How can we deliver the best customer service?
There are many forms of customer service. Depending on your type of business and what you sell, customer support/service can range from a very hands-on, human-to-human approach to a completely hands-off, self-service solution. As a customer service expert, I’m often asked, “How can we deliver the best customer service?” The answer is, “It depends.” That said, in general, we can break customer service and support into four areas:
1. The Best Customer Service Is No Need For Service: This is customer experience utopia. This is what Amazon’s founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos envisioned when he said, “We shouldn’t need a customer support department.” As much as we might wish for this level of service—actually, no service—it is just a vision, maybe even a dream. It’s not reality. But it’s still worth pursuing.
2. The Second-Best Form of Customer Service Is Proactive Service: There is a version of customer service that gets somewhat close to No Need For Service, and that is proactive service, which is the ability to solve an issue or communicate it before the customer ever knows about the problem. Customers don’t have to call about a problem, because you inform them first. For example, I’ve worked with a number of cable and internet providers. Typically, a customer finds out their cable TV or internet is down when they try to use it. Frustrated, perhaps angry, the customer reaches out to the company that provides the service. One of our clients in this industry said they maintain multiple ways to communicate with customers, including their phone numbers (home and mobile), email, Facebook accounts, Twitter handles, LinkedIn profiles and more. They accumulate this information not to spam the customer, but to proactively blast a message to all these communication channels to alert the customer about a problem. In addition, they send the customers regular updates. While this doesn’t fix the problem, it keeps the customer informed about the progress, and eliminates the need for a customer to call to report a problem the company already knows about. The result is that customers have information, which gives them a sense of control over the situation.
3. The Third-Best Form of Customer Service is Self-Service: The next best CX is when customers can help themselves. Our customer service research shows that the No. 1 channel American consumers like to use is the traditional phone. But, even though the phone is preferred, many customers are willing to use digital self-service options. For them to do so, you have to have a database of knowledge for them to access. This could include a Frequently Asked Questions section on your website, instructional YouTube videos, real-time chatbot support and more. For those who prefer self-service, one of the most important considerations is being able to easily find answers to their questions.
4. The Fourth-Best Form of Customer Service Is Live Support: Live support is powerful. The phone is still the most popular channel customers use to communicate with brands. The key to making this work is an empowered agent who can solve the issue for the customer in one interaction. In other words, the agent owns the customer’s experience. Agents have a team they can consult, but the customer sees one rep as “their person on the inside” who magnificently takes care of them. First-call resolution is essential. Not transferring the customer to multiple agents is a goal, although if you must transfer the customer, it should only be once. And not making the customer repeat their story is important. The key is to create customer confidence, so they know that if they have to call to talk to an agent, they will have a good experience.
While there may be other ways to describe the very best customer service experiences, these four will help manage even your most difficult customers. While “no customer service needed” is a lofty goal, when you provide proactive, self-service and live support, and you execute well, you will create an experience that gets customers to say, “I’ll be back.”
