Your customers are your purest form of quality control. Without their approval, your business doesn’t grow and succeed. So, when customer complaints roll in, it’s important to hear them out because these are opportunities to improve the customer experience and prevent potential churn. No matter which industry you’re in, you’re going to deal with customer complaints. Even if your business doesn’t make a mistake, one of your customers will eventually hit a roadblock that leads them to your customer service team. In this article, we will take a look at some of the most common customer service issues and how to resolve them.
Why Great Customer Service Can Be an Asset to Your Business
Great customer service can be a great asset for your business. For example, it can help you increase customer loyalty. According to Salesforce, 91% of customers say a positive customer service experience makes them more likely to make a further purchase. Also, investing in new customers is five times more expensive than retaining existing ones. Therefore, you definitely want to prevent a customer service issue from affecting the purchasing behavior of your customers.
Now that we see how important it is to address customers’ issues, let’s take a look at why it’s important to address customer problems head-on.
Improve Your Customer Service Standards by Addressing Problems Head-on
Customer complaints are often a sign that there’s a disconnect between what customers expected and what you delivered. However, problem-solving in customer service should be done head-on. Try digging deeper into the issue by asking the right questions. Complaints — even angry ones — can contain insights, and it’s your job to seek out the point of friction. Socratic questioning can help you get to the source of the issue. Also, try to identify the type of customer you are dealing with. For example, there are customers who pay well and demand premium support for it. Therefore, when responding, avoid excuses and just get to the solution. Consider creating a VIP folder and workflow to make it easy to identify and respond to their complaints.
Now that we know you should tackle customer problems head-on, let’s move on to the most common customer service issue you will encounter.
8 Main Customer Service Problems and How to Resolve Them
Studies on the state of contact centers today show poor customer service costs businesses more than $75 billion every year. Therefore, you want to resolve customer issues as soon as possible. Here are the eight most common customer issues you will encounter:
- Customer service associates are having too many conversations at once – A lot of times, there are not enough agents for one person to focus on one customer issue, and they will try to resolve many at once. This results in none of those customers being happy. You need to make sure that you have enough people to focus on one customer at all times.
- Lack of accessible customer history– A big part of effective customer service problem-solving is looking at the customer history and understanding the issues they had in the past. Without this, agents will try to repeat the same steps that did not work in the past. Try implementing some kind of knowledge base employees can access so they can see the customer’s previous interactions with the company.
- It takes too long to find an answer– Effective problem-solving customer service requires agents to resolve issues as quickly as possible. Otherwise, even the smallest issue can snowball into huge problems. The problem is that you usually don’t have enough agents to cover the call volume. Try setting up an offshore team to help you deal with an influx of customer service tickets.
- No process for escalation – Most customer service problems are identified by tier-one support, but what happens if they cannot resolve the issue? There needs to be tiers two and three so that complex problems can be resolved quickly.
- Backlog of tickets – Companies with customer service problems have a big backlog of customer support tickets. This gets customers even more frustrated because they are already dealing with issues with your product or service and now have to wait for your agents to dig through their backlog to find their tickets and resolve the issue. Try looking into how long it takes an agent to resolve a customer issue, more specifically, the first call resolution rate. Increasing the FCR can help you reduce your backlog.
- Time zone issues – If your support team is available only during regular business hours, this will be a problem if your customers are located in other time zones all over the world. Needless to say, their business hours will not align with yours.
- Poor workflow and/or software – Sometimes, the issue could be with the workflow in your team and the software they are using. Try to do an audit of your daily operations and tools to see if things can be improved.
- No after-sales support – The sale doesn’t end simply when money has exchanged hands. You need to stick by your product or service to make sure everything is working correctly, and the customer is getting their money’s worth. Discuss what customer problem the products or services solve and make sure your agents are proactive in asking the customers if their needs have been met.
Why is customer service problem-solving important?
Customers have more power than ever. If customers have a positive experience with your company, they will share this experience with friends, family, and connections – which in turn can lead to new business. However, if the customers do not get the right level of service, they will complain. A customer complaint highlights a problem, whether that’s a problem with your product, employees, or internal processes, and by hearing these problems directly from your customers, you can investigate and improve to prevent further complaints in the future.
How to Solve Customer Service Problems?
Customers want a great experience, and part of that experience means not losing time, money, and patience. Brands similarly value their time and money, but they must always have the patience to deliver their customers a great experience. Even with the best efforts, however, difficult customer situations are sure to arise, and how companies handle these situations can mean the difference between customer churn and long-term loyalty. Therefore, be sure to show a lot of empathy. Regardless of the channel on which they contact a business, an agent must patiently welcome a full explanation of the issue and then show genuine empathy for the customer’s frustration. It’s critical to show customers that a brand values its customers as people, not just buyers.
Trust Pexly With All of Your Customer Service Needs
If you are experiencing customer support issues or would simply like to increase your key performance indicators, consider hiring Pexly to improve the level of customer service. We have extensive experience actualizing projects of all sizes and complexity and can provide you with a custom solution that will fit your needs. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you.
