In doing so,
this frees up time and attention for more valuable conversations,
especially ones that grow revenue.
In turn, support teams increase their clout and influence, leading to more
invitations to participate in strategy.
The good news
Throughout
this article, we focused on what could go wrong with your online service, which
might seem a little gloomy. The good news is that these are common issues.
Good
news? Yes. While your competition is stuck making these mistakes over and over
again, you now have the knowledge to avoid them, propelling you ahead of the
pack and into amazing online service that drives long-term loyalty and success.
Nykki
is a versatile professional with a passion for connecting people to products
through data-driven decision making, clear communication, and a deep focus on
understanding customer needs. She’s the Head of Customer Success at Figma. Reach out on LinkedIn.
No comments:
Post a Comment