Tag: hubspot

Customer Service Complaints on Social Media Gone Wrong

Posted on by rpsstudios

So someone made a mistake and responded poorly to a customer service complaint on Social Media. What will you be able to do to make things right? Is fixing it even possible?

Crisis Management for Customer Service Complaints

Today, complaints are received through social media and traditional channels. And as a result, it’s harder than ever to step in and help the customer.

Of course, it’s still the human’s duty to respond and as a service provider, it’s your responsibility to help the customer. Of course, unless there is legal liability, doing so is also generally beneficial to the brand.

Since your customers are likely shocked at being criticized online, you’ll want to start your mitigation strategy well in advance. Don’t forget to include information about rescheduling your phone call or meeting the person personally. In fact, sometimes you’ll want to reach out through social media. If you can only resolve it by tweeting, perhaps it’s time to tweet out the inquiry to the company at your name for their sake and to your satisfaction.

When You Won’t Even Be Able to Say No

When a customer does reach out on social media and you can’t help them, you might be able to solve it with professionalism.

So how can you support them when you’re not even able to get in touch? From here, there are some steps you can take to resolve their problem.

The first is to respond quickly. If you can find out who wrote it, the second option is to handle the problem internally if possible. Finally, it may be time to consider taking the situation to a customer service manager who is knowledgeable in this exact area.

Mistakes Can Happen

This is a huge misconception when it comes to customer service. As a matter of fact, mistakes can happen all the time with customer service and you won’t be able to avoid them. But the fact is, they can be avoided to a degree and this is why it’s worth taking a look at what else can be done when a customer service complaint is called out.

Manage the Relationship

The first step is to simply apologize. You can also show them that you take their problem seriously. Understand where the issue occurred and then talk about what you can do to resolve it. It’s a good idea to address the issue with the customer as soon as possible. If you can find out who it is who brought it up, you can address it quickly as well. Do Your Homework

Once you’ve addressed the problem, it’s time to research the issue. You may not be able to fix the problem immediately.

Taking time to research the issue will show the customer you have a good idea of what you’re dealing with.

Listen

When the customer realizes how much effort went into addressing their concern, it will be hard for them to walk away. They’ll feel like you got their problem resolved. Remember, you should never try to resolve the situation unless you can. So keeping your word is a good idea.

It’s not a Guarantee

There are chances that you may not be able to resolve your customer’s issue easily, especially if it is outside your job description. This is why it’s so important to reach out to a customer service manager when this happens.

As a matter of fact, customer service managers can even save you from making common mistakes. When you do reach out, they’ll be able to handle things more professionally than you could. Keep in mind, handling a social media complaint is not a one-time deal. So, always remember to keep in mind the above steps to handle a customer service complaint.

Discount

Taking care of the customer is more than just writing a review, taking a picture of the issue, or offering a discount. Treating a customer well means ensuring they’re satisfied.

Therefore, don’t just send a message to them but instead take the extra step of having a face-to-face meeting with them. Or even better, get a dedicated counselor to help them on their own. It won’t cost you anything to set it up for the service managers to handle it. That way you can deal with the problem before it escalates.

One Tip

As a business owner, you’re in charge of keeping the company afloat. However, you also must remember to treat your customer s with respect and dignity.

Disrespecting them, speaking poorly about them, or alluding to their problems will not reflect well on your business. In other words, treat your customer s as you want to be treated. Do not underestimate them or make them feel like you are treating them with contempt. But if you truly want to win their business, don’t make them feel like that.

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform. Do more, with less, to maximize your retention.

Ready to provide excellent customer support? Contact us today!

Leveraging the Power of Proactive Customer Service

Posted on by Eric Klimuk

The first step in resolving any proactive customer service complaint is to set up a relationship with the company. If your company employees are always calling, emailing, or texting complaining customers, their relationship with you isn’t ideal.

They’re the only ones who know your company’s standard and want to make your business an easy place to work. The first step to fixing a customer ‘s relationship with your company is establishing a relationship and asking questions.

1. Set up a system to investigate complaints.

Make sure that your company is taking the time to set up a complaint investigation process and make sure you have a system in place to hand it out to customers when they call in a complaint. The complainant and the first party will be the focus, but as a business owner, your company must be on the same page.

Use different timelines for different parts of the investigation. For example, if a complaint is called in at 1 p.m. and you’re still late to the office at 6 p.m., they may still get support from you. “Set up a system for monitoring actions you take to make complaints less likely to occur in the future,” says Michael Schneier, Head of Operations at Hilliard Brands Group. “This allows you to take proactive steps to address issues in a timely manner to make those complaints less likely to occur in the future. ”

Take notes of what your employees are doing, and reference the written procedures that specify when and how they will respond to customers who have issues. In addition, find ways to assist the complainant and make sure that they have a voice in the decision-making process.

Take notes of what does and doesn’t sit right with a company representative.

2. Stand behind your IT systems and procedures.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: IT should be the first line of defense for your company. Your IT department should be aware of everything that you are doing to your customer service infrastructure. “To the extent that your IT is present and helpfully supporting your company , your customers will hopefully be benefiting,” says Jason Park, Director of Operations at Freshness Software, a provider of software solutions.

