A profitable business will provide quality products and outstanding customer service. Without these elements, your business will not be profitable and your reputation will sink to new lows. Therefore, it is vital that you provide high-quality products and service.
For your customer service representatives to provide high-quality customer service, they need to be attentive to the needs and problems of the customer. A customer who is experiencing a problem with installing a software program or integrating something into their web server will likely be annoyed because he/she cannot do it himself/herself and had to take time to call, email, or chat with a representative in order to alleviate the problem.
The representative needs to be aware of this fact and not provoke the customer into becoming angrier. One good way of making sure the customer doesn’t get angrier is to ensure the representative is following along with the problem and making sure he/she understands the problem so that he/she can provide the best solution to the customer.
If the representative does not know the answer to the problem, he/she should be forthcoming in admitting that he/she does not have the answer, but can find the answer or transfer the customer to a person who has more in-depth knowledge about the solution (especially regarding technical issues, etc.) It’s important that this happens in an efficient manner; customers do not want to wait all day to reach a person who can help him/her solve the issue he/she is dealing with. Any more waiting by the customer will likely cause him/her to become so angry that it will be very hard for the representative to leave a positive impression of the company with the customer, and thereby, eliminate virtually all chance of that customer doing repeat business with your company.
For more information on how poor customer service can decrease your profits, read “Customer Service Profits.”
