How to Deliver Noteworthy Customer Support(the good kind)
The team at Fiverr sent out their usual email newsletter, and one of the paragraphs caught our attention, it highlighted an area all of us need to revisit, and we’ve expanded on this to include tips on how to do step up the game.
Fiverr say:
“Your customers were drawn to you by something that interested them on your website. However, if you aren’t consistent, they’ll get bored, or worse they’ll get confused. By keeping your social media fresh and responding quickly to queries, you’ll be someone they can trust and you’ll keep them interested. The internet never sleeps. Your customer support shouldn’t either.”
Awesome. Agreed. 100%.
But what does that mean? HOW do you do that?
Here’s the ‘how’ — the Bolstur key to noteworthy customer engagement, customer support and ongoing customer satisfaction.
Responsive. On-Brand. Solution Focused. Empathetic.
Responsive
It’s all about channels and timeliness. Know your customers and know how they want to reach you and be available on these channels. If your customer base loves to chat, have phone support and make your phone number prominent on your website. If they’re on the go and want to message, have live chat or Facebook messenger. If you know what role your product or service plays in their business or life, and make sure your response time is appropriate for this. If you offer essential operating software and their business stalls if there’s a glitch, you need to be available almost 24/7 and have a fix within minutes, not days. So choose the channels that work for your customers and the response time that’s relevant.
On-Brand
This may not seem an obvious one, but it’s a critical one when you look at the bigger picture of ongoing customer retention and engagement. A ‘brand’ is so much more than a logo or a font family. A brand is ultimately about the experience — your brand is delivered through ‘touch points’ with your business. If you make promises with your brand, or marketing, or sales activity, you gotta deliver them. Doing so consistently creates trust, which is crucial to ongoing customer loyalty. Another key touch point is your customer support function (whatever that is — the person who answers the phone, the tech helpdesk, the field engineer, any and all of these!). When customers need you, and you’re there, and you solve the issue, boom, you’re winning. People know mistakes happen, but solving it well, can actually increase customer loyalty.
Solution Focused
Okay, that’s a no-brainer. But we like to keep it top of mind so everyone’s focusing on getting to a solution, not just closing the call, or ‘nodding and smiling’. It’s only over when it’s over, and it’s over when there’s an outcome that closes out the situation and all parties are clear on that. Note we don’t say ‘happy with that’ as while striving to meet customer’s needs is crucial, there’s a line that we recommend you don’t cross, that where meeting the customer’s need is detrimental to your business.
Empathetic
The tough one to master, especially as we humans are complex creatures and complexity is added when we’re using digital channels too. So what’s the key here? We’re gunna share with you a couple of key behavioural traits from our sales competency model here, which showcase what empathy looks like — ultimately, it’s the ability to understand emotional state and feelings of others and share own feelings where relevant. People that nail this show a genuine interest in what others are doing and are aware of others’ feelings, needs and concerns. When it comes to customer support, they are stars active listening. They’re attentive when listening, evaluating what is important, remembering this and appropriately responding when necessary. Ultimately though they are seeking to really understand what’s happening from the customer’s view, to acknowledge this and react appropriately. We don’t mean the scripted stuff, you know, the old ‘So what you’re saying is …” because after hearing that five times, anyone’s buttons can be pushed! Being an expert ‘questioneer’ (new word!) is essential here — asking good open or qualifying questions to really get to the crux of the call means the customer is heard, and the real issues are prioritized.
There you have it — it’s all about the ROSE.
Responsive. On-Brand. Solution Focused. Empathetic.