What is customer service?

Talking to a friend, family, or a stranger, opening small talk, and Helping a friend, family, or a simple stranger are just a few roles of customer service. Fixing a bad experience, interacting with people’s complaints, and making people feel better after the worst night.

Good customer service is being friendly to your customer, always making sure that you listen to his issue first before talking, after listening to the customer’s concern we should make sure that we put ourselves in the customer’s shoes.

Empathy and acknowledgment are variables of giving excellent customer service. Before ending the conversation also make sure that you are asking if all issues have been addressed accurately and efficiently and ask if they still have any other concerns.

There are a lot of variables, tips, strategies, and techniques to have great customer service. So let’s dig in further and share with you some ideas to gain customer satisfaction :

The 8 elements of customer service

For most customers defining good customer service and poor customer service might be easy but in technicality, it isn’t. Talking might be easy for some people but dealing with angry, frustrated customers would be a hell of a job.

Put Customer’s Needs First

The customer service team was created to have a team to find and assist every customer concern even when they’re difficult to attain or require some out-of-the-box thinking to implement. It is always called teamwork so that everyone will be working together.

In business, a customer’s needs are always the main variable that a company is targeting to solve. Without a customer’s need the company’s business won’t be running. At the first of the conversation, customers are obnoxious to share their concerns. So customer service should study specifics on how they will resolve the matter.

Clarify the Customer’s Goal and Roadblocks

Before diving into the case, we should have to identify the customer’s goal and roadblock since this is a critical component to know to provide exceptional customer service.

Making sure that you and your customer are on the same page, we carefully choose our words so that customers can identify them easily if the customer isn’t that technical the matter we can simplify it but at the first interaction, we should be able to determine how technical the customer is.

Technical customers might not believe in us if our knowledge and confidence don’t leverage the customer’s knowledge. A great example is if a customer service rep and the customer is having only one goal and it won’t interfere with anything.

Prioritize Quality over Quantity

A short and concise conversation is much more effective than a long flowery conversation. Many businesses’ goals are direct as long as the knowledge base is shown in a business proposal. In providing excellent service we should make that efficiency is present because customers’ time is gold so make sure to summarize and explain it to the customer in a timely manner and accurate information of what the customer needs.

Engage with Customers with Genuine Interest and Enthusiasm

Who doesn’t love a conversation with a person that has the same interest as you? Well, not all representatives can talk with the same interest with the customer while taking in the concern. Basically, companies would really love a customer service rep that has a lot of knowledge on everything because they can just open any small talk with genuine intention and interest with any customer.

Create Accessible, Omnichannel Support Option

Social media right is the biggest thing happening, we can do anything under the sun. Businesses can just make it easy using their platform. Our businesses should be to add a feature where customers can communicate with the company. Whether this implies giving bolster through an assortment of communication mediums or having broad self-service alternatives, your trade ought to make it simple to get to your client benefit group.

This kind of contact gives customers the convenience of dialing using their phones instead they can just click on the chatbox and the issue should be covered by the company.

Troubleshoot Collaboratively

It’s the primary responsibility of a representative to provide an effective solution to the customer’s problem. Next is positioning the response to the customer so that they can feel you came to the conclusion collaboratively. This creates a more delightful experience with the customer instead of copying and pasting the solution and giving it monotonously.

Instead of giving the customer the URL of the page to where they can fix it, how about walking them through it so that both of you can work together, and if the customer is stuck on a page then give them the knowledge base article so that they will understand it. And don’t forget to give the follow-up link so that they can still review it if the same issue happens again.

Ask for Feedback and Learn from Customers

Even though if learned all the knowledge and understand it, remember that every day in life is a lesson, it’s a never-ending lesson that we shouldn’t be missing. By listening to the customer’s concern you might know some information that you don’t know, be an active listener and you can learn something from customers too. At the end of every conversation, we ask for customer feedback so that we should also know if ever we might have missed any opportunities in our business. A customer survey should also be a great impact in getting great customer service.

In these scenarios, it’s critical to preserve a proficient deportment and treat the circumstance as a learning opportunity. Instead of taking the criticism personally, see it as criticism that you just can utilize to move forward your client benefit offer and your company as an entire.

Solve For A Long Term Solutions, Rather Than A Short Term Conveniences

perfect way”>The most perfect way to demonstrate you’re on the customer’s side is to advocate for long-term arrangements over short-term comforts. This appears to the client that you’re not only interested in understanding the issue before you, but you’re moreover concerned with their general victory.

Short-term solutions couldn’t solve long-term problems so put in mind to always go for long-term solutions because once you dig deep into that process that short-term solutions can always be seen in the knowledge base. So basically short-term solutions are just a bracket under a long-term solution.

You can check this video.

5 Types of customers and how to handle them

Knowing customers are the main thing in a successful company, we should able to understand what are the customers that we are dealing with day by day. Having it categorized we should be able to identify what and how do we interact with them. Differentiate the words that needed to said the emotion to be displayed in every specific customer.

