![]() Customers are the essence of any business. That’s why they’re businesses; they’re built upon people patronizing their brand. With most business inquiries and transactions taking place online, it’s a must that entrepreneurs ensure their online customer service game is always at its best. Now and again, however, pages are prone to dealing with customers in less than ideal ways. Given that, it’s time to review some of the biggest yet overlooked online support mistakes and how they can be addressed. Mistake Number 1: Leaving Customers on Read Whether you’re doing customer support yourself or have a team to do it for you, unless you have round-the-clock services, chances are it’s not all the time that messages are answered promptly. You’re (or your support staff are) only human, after all, and some messages may not be paid attention to in time. While that’s understandable, leaving a query unattended to, meanwhile, is a different story. Not only is it offensive, but it says a lot about how much you value your customers. Once word of how poor your online customer support is gets out, you can say goodbye to building a loyal customer following. Solution: Use Auto-replies One of the best things you can do to aid this customer-irker is to make use of auto-responses. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter allow in-channel auto-response features, so you’ll simply have to set-up the template to be used. The responses can act as a temporary attendee to your customer, just make sure to regularly check your messages to make sure that apart from the auto response, the query actually gets answered. Better yet, the feature can be modified and customized according to the question, so for more general/FAQ-type questions, you can use the auto-response template as the total answer. Mistake 2: Losing Your Cool Part of effective customer service is maintaining professionalism at all times. It’s not uncommon, however, to encounter stories of displeased customers getting unprofessionally handled by business owners. When those kinds of mishandled cases occur, chances are it’s due to lack of training on the part of the support staff. Or as in some cases, it’s the business owner themselves that’s handling the situation, and due to the pressures of business, may have temporarily lost control. Solution: Hire Quality Support Staff This should definitely be an automatic part of any business strategy, but it’s one of the most overlooked aspects when it comes to investments. It’s easy to say that you’ll handle it yourself, but come the time that your business is growing and things are getting hectic you’ll find that trying to do everything yourself is counterproductive. Investing in a well-trained support staff with substantial experience in handling customers, from the most pleasant to the most irked, is crucial as they will be the ones to directly face your market. And if your team is reliable, you never have to worry about your customer support ending up in customer horror stories. Mistake 3: Failing to Acknowledge Negative Feedback Negative comments and responses from customers and online users are to be expected, and while for personal accounts and personal instances it would be best to leave the post or comment alone, if you’re a business, it’s important that they be responded to as soon as possible. Never delete the comment or leave the comment unacknowledged; not only will this irritate the customer further, but it will send your potential customers the wrong message that their feedback isn’t valued. Solution: Respond and Follow Up A simple response addressing their concern and a follow-up message where you can discuss the matter better should be protocol. Apart from apologies, an assurance on how you’ll fix the situation is a very good idea. Aside from fixing the situation then and there, it’s also important to follow up on them after a while and see if they visited your store/restaurant or transacted with you again. If they did, ask them on any improvements.
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