Customers are the basis for every company, they are what drive their sales and help keep them afloat. If a business doesn’t have their customers they don’t stay a company very long. Which is why you will find that most companies have a customer service department, especially if they are a medium to large size company.
As the customer service agent is a point of contact for the customer to the business; it is important that the business utilize their agents well. They can do so in many ways, from bringing in new customers, retaining current customers as well as helping current customers add new services to their current contract. Customer service requires a certain experience as the times change call centers now utilize not only phones but e-mail, text chat, and social media to converse with their customers ensuring that they prove them with everything they want and need.
To ensure that customers get the best care that they can it is important to install certain best practices into your agents daily routines. In doing so it ensures that each and every customer will be able to communicate with the company what their needs and wants are. We have some of those best practices laid out for you here.
Make sure your customers can reach a live person
When customers can’t reach a live person they become frustrated, especially when forced into the self-service channels that seem to have no way out. Giving them a live person to talk to either on the phone or in a live chat makes them feel as if the company does care about them and they are more satisfied. On the other hand, your more irate and upset customers may change to a rival company if they can’t reach a live person versus those that were given the option.
Build strong customer relationships
Building strong relationships with your customers will keep them around for many years. It’s not just in solving their issues it is also about giving them the better product for the better price. Companies can employ cross-sell marketing programs to offer their customers exactly what they need when they need it. Companies will use historical and real-time data to accomplish this task. To ensure that the customer service agents offer the best products, and not the most expensive ones install a rewards program for the agents.
Coach agents on performance
The foundation of any company is its agents and their performance, ensuring their performance is where it should be is key. Provide your agents with quality performance feedback on a regular basis to help them better their performance.
Starting at the top
The actual customer service experience starts with the CEO a company that is going to give great customer service is one that is focused from its management all the way down to the front line employees.
These are just a few of the best practices that a company can instill to make itself better there are many more to be utilized and compounded upon.
