30 Do’s and Don’ts for Better Customer Service
Wed, 18 Jul 2018, in Customer Service
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Just like there are laws that govern science, there are certain guidelines you must live by if you want to make the best impression on your customers. As a result, making customers happy with every support interaction is a must. Here, we will share some of the top tips of what to do and what not to do in customer support.
1. Prioritize difficult work instead of doing everything at once. 
Support requests vary in urgency and importance, and making productive use of time can make or break you. Customer service demands a lot from us, so without plans in place can quickly lead to overwhelming situations.
2. Use a knowledge base instead of copy-pasting long guides. 
Keeping important data organized and within reach is a huge time-saver. Without organizing helpful answers, tutorials, questions and answers, you risk spending time answering repeat questions on one-on-one basis. This is not an effective use of time.
3. Collaborate together instead of using a single inbox. 
When you have more than one team member in charge on support, it’s easy to step on each other’s toes. Using a collaborative, multi-department support approach, complete with the right shared inbox is important.
4. Centralize information instead of working in siloes. 
Get into the habit of sharing customer insights across all departments. Create a centralized docs depository or knowledge base and call it up when you need access to customer data.
5. Establish best practices instead of performing repetitive tasks. 
Find yourself typing out the same thing over and over? Save solutions that work and establish best practice help desk workflows. Keep them handy when answering tickets or talking to customers, so you can answer repeat tickets with ease.
6. Offer instant answers instead of making customers ask you. 
When you make customers’ lives easier, they remember. When you offer solutions to avoid problems in the future, you save them time and money. As a result, they remember your organization and keep coming back to it.
7. Relate to the problem instead of dwelling on it. 
When a problem seems overwhelming, it’s easy to try to dwell on it instead of look for a solution. Inject a personal story, relate to the customer or offer an update to keep customers at ease.
8. Accept all types of feedback instead of worrying about bad reviews. 
Set up a self-service website or an email channel for customer feedback. Listen to all of it. Don’t dismiss bad feedback. Use criticisms to learn more about independent use cases and as an opportunity to improve your product.
9. Pick software carefully instead of forcing tools on everyone. 
Before settling on new software, get your team to test it out and listen to their thoughts on it. Also, be up-to-date on the latest trends. Be flexible with modifying processes that don’t work for certain employees.
10. Take care of yourself instead of skipping lunches and breaks. 
It’s just as important to know when to say “no” to others as well as yourself. It’s easy to get caught up in work or the daily grind. When your work interferes with your personal life (and worse, your health) it’s never a good sign.
11. Focus on quality instead of quantity. 
Department managers are usually pressed to cut support costs, so they often identify call times or ticket quantity as something to be reduced. Sure, this might help the bottom line, when customers are pressured, they will notice.
12. Inject humor and praise instead of scripting empathy. 
Setting and sharing weekly or monthly goals with your team can increase direction and motivate employees. Establish an action plan consisting of setting and implementing goals and place it in a visible setting.
13. Embrace personality in the workplace instead of scripts. 
Establish a pleasant workplace environment that allows employees easily meet customer needs. Match the right employees to the right customer to minimize emotional labor. Find ways to celebrate workplace accomplishments.
14. Expect certain outcomes instead of micro-managing. 
Don’t “expect” people to do the right thing (or the thing you want). Instead, describe the good behavior you want. Instead of blaming employees for wrong outcomes, fix the environment that will result in a much better outcome.
15. Talk to your customers instead of assuming you know. 
Proper communication is only part of the answer. Invest in employees and don’t let the company control the customer experience. Measure employee engagement and listen to their feedback on customer interactions.
Customer service remains to be one of the biggest scaling costs. By following the tips we’ve laid out here, you’ll help smooth out your support process (and your sanity) while keeping your customers happy.
Tags: customer service
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