Customer Service is an often overlooked aspect of many businesses mainly because all their time and energy is spent on the service or goods that are being offered leaving little time for anything else.
How often have you experienced bad service and told every person you know about it?
Stories about bad service notoriously spread like wildfire so it is bad business strategy not to have a plan for customer relationship management.
Causes of bad Customer Service
From my experience, the No.1 cause for dissatisfied customers is that their query has not been responded to.
They have found a company that offers the service they want to book or they have already purchased and have a query.
So, they diligently email the company, sometimes filling in their query form online, taking time to explain their question or what service they want to book, to find that days pass and they haven’t heard back from the company. The reason being is that the email gets lost inside an overflowing inbox never to be seen again.
They can’t book in time for the service they are wanting. They wait, perhaps send a second chasing email and still nothing. How rude.
Unanswered phone calls or lengthy IVR systems
Sometimes it feels easier to pick up the phone and call with your query. It can get the job of booking the service done and dusted quickly so you can move onto doing something else, prevent lengthy emails being written or email ‘tennis’ if you need further information.
The disappointment that ensues when either the call goes unanswered, an answer phone kicks in or you have to fight with an automated service which asks you to repeatedly press a number of choice (assuming your choice is part of one of the options).
The answerphone message is never returned or pressing ‘1’ takes you round and round the options and never to speak to a real person. Very annoying.
Whilst these two scenarios cause a frustrating customer experience, what business owners need to recognise is the knock-on effect this has on their relationships with their customer base.
The disgruntled client tells anyone who will listen about your lack of response, your reputation is damaged and you have missed out on a customer lead (and others as the word has spread) as they have gone to a competitor all because of something so simple as providing a response.
3 Easy steps to improve customer satisfaction
Well, it could be simple if you put procedures in place:
- Regular intervals or times of the day/week where email inboxes/answer machines are checked and responded to,
- Templates for email responses so you are not staring at a blank page for every reply (and your response looks more professional),
- FAQ’s can be published on your website and used as resources for your team so the info is consistent and easy for everyone to find.
These three things need a bit of time to set up and may need refining depending on feedback that is received but it is well worth investing the time to do as it is the difference between building a good relationship with your customers and a not so good one.
Build trust with your customers and they will reward you with repeat business and invaluable word of mouth recommendations.
What is the biggest annoyance you find when interacting with a business?
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