Guest Blog: Tools To Help Deliver A Stellar Customer Service
This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post, my colleague James Clifton shares an experience where customer service was lacking due to a reluctance to new technology. He shares easy and inexpensive ways to deliver stellar customer service. – Shep Hyken
Having the right tools enables you to deliver stellar customer service.
Let me tell you a brief story of my last employment where customer service was severely lacking because they didn’t want to make the move to new technology.
A bit of background first, my previous place of employment was a holiday apartment rental agency with offices and apartments around the world, with the head office located in Barcelona. I was in charge of social media for said place of employment. Every year, just before summer arrived, the reservations department would be inundated with queries, bookings and so on by anxious holiday planners. At the same time the reservations department started getting busy, I would notice a spike in questions and complaints coming across the Twitter and Facebook feeds.
Things along the lines of:
Have you received my booking?
Why hasn’t my email been answered?
I still haven’t received my confirmation number despite having paid.
When do I receive my deposit back?
There were a number of problems that occurred as a result. Firstly, the clients weren’t receiving the sort of customer care they had come to expect and would likely look elsewhere when booking accommodation again. Secondly, the reputation of the business suffered due to the highly visible nature of the complaints on social media and, finally and perhaps the most damaging of all, the booking agents became stressed and disengaged. Overall, it wasn’t great news for the company.
Although one could employ more staff to handle the busy times, which would be costly and inefficient at best, it doesn’t address the underlying issue, a lack of good customer support software. The agency had a haphazard approach to answering emails and dealing with customer feedback, which in the end has proved quite damaging to the company’s reputation. Unsatisfied customers who despite being happy with the accommodation on offer probably wouldn’t book again because of a sloppy booking process.
There is in fact a really simple and relatively inexpensive fix to this problem had the owner been willing to embrace cloud technology instead of relying on the clunky inefficient in-house system. The tech guys were tired of it and there were times when the whole office would be offline while maintenance or upgrades were carried out; not very good for an internet-based business.
Today’s Helpdesk software would have put an end to customer complaints in next to no time. For example, if the agency had been using FreshDesk’s ticketing system, it would have sorted through customer requests, distributed ticket numbers to the client and sent them to the right customer service agent. An automatic email response is generated, informing the client their request has been received and that an agent will be with them shortly. This effectively prevents the client from airing their grievances on social media, since they are being made aware of what is happening.
Many of today’s HelpDesk solutions also come with a built in knowledge base. What this means for the customer is that they are able to help themselves and the business is able to save money. So, let’s take a common question I received when I was on social media at the agency as an example; When will I receive my deposit back? If we had been using HappyFox, for example, then all we would have had to do is to write a short article explaining the process and timing of when deposits are returned and add it to the knowledge base. The clients would then be able to source this information themselves without having to put more stress on the already stretched customer service team.
Having an extensive knowledge base means a lot less hassle for your customer service team and also means that they are able to focus their energies on more important tasks. An overly stressed employee is more likely to become disengaged and deliver less than optimal customer service and as we all know excellent customer service is paramount to business success.
James Clifton is the Social Media Manager at GetApp.com, the #1 independent Cloud Apps Marketplace that helps businesses to discover, compare, review and purchase the best B2B apps. You can connect with James on Twitter here: @GetApp.
For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com
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