3 Strategies To Prevent (or Mend) Bad Customer Service

 

If you run a contact centre or manage a customer service team, you certainly won’t be a stranger to customer service mishaps. While you may not be able to plan for all service scenarios under the sun, an underwhelmed customer is risky business, unafraid to tell the world about any dissatisfying experience. Now, before you break into a cold sweat, consider these 3 strategies to prevent slip-ups and improve your customer experience.

Intelligent Call Routing

Intelligent call routing is super effective because it quickly directs each and every caller to the best-skilled agent to handle the specific enquiry. Imagine fast-tracking repeat callers to the employee they spoke to previously, based on their CRM customer data. Your agent could continue the conversation where it last stopped off, meaning your customer doesn’t need to re-explain her issue. That saves time, takes the hassle out of interactions and makes your team more productive as only one agent spends time handling the customer query.

First time callers, then again, can be guided to the right agent through Interactive Voice Response (IVR) that pre-qualifies their request and then forwards the call.

Together with collaboration tools that allow agents to draw on experts in the back office in real time to provide useful answers and customer satisfaction upon the first call, call routing strengthens the backbone of a seamless customer experience.

Empowering Agents

Some frustrations could be prevented simply by giving your agents the right tech and tools to deliver the service your customers expect, in the channels they demand. From computer telephony integration (CTI) and social media integration to intelligent call routing and real time management reporting, there is amazingly capable technology out there to bring your contact centre up to scratch, if you’re not already taking advantage of it.

Beyond enabling agents to collaborate instantaneously and flexibly across your organisation to achieve first call resolution (FCR), advanced applications paired with mobile devices will empower your team to meet customers in the digital spaces they are flocking to. What’s more, the built-in mobility that today’s solutions bring to the contact centre really unshackle agents, supervisors and managers from their desks to deliver excellent, responsive service anywhere, anytime.

Customer Experience Audit

Have you ever considered conducting a customer experience audit? A thorough, independent examination of the service that you actually deliver to customers versus the service experience you think you are delivering will help to identify strengths, weaknesses and gaps in your customer experience programme. Technology employed, communication channels used and emotions evoked are just a few of the experience factors that are critical to review as they will point towards areas of investment that hold the key to creating real customer value.

Last Resort

Now, if you ever do happen to need to turn the boat around after a gaffe, be proactive: acknowledge, address and amend the issue to restore customer faith. Being transparent about what’s going on across the board will help employees to guide customers and, in turn, reassure your customers that you are on their side.

And whilst apologies throughout the process are an absolute must, customers of course expect a fix. So go public with your plans of how to make your service better and how you are planning to follow through with it. Then do it. One of the above strategies might just prove useful.