Does Heavy Lifting Describe Your Customer Service?

Is there a difference between a customer support team that simply does support, and one that’s really good at it? Can we ever replace “good” with “Great.” Is that last step in improving customer service the heavy lifting part.

Numerous studies have shown that happy customers buy more, they buy more often, and they tell their friends to buy, too. In fact, a happy customer, on average, tells nine people about their experience.

Did you know that empathy is the single most important customer service skill. Why? Because if you want your employees to help your customers to be happy and successful, it’s important for your employees to understand what happiness and success mean to your customers. And if you want an employee to help your customers overcome their concerns, it’s crucial for that employee to understand exactly how being in that jam is making the customer feel.

All employees who interacts with customers are candidates for customer service training. In addition to customer service representatives, this includes other positions such as receptionists, technical support representatives, field service technicians, sales engineers, shopkeepers, waiters, etc.

Good listening skills and questioning techniques can shorten the interaction time with customers. This allows an organization to serve more customers in less time, possibly with fewer staff. However, consumers are intelligent and do not want to feel rushed, when they have questions. So be proactive and make sure every consumer feels they are being heard and not just "listened" to. Being able to clearly explain the next step in a process and confirming that the customer is satisfied, will decrease the number of callbacks and return customers. Improving "first contact" resolution is one of the primary drivers of customer satisfaction.

You might find it interesting that Apple likes to say it “values a magnetic personality” as much as, if not more, than proficiency. When a company hires a troubleshooting specialist, clearly that candidate needs to have more technical know-how than a salesperson. But it’s interesting to note that the internal Apple Store training manual for Apple Geniuses spends as much time on communication skills as it does on process and technical knowledge.

Of course using the right software to support your CSMs is another important part of your customer service mix.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com