Supporting your customers is a fundamental part of running a business. Speaking of which, I posted an article dedicated to the importance of customer service not too long ago. If you want to go ahead and read that before/after this one, then by my guest! Essentially, the main points were that good customer service leads to happy customers, which will benefit your business in many ways.
Now, it’s all very well talking about how much you’ll gain from great customer service, but how do you achieve this? For me, it starts with supporting your customers. You need to provide them with a high level of support, so they’re never left frustrated or angry at your business. Frustrated customers turn into bad reviews very quickly, which harms your reputation and damages your chances of new and repeat business.
Bearing all of this in mind, here are a few ways you can improve your customer support almost instantly. Try these ideas and watch as you turn those frowns upside down and see a bucket load of happy customers!
Provide 24/7 Support
As a business, you need to understand that consumers don’t work to your schedule. Your office hours might be 9-5 Monday to Friday, but your customers could have problems at any time during the week. So, if they have a serious issue at 7pm on a Monday, they need to get in touch with you right away. But, everyone in your office left at 5pm, so there’s no one there to pick up their urgent call.
What you end up with is an angry voicemail, an unhappy customer, and quite possibly a bad review. The key is providing 24/7 support, so there’s always someone to pick up the phone and respond to urgent queries. There’s an obvious issue here; what if you can’t afford to employ enough customer support reps to provide a 24/7 service? These days, this isn’t much of a problem anymore. As this company shows, you can basically pay for a 24/7 call answering service. It’s a form of outsourcing, which is much cheaper for your business. So, you can save money and still provide constant support. Now, when anyone has a problem out of your usual office hours, there will be someone on the line to pick up and deal with the problem right away.
Offer Multiple Avenues Of Support
It’s fair to say that phone line support is the most common form of customer support. It’s an easy way for someone to get in touch with your company and speak to a human straight away. However, you have to remember that not all customers are the same. Some may not have an urgent inquiry, but simply want help with something, or have a question they wish to answer. Likewise, there are loads of people that hate phoning companies up, and would rather get in touch a different way.
Consequently, you can dramatically improve your customer support by offering multiple ways for your customers to contact you. Don’t solely rely on phones, open up communication channels via email, social media, and your website too. It’s so easy to offer customer support on social media these days, anyone can ask you a question, and you can respond as soon as possible. It’s simple for the customer, which they love, and it results in fast responses, which they also love! Communication via your website is possible through a chat pop-up. You’ve probably seen these everywhere nowadays, and they’re good for customers that want to talk to you privately but still need a quick response. Email is always a trusty way of offering support to people that aren’t in desperate need of an immediate response. The more options you provide, the better.
List Multiple FAQ’s On Your Website
Another important factor in customer support is allowing your customers to figure things out for themselves. This may seem like you’re lazy, but in actuality, it can save them so much time and frustration. Some problems or questions your customers have can be easily answered, and there’s no need for them to wait around as they ring you up or send an email. In fact, there could well be certain questions that are frequently answered.
You can see where I’m going with this one; an FAQ section on your website is a great form of customer support. It easily lets customers find answers and solutions to really common problems/questions. Like I said, this saves them loads of time and means they can find things out for themselves. Many customers prefer doing this as they don’t like to wait around or don’t have the time to engage with a customer support officer. My advice is to think about all the common questions you’re asked by customers that ring or email you. Compile them together on your website, with good answers laid out.
Create A Troubleshooting Guide
Following on from this theme of allowing customers to find support themselves, a troubleshooting guide can come in handy. You see these on many websites, I think companies like Sky and BT have them to help any customers that have issues connecting to the internet, and so on. But, you can have them for any business that has fairly common issues.
A troubleshooting guide aims to come up with different solutions for certain scenarios, which your customer can try themselves. It’s somewhat similar to an FAQ page, but the difference is that if one thing doesn’t work for them, they can click a button and receive another idea. Essentially, they keep running through solutions until the problem is fixed. If they can’t fix the issue, then it shows them that the problem is serious enough to warrant contacting your support team directly.
These four ideas will instantly improve the way you support your customers. There are pretty much three core principles to think about here. One; you must provide support at all times, every day. Two; offer many different ways for your customers to contact you for support. Finally; set up support channels for customers to find quick and easy solutions themselves.
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