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Good and Bad Customer Service Trends

New customer service trends emerge all the time because everyone is looking to improve their company’s customer service. Your customers are the lifeblood of your company, so adopting new customer service techniques and mediums can vastly benefit your company. However, just because they are trending does not mean that all of these techniques are effective. Here is a look at both good and bad customer service trends.

Good Service Trends

Text Messages

Studies and surveys show that most customers prefer a text response. They are great for communicating with customers quickly, with little to no hold time. The only real caveat is that your responses have to be precise and accurate. Your customer service agents will need to be highly trained in order to think and solve problems quickly.

Rapid Response Times

Customers are getting used to customer service responses that are nearly instantaneous, and they come to expect it out of every company. So, no matter which medium you use for customer service responses, the faster your response times are the happier customers will be.

Social Media Outreach

More and more customers are reaching out to companies through social media. It is usually one of the fastest ways to get in contact with a company, and people are taking advantage of it. You are missing out if you are not responding to customer service inquiries on your social media, because companies that are responding publicly are getting a lot of customer satisfaction because of it.

Follow Ups

Customers do not like to think that you solved their problem and then forgot about them. So, a follow-up contact to check in and make sure they are not still encountering a problem can go a long way towards increasing a customer’s satisfaction level. Follow-ups can be done in the form of phone calls, emails, texts, etc., so they are pretty easy to implement.

Scheduling Apps

In this fast-paced world, customers do not want to wait on hold to schedule an appointment. It is far simpler for customers to schedule the appointments themselves. You can implement this system in a couple of different ways: you could add a section on your website for DIY scheduling, or you could use an app like Schedulista.

FAQ Videos

Customers tend to like to solve their problems themselves before breaking down and calling customer service. So, having a large list of FAQs is a great way for customers to troubleshoot. However, they like “how to” videos even more. Short videos that explain how to use features or fix common problems give your customer step-by-step instructions, along with visuals. It is easy to upload such videos to YouTube.

Bad Service Trends

Negative Online Contacts

Just because celebrities get into arguments with their followers online does not mean that your business can afford to. Anyone who represents your company should maintain a positive online presence. Treating a customer badly in such a public way can have a drastically negative effect on your company.

Using Only Facebook

People are turning away from Facebook as more types of social media sites and apps are emerging. So, if your only social media presence is on Facebook you are missing out on a large customer base.

Exclusively Telephone Customer Service Support

Customers are evolving to use new technologies, and we now have other ways that they can contact us. Text, chat, and email customer service make up a lot of customer service contact volume today. If you are only using telephone customer service support, you are really missing out.

If you are looking for another way to improve customer satisfaction, you can always outsource your product support. This is the age of the informed consumer. They can see a good business when they see that others like it too. So, when you treat them well they are good at writing rave reviews online. If you provide good, fast customer service, not only will your customers be happy, they will sing your praises to others. Since the majority of people now rely on the reviews of a business to make decisions on which company they will choose, a great review will hopefully result in even more customers.

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Why Proper Customer Service Email Communication is Important

Email communication is important for customer service. There are a lot of email scripts and templates out there. They are pretty easy to find, and all you have to do is copy and paste to use them. Sure, they are a quick way to communicate with your customers. However, scripted email responses are not the most effective way to communicate with your customers or handle their inquiries. 

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If a customer receives a scripted response, they may call customer service later. Anyone working in customer service can tell you that a customer upset before contact has the potential for a negative outcome. For example, they can leave poor reviews, act rudely towards employees, or find a new company to give their business to. This article will help you avoid unhappy customers, gain satisfied clients, and teach you how to give an enjoyable customer service experience.

Problems with Scripts

Have you received a poorly scripted email from customer service? Most likely, you have. A typical scripted customer service email is quite basic:

“Hi, <<customer’s first name>>, Thank you for contacting the XXXX”.

Then, the email usually goes on to give the customer service team’s hours and days of operation.

There are a few problems with this type of email, and you can sense them as you are reading it. The whole thing feels robotic and computerized. Worse still, the email points out that nothing is getting done to fix the client’s problem because business hours are done for the day.

To tell a customer right away that you cannot fix their problems is a put-off. You want them to know that you are trying, that you hear them and that you will do what you can.

How to Send Better Emails and Make Better Scripts

If you do not have a 24-hour customer service team, you can use an automated, scripted response for emails after business hours. However, the script needs correct wording.

Add, “This is an automatically generated email” at the end of your automated email. Do not state that you cannot fix the customer’s problem because business hours are over. Why does this work?

Often, people see that their message is received and that they will get a response once your business is open. Clients get anxious without any response and wonder if their message got through. When you add that the business is closed at this time but that a response will come as soon as possible, they feel reassured.

You could consider sending out personalized emails yourself. Even big companies need to make their customers happy. However, responding to emails takes a lot of time and commitment that many business owners do not have. If you are wanting your business to have expanded hours for customer response, hire a contact center like KPI Connect. We can provide customer service email communication outside of your normal business hours.

This way, your customers get responses from real people rather than an automated response. Whether you’re sending personal emails or scripted ones, making your customers feel heard is important.