It is widely accepted that the success of a business depends on the customer experience. If a company provides great customer service, people are much more likely to remember the experience and use that same business again.
For these reasons, creating a memorable customer service experience from the start is essential. In most cases, the first step is putting a system in place that allows your technology and employees to function to a high level.
Support Desk
While it is possible to use a contact form or direct email, the advanced option is to use a support desk. There are various software products, including Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Zoho, that provide help desk and ticketing facilities. Rather than trying to manage everything with email, dedicated software ensures you won’t miss any requests and inadvertently create a bad experience. A dedicated support desk also lets you monitor your team to ensure they are providing an excellent service at all times.
Speed
Dealing with problems in an efficient manner is vital to the customer experience. Most people understand that problems or questions may arise, but they can get frustrated if they receive no communication. In order to provide a timely response, your team will need to be well-trained and able to manage their time. It is also important to properly assess how much demand there will be, so you can take on support staff that can work across different times depending on demand.
Best Practices
In order to provide an efficient service, it is important to have best practices that your team can follow. There should be a consistency to your service, so that every customer is treated to the same high standards. When your team understands how they should communicate, interactions can be beneficial for both parties. For example, the casino at NetBet provides services that align with their customers’ preferences. They publish articles regularly and stay active on social media platforms, informing players about new game launches and other important information.
Live Chat
With speed playing an important part in customer service, live chat offers one of the quickest ways to communicate with customers. Depending on your resources, live chat could be used to close sales, deal with problems, and answer general questions. You could use this facility during office hours to reduce the workload on staff, but as you grow you might want to make it a permanent fixture.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions are a common sight online. If you can provide a comprehensive FAQ, many customers will never need to contact you. In most cases, there will be a small number of questions that make up the bulk of enquiries, so by tackling these in your FAQ you can cut down on customer service queries. Your FAQ can be an ongoing section of your site, with updates as you start to notice recurring issues.
Survey
To maintain consistently high standards, adding a survey to your customer service process can be effective. When a customer indicates that the issue has been resolved, you can ask them to fill in a short survey about the process. This data can be useful in working out how to improve any areas that are lacking. You might choose to not make the survey a permanent fixture, but it can be used sporadically to test for any problems. Customer feedback should be at the core of your business, from an initial contact by a prospect to a support ticket created by an existing customer.
If you can implement these ideas, customer service can be a fairly painless process. Choosing the right employees is a vital factor, but with the right training you can create systems that are easy to follow. Gradually, your support system should operate smoothly and you will be able to operate at an advanced level of customer service experience.
