You must have read a lot of tips and guidelines on how you can make your customer service great and what practices you can follow to provide excellent customer service. But have you ever thought about what are the biggest sins of customer service? To err is human but there are certain things your team must avoid if they don’t want the company to lose customers.
We are going to educate you on all the major mistakes that your customer service representatives should never do so you, and your team can avoid them and make your services great. So without any further ado let’s begin:
1. Making your customers wait for a long period
Waiting time is what puts off a lot of customers and causes them to lose interest in your service. If your customers are constantly complaining about the waiting time, then it means that you need to hire more staff that could cater to more customers simultaneously.
The reason why some companies are enjoying top rank for customer satisfaction rate is they offer minimal waiting time to their customers. Take the example of AT&T, which is one of the largest internet service providers in the US and ranked among the companies that hold high customer satisfaction rates.
What makes it the best choice is that whenever customers reach out to AT&T customer service, a representative gets in touch with them in no time. This makes the whole experience smooth for the customers and they start off in good mood.
2. Not paying attention to what customers speak
We all know how exhausting long shifts at customer support could be. It can lead you to lose interest in listening to or attending to your customers anymore. But no matter how exhausted you are, you must listen to every single customer attentively. Practicing active listening will help you to get to the root of the problem and resolve it properly.
3. Avoiding accountability
At times customers are extremely frustrated due to the inconvenience your services caused them and what makes them more annoyed is a customer service agent not taking accountability for their actions.
Remember you are representing the whole company on behalf of the customer service you’re providing. Even if it’s not your mistake you have to accept it on the behalf of the company. Instead of playing the blame game with customers, it’s better to accept your mistake and respectably move things. This will help you retain customer loyalty.
4. Not being empathetic
Adding a human touch to your services is important. You don’t have to keep a monotonous robotic tone and only keep marketing your company and your products. Be empathetic to your customers whenever they reach out to you. Understand where they’re coming from and provide them with satisfactory responses.
Try your best to communicate effectively and convey a supportive interaction. The biggest mistake you could make is treating your customers like numbers only. This will only help you gain customers temporarily but they will not come back to your services most likely if you continue with the same approach.
5. Listening only to respond
Another big mistake you must avoid is listening only to respond and not to comprehend. If you’re listening only for the sake of providing them with a generic solution then it won’t help in every case. Sometimes your customer might not be able to explain the issue properly.
But since you’ve assumed that it’s one of the scenarios you see every week you’ll end up responding to them with a solution that is not helpful at all. This is why you should never respond unless you’ve understood your customers properly. Clarify what they’re trying to say. Don’t just jump to conclusions, take your time and come up with the right advice.
6. Bombarding customers with information
The worst thing you can do to your customers is to bombard them with unnecessary information related to your new products or services. Even if it’s related to the issue the customers have come up with you don’t need to tell them every little detail.
Be concise; prove your point, and tell them the exact amount of information and explanation they need to hear and that will be enough to satisfy your customers.
7. Making empty promises
Believe it or not but customers appreciate transparency and honesty. They would rather appreciate getting told that their issue will take days to resolve than a customer support agent telling them that they’re looking into it without having any truth attached to it.
Delay in processes will be difficult to manage but unmet expectations will be a worse thing to offer to your customers. You might end up losing your customers’ trust and in the worst-case scenario, losing customers permanently.
8. Avoiding to follow up
Your job doesn’t end right where you solve your customers’ issues. You must follow-up with them and ask how happy they are with your services or if they are facing any more issues that you can help with.
Nowadays many customer support platforms have incorporated automated reminders to follow-up with the customers. But in case your company does not offer any facility like that you must train your staff to do that manually.
Final Word
To provide your customers with a top-notch customer support service you must be doing a lot of things. But there might be a chance you’re still failing at it only because you’re not avoiding the aforementioned mistakes. Develop a comprehensive strategy and train your staff to put in a little more effort than what their job requires them to do. You’ll surely see your company flourishing by leaps and bounds.
