The only way to consistently compete in this era is by truly understanding people, what motivates them, and mastering the best ways to deliver what, when and how customers want things. Most companies think they understand this and believe they do provide a great customer experience. But despite these efforts, a lot of their customers disagree with the results. In these cases, it’s likely the service team has gone wrong in one or more of the 3 P’s of Customer Support: Process Definition, Product Knowledge, People Skills
Process Definition
For every service-based business, there is a process (collectively, process, knowledge, and workflow engineering) that happens behind the scenes to make that service possible. Your processes do more to define the overall experience that you offer than almost anything else, and are also a great way to differentiate yourself from the competition. It’s true that processes look different for everyone, but the one thing that is important for businesses of all kinds is that these processes remain consistent, ensuring that the expectations you set with customers match their real experience. Creating a Process Roadmap can be a great way to not only maintain consistency but discover potential opportunities to improve your processes and therefore the experience that you offer. A Process Roadmap draws out each step of the support experience your customers find themselves in, including actions that are publicly visible as well as ones that happen behind the scenes. Being able to view the big picture can make it easier to spot opportunities that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, and this Process Roadmap helps you accomplish that. It also makes spotting inconsistencies much, much easier!
Today’s leading capabilities allow companies to warehouse critical process knowledge in contextual ways that allow the agents to interact with purposeful systems and not wing it with tribal knowledge that can change at any given moment. This is a critical capability that should not be overlooked. Why? It is simply the best way to make sure that “tickets” are handled properly day in and day out knowing that things will change in the environment itself.
Product Knowledge
Support agents spend all day troubleshooting for customers, and that means you need a team that has good training habits and can readily integrate new information. Knowledge of your product is an essential skill for agents to help your customers navigate the reason they are contacting you. Ideally, you should believe in your product, be able to discuss features and use cases in an insightful way and show your agents how the product benefits your customers — not to mention how to troubleshoot issues! The goal is to help your customers get the most out of their purchases and let them walk away knowing that they have gotten true value for their money. Make it your goal to build a nimble team that can amaze your customers with timely recommendations for using new features and services.
People Skills
People skills are the set of behaviors agents rely on when interacting with a customer. For example, if an agent needs to troubleshoot problems they’ll need to employ several different skills to deliver truly excellent customer support including:
Communication. Agents need to be responsive and communicate in clear, easy-to-understand ways to solve the problem. The agent also needs this skill to understand how to correctly communicate the problem in documentation and escalation.
Empathy. Interactions often begin with someone who is frustrated or unhappy. It is important that agents understand and identify with the feelings of the person contacting support and communicate (and escalate!) accordingly. Agents must pay attention to both the mood of the customer, and make sure that they respond in an appropriate tone
Patience. Clients and customers might ask several questions, be unhappy, or ask for instructions to be repeated. Patience is an important skill to keep in mind, as it helps keep the conversation focused and on track while remaining personable and providing a positive experience.
Listening. Proper listening is a highly underestimated skill but can lead to the best customer satisfaction scores when dealing with support. Sometimes people simply want to be heard and then have someone help them with direction for the desired outcome. Jumping the gun here, although often times expeditious, can shortcut the experience itself.
For many businesses, people working in customer service roles or using customer service skills are the human face of the company. At the end of the day, businesses rely on employees who can create a positive dialogue with customers, helping to foster loyalty and a good reputation which ultimately drives revenue.
Provide After-Hours Support Operations
By definition, business-hours customer support operations are literally closed 70% in a given week. This is a statistic that surprises most people. Think about it: The sum of nights, weekends, and holiday coverage easily eclipses the hours of M-F, 9am-5pm coverage. This is especially true if a companies customers are not geographically located nearby.
Thankfully, today there are specialized support vendors that can deliver after-hours-only support coverage on your behalf. Good after-hours support vendors have optimized their solutions for both service quality (using the items listed above) and offer “only pay for what you need” pricing for low volume, after-hours shifts. The ultimate objective here is a seamless 24/7 support experience that meets or exceeds your customer’s expectations without breaking the bank.