5 Things Your Customer Service Teams Are Doing Wrong
By the Marketing Team at Lava Protocols
I was already late for work, but I was in desperate need of cash. I went to the nearest bank and to my dismay, my debit card was swallowed by the ATM machine!
“What? No No No!”
The screen went blank and I pressed every single button on the machine to get my card out, but to no avail. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s being late to work (even though my boss is pretty lenient).
In a frantic, I called Customer Care. The lady on the line was empathetic, apologized on behalf of the company, and asked me a few security questions before canceling my card in just a matter of minutes. Thank God. Now, I had to wait a good 30 minutes before the banks were open in order to make a new debit card. Once in the bank, service was incredibly fast and the customer service executive serving me was efficient and friendly. I had a new card in just a span of probably 10 minutes of being in the bank?
That’s what I call great customer service. Honestly, I wouldn’t have left as a happy customer if it wasn’t for good technology and of course, great service skills.
As a cloud solutions company in Malaysia, I would say Lava Protocols is familiar with the challenges companies tend to face in this area. Here’s a summary of things customer service teams may be doing wrong:
1. Poor presence on all key touchpoints
When instantaneous support isn’t available, customers resort to finding their own answers and may even cancel your service. If you’re Malaysian, you would have encountered scenarios where you are passed from one service agent to another, and where the agents take a long time to pull up your history. This is due to the presence of disparate systems, and this simply won’t cut it in today’s world. Customers expect service agents to have data at the back of their hands.
This doesn’t just apply to customer service teams. Customers deserve exceptional experience from the start till the end — from marketing and sales to customer service. This is why it’s crucial to have the right technology in place to equip your teams with the necessary data. That’s what Salesforce is for. With this CRM tool, your agents can immediately pull up details of every voicemail, email update, knowledge article, or anything else about a case with just a few clicks and without leaving the Salesforce platform.
2. Not analyzing all that customer data
Whether you have a small or big service team, there will be a lot of customer data that is being collected daily. Analyzing all that data can be time-consuming and complex. If you had a good customer service software, you can easily view a customer’s purchase history, their interactions with your company’s marketing campaigns and sales agents. This can give you wonderful insights into how to talk to the customer, what discounts/ promotions to offer, and what add-ons or new products they’d be interested in.
As for managers, a tool like Salesforce can even tell you the average duration of case resolution, average wait times, service level agreement adherence, and strategize accordingly.
3. Assuming rather than listening
Something we all tend to do is to come up with a solution or answer even before the other party has finished talking. In some cases, our solution is not what the customer is looking for. Actively listen to what they are saying, without letting your assumptions get in the way is key. Clarify and re-phrase what they have said, and admit your mistakes before the customers bring it up.
Of course, having a tool to help you decide what solution fits the customer best is not a bad idea. I mean, if you had a 360-degree view of customer A, wouldn’t it be easier to predict what they would want?
4. ‘The customer is always right’ policy
This policy is not valid. In fact, by putting this into practice, you are only giving customers the right to abuse your customer service teams. Some customers are just better off being non-customers as they only cause trouble. These are the ones who show no respect nor consideration and mistreat your staff. Your staff is then left feeling demotivated, unhappy, and this reflects in their service delivery.
You wouldn’t want that, would you?
After all, you hired them and they deserve respect and fair treatment.
5. Automating everything
Automation is a godsend, isn’t it? With the right technology, you can automate manual and repetitive tasks and boost the productivity of your service agents.
Going back to the story I wrote at the start of this article, I mentioned that I appreciated the empathy demonstrated by the two service agents. Chatbots can indeed be programmed to ‘apologize for the inconvenience caused’. But it’s not the same as a human response.
Some of your customers would still have a preference for human interaction. There still has to be a degree of personalization. If you’re using a marketing automation tool, what you can actually do is try and incorporate the customer’s first name in your email marketing and follow up from their emails, sign-ups, and queries with a phone call or customized message. If you’re using a chatbot, give customers the option to speak to a human.
In A Nutshell
If you’re still using disparate systems, lack the ability to have a full view of customers, and are using one too many automations, you might want to re-think your customer service strategy.
Having a single platform where you can manage your cases, track customer data, and automate particular functions is essential.
If you’d like to know more about how Salesforce Service Cloud can do all of the above and more, email us at asklava@lavaprotocols.com or call us at +603 7885 9720.
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Lava is a leading CRM solution provider in Malaysia. We have more than a decade of experience in CRM solutions which includes sales, customer service, marketing, implementation, change management, and consultation. We pride ourselves in not just being a CRM partner but in also understanding the needs of our customers and taking their business to the next level.