In this link, you can check on the video to summarize the 5 types of customers.

The Talkative Customer

We just love people who are talkative, they also seem to brighten our day and provide us with more information but some of this information isn’t relevant to discuss. The talkative person usually uses their right brand with fantasy, and creativeness that they won’t stop telling but it ain’t logical that is why we need to let customers transition from the right brain to the left brain. The left brain tends to be logical and analytic so we need to do call control.

To control a call we need to ask 3 closed-ended questions back to back, since close-ended questions need to have a specific answer and it would be logical, the transition from the right brain to the left should be processed by then. Once these steps will be performed the call will be controlled.

We don’t define this as a bad practice, we love the talkative one but remember that we still have another call to entertain with afterward or maybe you have a scheduled meeting later onwards with these methods it won’t let you miss the appointments. Here is a link to a study that explains it.

The Mistaken Customer

This might be a complicated one, customer service representatives will have a hard one with this since these types of customers are the ones that won’t believe your solution since they believed that they knew more than you but honestly, they were just misinformed or what not. Customer service representatives should always watch their words because these types are very sensitive.

So we should be polite to them and let them know that we are an alliance to them and not an enemy telling them they’re wrong. We should be patient in telling them and also explain the slowly and concisely. These types are smart so just make sure to gain their trust and they should believe in you.

The Elitist Customer

These types are somewhat like they know everything and also they think that their issue is very complex and special. Customer service representatives while explaining the resolution tend to ask for a supervisor and cut us off.

When dealing with these customers, you need to assert to them that you are qualified that you can solve their concerns, and are an expert on these matters but do this in a polite way. If these matters will be solved without a manager’s intervention tell them that there is no need to escalate since we can solve this issue right away.

The Positive Customer

These are the types of customers that are easygoing, they have a big impact on companies especially they’re really friendly and they have a positive mindset that we can receive good feedback. Sometimes they are new customers, happy customers or a regular customer that enjoyed our services.

In handling these types of customers since it would be very easy to explain and talk to them just make sure to highlight and promote new business products. We should retain the company’s reputation, be intuitive, and adopt a strategy that could gain good feedback from the company.

The Irate Customer

The most difficult and challenging type of customers, some say they ruined the company but we say that they’re the ones who can bring the company up. Angry, rude, and irate customers all say what they wanna say and also rant what they wanna rant.

In handling these types they’re tips we provide for you to check in to.

7 Steps for dealing with angry customers

For all customer service reps, we deal with all types of customers every single day. We received 30 – 50 calls per day depending on the calls we handle but we don’t know what type of customers are they. The worst part of gaining customer satisfaction is pacifying the once angry mind.

Customers will get rude or angry for a variety of reasons, some will justify it and some will not. But since we are in the business to serve customers we should bend things out. How you respond to the customer is a great impact on their mood. Excellent customer service is to serve angry customers without sweat.

Here are 7 tips for dealing with angry customers:

Remain calm

Customer service reps should always be ready in taking in conversation with a healthy and conditioned mind. Always think that you will be dealing with these emotions over time. With a conditioned mind, you shouldn’t get carried away and just let all the things pass from what you heard. A calm mind and working under pressure isn’t great skill to learn overnight. Practice being calm and everything should come easy.

Don’t take it personally

Customers always get rude and angry with the service poor service of the company and they are channeling this emotion thru the person first in touch. A skill of a customer service expert is to be professional. This customer interaction should be taken with professionalism and a good attitude towards their roles. Remember customers are ranting with the company and there isn’t anything to do with you personally so just remember that you are professional customer service and you can handle this without stress.

Use your best listening skills

Customers talk about a lot of things once you answered the phone and we don’t really know the main problem of the customer. Even if we already knew the problems there might be minor problems to be solved also so make sure to sharpen your listening skills and be active in listening.

Write down notes on what key points that are they’re talking about. If you solved all the concerns by using the words that customers say it will improve customer experience also they will feel appreciated that someone is listening to them after a long day of work.

Actively sympathize

Many customers have a lot of things going on in their day-by-day life, so take to them as real people, not just an employee but engage with a human touch. Actively sympathizing with customers is an example of great customer service. We should be able to show how we feel about the situation that they facing. Show them that we are here to support them with positive language.

Apologize gracefully

An important element of customer service is to be genuine in apologizing, and make sure to personalize your apology so that you really are sincere in every aspect of it. All customer service employees should undergo training on how to deal with customers’ emotions so that we should be able to target and say the right things when apologizing to our customers.

Find a solution

Every problem has a solution, at this part you already listen actively show sympathy and apologize if needed to their concerns. Now finding a solution should be easy since customers are calm and ready to listen. Let the customer know that we have them covered and that there is always a solution to every problem.

Take a few minutes on your own

Remember we are all employees of a business which means we are still the person who we are at home. We might gain the business’s success but always take a few minutes on your own to internalize everything from what you’ve heard down to what you said.

This will help in your mind conditioning which your mind reflexes will be sharpened and leads to great service on your next cases.