Ninety percent of Americans use customer service as a basis for trusting a company. If your customers didn’t have a pleasant experience doing business with you, they’ll most likely never return, and they’ll proceed to patronize your competitor instead.
Customer service may seem simple when your business is still in the planning stages. After all, you just need to hire competent staff and train them. But once you start operating, all the issues will come to light. You need to solve them fast if you don’t want to lose potential loyal customers.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the customer service issues in a typical small business, and how to solve them effectively.
1. Your staff doesn’t have adequate knowledge of your products.
Your staff could be poorly informed about your products for several reasons. They might be a new hire, or their training didn’t cover much about your latest products. It’s also possible that there’s just too much information for them to process that they’re barely keeping up.
The problem inadequately knowledgeable staff can create is giving false hope or erroneous information to customers. They won’t simply admit that they don’t know how to answer a question or to solve a problem. As a result, customers will hold on to your staff’s word, only to realize later on that they were given the wrong information. That single interaction can put your business’ reputation at stake.
You can solve this problem by creating a knowledge base for your employees and customers. You can do this by investing in the best client onboarding software, a tool that lets you demonstrate your products to your customers in a highly informative, engaging, and creative way. Your employees will also benefit from this since they can use the software to boost their knowledge about your products, enabling them to provide accurate information to customers.
2. Your customer is transferred to several departments before having their problem solved.
If you’ve experienced calling a company to report a problem, and their customer service department has transferred you to several other departments before your concern is finally dealt with, you’ve surely lost your temper and regretted making that call. But your own company might be guilty of the same practice, too.
This problem usually stems from poorly informed staff. While transfers may not be avoided altogether, the trick is to nicely explain that the call is being transferred to a department best suited to solve the problem. The customer will feel less frustrated since they’ll not be left hanging without knowing whether their problem has been understood.
3. No one is available to answer a customer’s inquiry.
Understandably, your customer service staff won’t be available 24/7. However, it’s beneficial for your company’s reputation if you can find a way to interact with customers at any time of the day. An AI chatbot is an excellent solution to this. It’s the little pop-up window you’d see on many eCommerce websites, greeting customers and offering assistance.
Another benefit of an AI chatbox is that it eliminates mundane tasks from your staff’s workload. This allows them to focus on more complex tasks, such as solving product problems and continuously improving customer experience.
4. Your customer has received a faulty product.
Although it isn’t likely your fault, your apology is still necessary when a customer reports receiving a damaged or faulty product. You may not change their opinion about your product, but you can change their opinion about your company.
After apologizing, provide possible valid reasons behind the mishap, and then offer a replacement or a refund. When you show your customers that you highly value their patronage and feedback, they’ll regard your company as trustworthy and reliable, even if they had one unpleasant experience with your product.
