Part of the work I do with online business owners is to help manage their Customer Service.  I’m happy to say that most of my clients get the importance of customer satisfaction.  After all, the more your customers love you, the more likely they are to become raving fans and not only buy your products and services themselves, but also shout your praises from the rooftops and recommend you to their trusted network.  So ensuring that your customers are taken care of can help you grow your business.  Below are a few strategies that can help your team provide world class customer service.

Cultivate A Positive Mindset

My first experience with Customer Service was on a technical support help desk.  One of the things we were taught was to smile when we answered the phone because the smile could be heard in our voice.  In the online support world, I no longer am on the receiving end of live phone calls.  Most customer service is done via an online support desk or by email.  But I still hold true to the principle of smiling when managing support tasks.  Every time I sit down to respond to a customer, I approach the task with a positive attitude and a smile.  Even though they can’t see me or hear me, I know that if I’m replying from a happy place, it will carry through in the way I’m writing and the customer will sense it.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an angry, disgruntled customer turn around simply because of the way I’ve replied to their email.

I’ve been involved in Customer Service in one way or another for about 15 years and while the support technologies have changed one thing remains constant: angry customers are often just confused customers.  That’s why giving extra positive attention to angry customers can, more often than not, diffuse the situation.  It’s not always easy to do, but once the customer understands that you’re listening and eager to help, a lot of the anger they felt is transformed and quickly forgotten.

If you’re like me and you have the luxury of time (meaning that you don’t have the customer on the other end of the phone), you can always step away from the computer and come back to the inquiry when you’re in a more positive head space.   I once had an email from a very irate customer who was understandably angry that a product he had ordered as a Christmas present had not yet arrived and it was days before Christmas.  The package was stuck somewhere in the Customs Office in England (his country of origin) and the tracking information that I had access to, did not provide much information other than it was in Customs.  After a two week delay with no update on the tracking info, the customer fired off an angry email with a few threats of calling the Better Business Bureau and filing a complaint with Visa.  I’ll be honest, the email was nasty.  But instead of replying right away with a few choice words of my own (let’s be honest, there were a few colorful words that popped into my mind as I read the email), I went for a walk.  I left my house and went for a walk around the park behind my house.  Fifteen minutes later, I was back at my computer and was no longer angry.  I was able to reply to his email from a positive and happy place and offered a few options.

At the end of the day, customers just want to know that you’re listening and that you care about their problem and willing to help in any way possible.

Be Proactive

You can save a lot of Customer Service inquiries and ensure that your customers avoid frustration by doing simple things to anticipate their needs.  Instead of seeing Customer Service as a reactive position that responds only after a problem has happened.  Why not make it a proactive role in your business that looks ahead and anticipates questions and works to ensure a smooth and seamless experience for your customers.  For example, before a product launch, you can think about possible questions your customers might have and create an FAQ page that answers these questions.  As the launch progresses and you respond to live questions, the FAQ can be updated to include common questions.

Sometimes it can be difficult to anticipate customer questions, especially if you’re closely tied to your project.  If you’re finding it challenging to anticipate potential questions, ask someone else on your team to help you develop questions.  For example, I used to work on a Technical Support Desk for a software product (it was a custom CRM database) and was responsible for developing training materials.  Every time I created a training video, I would ask the receptionist (who had no experience with the software and wasn’t very comfortable with technology) to go through the training and give me her feedback.  It helped me create better training materials because her feedback would show me what needed to be improved or what questions someone who wasn’t as comfortable with the program as I was would have.  As an added bonus, it helped the receptionist learn the program and she was able to go on to manage the Support Desk after I left the company.

Train Your Staff

I consider Customer Service one of the most important segments of any business.  After all, it is usually the first point of contact any potential customer or current client has with your company.  That’s why it’s important to thoroughly train anyone who will be managing Customer Service… not only in the products or services (and billing issues) they will be supporting but also in the exact way you would like them to interact with a customer.  If a customer calls and doubts the person helping them can actually help them (or worse, treats them poorly), it can make your business look incompetent and unprofessional.  Your staff needs to understand that they are the biggest brand representatives of your business.  A customer will base their opinion of your business based on how the were treated by support staff.  They will form opinions so choose and train your support staff carefully.

Your support staff may at times be asked questions they do not know how to answer.  So make sure you set up a system that allows your support staff to find the answer as quickly as possible.  That’s where a centralized support desk can come in handy because many of them include an internal knowledgebase that can be used exclusively by support staff for training and to get answers to questions they don’t know how to answer.

By thoroughly training support staff, being proactive and cultivating the right mindset, you can rest assured that your customers (and your business) will be taken care of.