3. Track complaints internally.

The same goes for customers. They need to be aware of any problems they have with the customer service process. This will be the first step in resolving the customer’s relationship with your company. Locate the complaints that your customers have to go through and track what happens within the system, according to Park.

When your business is ready to address the complaints, the issue can be identified, either as “happy-hour” or “problem-solving” depending on how the customer does their job, say the experts.

Do this before you write any notes or recommendations to your manager in order to improve a proactive customer service

4. Respond quickly.

If you don’t find your customers’ problems solved within the first 24 hours after receiving a complaint, you’ll need to be fast to solve the issue. There’s nothing more annoying than waiting several days for help to arrive or when they appear to be receiving a lot of complaints. These excuses will generally be unfounded, and if a customer can’t be right all the time, they’ll turn to you.

5. Show your understanding.

If your customers keep complaining and the brand doesn’t understand their concerns, or even tries to hide them, your customers aren’t likely to keep coming back. Some companies don’t share their real feelings when dealing with customers, but your company should do so. If they don’t, you should respond to them often and without the need for intermediaries. If a customer does call your company in a complaint, let them know the truth.

Even if they feel helpless, they can still voice a concern and you will hear back.

6. Refer questions to other departments.

If a company starts to have issues with their customer service, consider outsourcing some of the skills they’re hiring as employees. You should also get help from other departments that can help you develop an appropriate response for customers.

7. Be transparent about situations.

When a company gets ready to fix the same issues with their customers, it’s important to give them some time to react and test their processes. They’ll likely have a lengthy message to send, so it’s important to notify them as soon as they have their first feedback.

Supportbench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform. Do more, with less, to maximize your retention.

Ready to provide excellent customer support and proactive customer service? Contact us today!

Mastering your customer’s journey

Posted on by rpsstudios

When you’re just getting started building a business, customer service is often the first and smallest thing you need to do. You need to understand how your customers receive their messages and what works best for your businesses and solutions. So, before diving headfirst into customer service, let’s take a moment to understand the different aspects of your customer’s journey, what you should be doing, and what not to do in this space.

What’s the secret to great customer service?

To build customer service into a strong foundation, you need to understand it in a certain way, and then act on the results of those insights. At Support Bench, we believe that great customer service means great customer insights.

While many CMOs may not know this, customer insight starts with a customer analytics study. That customer analytics study should offer valuable insights, including your most valuable customers. That said, very little of your customer’s data is out there.

Making sense of customer data

At a basic level, customer service insights are pretty easy. For example, if your company is looking to collect and analyze data from a single channel, a customer portal can play a role in getting you started. For small or relatively new businesses, listening to how customers interact with your product and services can provide valuable insight.

Another step is building good content around customers — whether it’s on their website, social media, email, or other channels. If you have a solid content strategy that focuses on what the different channels communicate, and the types of content that are most effective for them, it’s possible that you can access customer information to gain insights into your content’s impact.

Customers will tell you what they want

As part of your customer relationship management (CRM) strategy, you want to provide everything your customers want: more information, more options, and more things to do. So, the biggest piece of the puzzle is determining what they need and providing it to them.

A great example of this is by analyzing the overall brand experience. When customers download your app or website, they usually want to know when it’s a good time to come back, what “power metrics” they should track, and how to access content that aligns with their needs.

The customer experience is a highly personal one — and you shouldn’t ignore that message. Don’t make your customer feel like they’re yelling at you, or like you’re directing them to bad information.

Choose the right channel

One of the best ways to create a perfect customer experience is to choose the correct channel. When you choose the right channel to serve customers, you create a very important understanding of who they are and what part of your customer’s journey your customers are. If they’re not in your database, you’re giving them a very incomplete picture of what type of customer they are. The right channel allows you to pinpoint how your customers are doing, and what, if anything, could help them do better.

The right channel is the one that help them do more. When your channel offers something that helps them do something, it’s likely that this will be among the things that lead to positive outcomes for them. For example, if you provide a tool that helps an employee better use their time, that should be something you implement in your channel. That means you make a strong connection with the information on your channel, based on what you’ve gathered.

Utilize the tools you already have

If your brand is not exactly known for customer service, even the most basic resource can be used to grow the number of your customers you get. This means you make an effort to understand your existing customer’s profile and create a relationship with them, or better yet, find out what helps them do better.

As part of your marketing automation (MaaS) platform, you can share analytics about all your customers on the platform. Make sure they’re aware of these, too. You can then learn more about them, and your customer’s journey and as a result, provide them with useful insights into what can improve their customer experience.

Don’t waste time on service matters

Conventional customer service will be extremely frustrating. When you need to do something, you’ll find your customer waiting for someone to help you, and they’ll either take a deep breath or will get very frustrated. At Support Bench, we’ve all experienced poor customer service experience in our own lifetimes. As the owner of a successful business, there’s something you should never do. It’s never simple to solve a customer’s problem. Good customer service doesn’t just happen automatically. It’s always worth the time.

Support Bench unifies customer support, success, experience, knowledge management, and account management into one simple platform. Do more, with less, to maximize your retention.

Ready to provide excellent customer support? Contact us today!