Quite a few organizations hire employees in internal positions such as human resources, marketing, sales, facilities, cafeteria, accounting or security without adequate training in customer service skills. Generally, unless a customer complains or compliments an employee their supervisor typically assumes that everything is being done well and provides positive feedback on their performance review.
Customer Services includes small and large details such as understanding the needs and purchasing habits of the customers, responding to all e-mail and phone inquiries, human contact and conversation, taking responsibility, to celebrate little triumphs with them, commiserate in their complaints and even get to know them. These customers once made will remain loyal customers forever.
By itself customer service is too vast to handle unless you are a large business with well defined sections in your office. Outsourcing customer service can allow a small or medium business to take care of its core competencies, while the customers are professionally and satisfactorily dealt with.
Online customer service is handled by quite a lot of call centers. The need for such service arises on two accounts.
First an online business is a 24*7 business. Your customers belong to the world and there are several time zones out there! Their hours and holidays are different from yours. Remember you lose a customer to your competitor if you do not respond to their calls.
Secondly, call response needs training and expertise handling. You cannot personally attend each call. So you need to hire employees. Each employee will need to be trained in your products, their handling and customer responses. So you will need to setup an entire process. The entire procedure is very time centric. If time is at premium (as it is for most of us) outsource it to the experts. Call center employees are trained in such procedures, responses come easier to them and they are trained to present a human face to the prospect.
Outsourcing customer service may have its pitfalls if the call center and business do not work closely in tandem with each other. The outsourcing company should work with the call center hand in hand to get customer feedback. The script flow must be based on previous experience of the company. The concept of personal attention to the customer is very important for closing a call. There some guidelines to be followed for ideal customer service assistance. Some of them are discussed here.
The customer must be put first as a person. The customer should be helped to make a decision and not pushed to buy. Respect him and he will respect you in turn and come back to you.
Listen to what the customer has to say. Clarify their doubts and answer the questions. The customer service employee should always have in-depth knowledge about the product or services. If unable to respond to a query immediately take the customers contact id and respond soon. Customers always have a tendency to look for a problem solver rather than an order taker
Learn about the customer in a casual way not as a marketing survey sort of thing. The easiest way to do this is to ask for them for feedback about their experience with the company or organization.
Respect the customers time. If a customer is in hurry be fast and friendly whatever the medium. In companies where the customer profile has senior citizens may want to talk a while. Give into them. They’ll come back to you for sure. It is also important to be fast and friendly.
If promises are made, should always be kept with the customers. If not, they should be compensated.
Lastly, review and feedback go a way in improving customer service. The staff can be asked about unusual requests or difficult situations. Reviews teach many important lessons.
In addition to the above points some do nots have to be kept in mind. Pitfalls such as incompetence, disorganization, unprofessional manners, lack of standard policy, delays and unreliability lose customers. It’s said that happy customers are the best and most effective way to find new customers. Let your prospects and leads rave about your customer services.
Randall J. Harmat is the President of Ansafone Communications a full state of art Call Center Company located in downtown Santa Ana, CA. During his tenure, Ansafone has succeeded in its quest to recruit and retain a premier management team making it one of the fastest growing companies in California.