Small- and medium-sized enterprises often overlook customer service because of the pressure to come up with new products. When entrepreneurs are too focused on beating their competitors, quality customer service can get compromised, further bringing the business down instead of taking it to its goal.
But focusing on satisfying unhappy customers is a common mistake, either. While valuing negative feedback is necessary, it could also mean upselling new products or services to your happy customers.
There is simply no perfect service in the eye of the customer. Hence, you shouldn’t spend precious time and money on pleasing each one of them. But of course, it’s also dangerous to let too much negative feedback slide. If bad reviews outweigh the good, then you need to improve your customer service.
In this article, we’ll identify the common challenges in serving customers and determine how a high-tech solution can help.
Common Challenges in Customer Service
1. Slow Responses
When a customer sends a complaint or inquiry, they’re expecting a fast response. And you can’t blame them, because it’s human nature.
Your response time will define a customer’s support experience. Do it late, and they’ll get more irritated and impatient. As such, it’s crucial to respond immediately, even if you can’t solve their problem in the first call or email.
A standard solution to slow response time is a chatbot. If you visit e-commerce websites, you’ve most likely encountered one already, popping up on your screen and offering to answer inquiries. They don’t necessarily replace people, though. The customer’s message will still reach an accountable person, who will respond with the appropriate answer or solution to a problem.
2. Payment Issues
Constantly tracking down payments, debating amounts, and chasing down unpaid customers can take a toll on your service quality. That tends to be a prevalent scenario in the B2B sector.
Blockchain is deemed as the solution to payment issues. It involves a feature called smart contracts, which can be used to send money from one person to another. It can also share documents, validate property ownership, and more. As a result, the time spent on reconciling payments is cut down.
3. Fussy Customers
As entrepreneurs, we can all agree that a fussy customer is a permanent problem to deal with. They’re even more threatening today, as one “wrong” move from you, and they can make you go viral on social media.
Disney has found an effective solution to this. They call it the HEARD technique, which stands for Hear, Empathize, Apologize, Resolve, and Diagnose. As the acronym suggests, the process of addressing a fussy customer should follow the word order.
Customer Onboarding: Is the One-stop Shop Solution?
New customer onboarding software can come as a downloadable app, which customers can use to engage with a brand. The technology promises an improved customer experience and increased efficiency and profitability for the business.
Customer onboarding allows you to gather insight during the customer’s journey, from the pre-purchase stage until they’ve received the product. You can also use it to provide tools for a prospective customer, such as easing the account creation process for them, for example.
When done correctly, businesses can reap several benefits from customer onboarding, including enhanced customer loyalty, improved customer insight, boosted efficiency, and mitigated risks.
But like any other technology, customer onboarding isn’t foolproof. Hence, here are a few recommendations to improve it:
- Allow mobile account opening.
- Use new and simpler marketing automation tools.
- Allow online appointment scheduling.
- Incorporate AI to anticipate customers’ needs.
Customer onboarding may not eliminate all customer service challenges, but they sure improve a customer’s experience to a great extent. It also helps you determine what they want, giving you an idea of the perfect product or service to offer.
