Good is the enemy of great. Sounds familiar? It’s the first sentence of Jim Collins’ management classic From Good to Great. A fantastic line that applies to so many things. Good customer support, too, is the enemy of great customer support.
So how can your customer support team take the leap from good to great?
Customer support tip #1: Be as one
What irritates a customer greatly is receiving multiple contradictory tips from different customer support representatives. To be able to offer consistently good service, your support team should work like a well-functioning machine, with every gear oiled and every team member on the same page. Sing on the same hymn sheet, as a Guardian journalist puts it joyfully.
Customer support tip #2: Be quick
Whether you’re a 2-person team or a huge conglomerate, waiting 48 hours before responding to a customer query is too long. Speed is one of the fundamental aspects of good customer service. And to get up to speed, all the components of your service need to be aligned perfectly. Be aware of the fact that most of your online visitors are pressed for time. They want the information they’re looking for as fast as possible. Make sure that your customer support tool is simple enough for all agents to quickly see which query has been answered already, and what else needs to be done. Even better is a tool that allows you to view all of your customer support actions in one place.
Customer support tip #3: Be proactive
These days, if a customer wants something, he wants it right away. If you don’t sell what he wants – or if he’s not sure that you do – he’ll look for it somewhere else: on the most crowded, international marketplace ever, called the internet. So catch your online visitor’s attention while you can. Why don’t you show a chat button on the webpage he’s visiting? Live chat is a perfect tool to improve customer satisfaction and web conversion. It’s less complicated than you think (especially if you have a WordPress website, in which case you can just download a live chat plugin for free).
Also, don’t forget to reach out to your customers where they love spending time: on social media platforms. Customer service is not just about sending emails. People love talking to (or about!) you on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Every company yearns to make the leap from good to great. I’m sure you heard many times that the quality of customer service mirrors the quality of the company. I’d like to turn it around: your company will shine as brightly as your customer service does. You’ll be just like Amazon. People will love you.
