6 tips to improve your team’s Customer Support skills
Have you ever wondered what makes or breaks your customer relationships? It's not just about having a top-notch product or a skilled team. It's the often-underestimated art of customer support that can make all the difference. Your customer support team is the face of your company, and their interactions with customers can leave a lasting impression.
Here are six tips to help you step up your customer support game and build stronger relationships with your customers.
1. Strengthen your Customer Support skills
First things first, ensure your customer support team possesses the right skills to manage your customers' needs effectively. Fancy CRM software won't compensate for lacking skills. What should you look for in a stellar customer support agent?
Empathy, patience, and consistency: Customers come in all flavours – some irate, some inquisitive, and some just chatty. You need agents who can handle them all with a consistent level of support. Listening is a big part of evoking empathy and patience. Let customers express themselves without interruptions. Show them you understand their frustration and are there to help.
Adaptability: Customers are like shifting sands, ever-changing. Agents should be ready to handle surprises, sense moods, and adapt accordingly. Customer support is a continuous learning process, so be open to new challenges and tasks.
Clear communication: Ensure your team conveys exactly what they mean. Use positive language, maintain a cheerful demeanour, and always confirm customer satisfaction before ending a conversation.
Work ethic: Agents should see problems through to resolution without losing sight of time management. Balance is key to ensuring all customers feel equally valued.
Knowledge: Customers rely on your team's knowledge of your product. Be well-informed to answer most inquiries, and don't hesitate to admit when you don't know something. Customers appreciate honesty and efforts to find the right answers.
Thick skin: Swallow pride and accept blame or negative feedback gracefully. Remember, it's not personal; it's about the product or service not meeting their needs.
2. Look at every touchpoint
A bad customer experience at any point in the customer journey can sour the entire relationship. Pay attention to key touchpoints, but don't overlook the entire customer experience. Make sure your customers encounter a consistently positive experience from start to finish.'
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3. Improve your customer interactions
Having the right skills is just the beginning. Ensure your team connects with your customers:
Identify common ground: Encourage agents to find common ground with customers, whether through shared interests or a simple "How's your day?" This humanises the relationship.
Practise active listening: Show customers you hear them by clarifying and paraphrasing their concerns. Empathise and reflect on their feelings to build rapport.
Admit mistakes: Own up to mistakes, even if you catch them before customers do. It builds trust and allows you to regain control of the situation.
Follow-up after resolution: Don't stop once the problem is solved. Follow up to ensure the issue stays fixed and customers are satisfied.
4. Enhance your Customer Support strategy
Your team may have the skills, but what about your strategy?
Get personal: Customers want to interact with real people, not bots. Offer personal responses and engage on social media platforms.
Be available: Ensure customers can reach you through various channels, and consider meeting them in person or via video calls. Provide physical contact information to build trust.
Cater to customers: Assign agents to specific customers to build relationships, offer VIP treatment to your best clients, and create communities to engage your customers further.
5. Make sure your support agents are engaged
Even with great skills, disengaged agents can hinder the customer experience. Improve employee engagement by understanding what motivates them and addressing their needs.
For example, you can keep them motivated by giving them more ownership into:
Creating reports
Owning different metrics
Researching and presenting new support strategies
Always make sure:
Support agents have the right tools and knowledge to do their jobs
Your support team gets call out for their successes in company wide meetings
6. Give your customers a way to provide feedback
No matter how proactive you are, some issues will slip through the cracks. Create accessible ways for customers to provide feedback, helping you identify areas for improvement and keep negative feedback from going public.
Check out our last blog where we focus on the Customer Effort Score and how that metric can help you understand your customers’ experience better.
Incorporate these tips into your customer support strategy and watch as your relationships with customers flourish. Remember, exceptional customer support is a journey, not a destination. Happy customers lead to a happy bottom line! 🌟🚀