Companies who want to be profitable for the long-term need to have repeat sales from previous customers; without this, it’s virtually impossible for a company to survive for any length of time. The way to achieve recurring sales from previous sales is to continuously provide quality products and excellent customer service.
If your customer service representatives are courteous and professional, that will certainly go a long way toward providing excellent customer service and a positive view of the company to the customer. However, one other important aspect that the representative needs to show to the customer is the knowledge that the customer is expecting. Customer service representatives who say, “I don’t know,” do not help the company provide excellent customer service, and this will decrease your profits.
While it’s not expected your representatives know everything about everything within the company, they should be able to handle most issues on their own – otherwise, why are they employed? When there are times they cannot answer a question or address a customer is having with a product (such as having trouble installing a software product, etc.), the representative should alert the customer that he/she does not have the answer, but will send them to a person in another department who does have the information the customer is seeking.
It’s important when a customer service representative cannot directly help the customer that he/she does not leave the customer hanging – this is almost as bad as being rude or unprofessional to the customer; after all, the customer called the company to get help regarding one of its products. If the customer service representative offers a “dead-end” in regards to the information or help the customer is seeking, the customer will likely think that the company is incompetent and not want to do business with them again. So it’s important that customer service representatives know how to handle situations when they do not know the immediate answer – saying “I don’t know” is not the best way to handle it.
For more information on how excellent customer service can boost profits, check out “Customer Service Profits.”
