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Email is no doubt a lifesaver in customer service especially when time is of great essence.

But what do you do when everything seems crazy and you have too much that needs to be done right away? In this post, we discuss some tips that will help you deliver effective customer services even when time may not be in your favor.

1. Invest in self-service.

If by now your customer support strategy is yet to incorporate self-service, then you’re missing out on a great opportunity. You have to give customers the power to solve their own problems because they want to.  Focus on providing on-demand self-service support such as a robust knowledge base so they can solve some of their most common problems without having to join or lengthen the queue.

2. Under-promise but over-deliver

Auto-replies are great. We use them as well to reply to our clients whenever we get a receipt of their messages. When we send auto-replies that we’ll respond to their queries or requests within 24 hours, we usually follow up and respond within about three hours. Customers like it when you do this!

3. Be proactive and anticipatory with service delivery.

You don’t have to wait until you’re asked, saved replies, tagging, triage, and other tools will help you sort out things easily. Personalized notifications can also help customer service personnel intercept conversations. 

You should always know that problems are inevitable and you should always look forward to them. Frustrated customers can only find relief when their problems are duly solved. Rather than waste your time apologizing, get right into the action and apologize later!

4. Urgency and importance are two different things.

Don’t be cajoled by that customer who has sent all his messages in upper caps or even putting ‘urgent’ somewhere in between. Understand one thing, what is urgent is seldom important and what is important is seldom urgent. Put in place some processes to determine urgency so you don’t put courteous customers at the mercy of ‘loud’ ones.

5. Be empathetic.

Your support team may not always be able to solve all problems; they should, however, be empathetic in all cases. Sometimes, just making customers feel heard and treating them with respect can make so much difference. Along with timeliness and professionalism, empathy and compassion should always be somewhere in between.

6. You may hold the phone.

A phone call helps you build rapport with customers, no doubt. The problem with the phone, however, is with time. An individual may end up taking so much time chatting on phone, taking up much time that may have been used to attend to other urgent queries.

While phones definitely are the best for building rapport, holding it up for emails may be more efficient in certain scenarios.

7. Be present at the right time.

24/7 services are excellent but when this is not feasible, you have to make maximize your presence.

Actually, there’s a limit to how much or how long you’ll be needed in different cases. There’s no point in staying up all the time your customers are all in bed. Depending on your own situation, you should find a balance so you’re always there during the most important times.

If you can put in your best these times, you can then supplement your efforts with self-service that’s still available for the most common issues even when you’re absent.

Well, there’s really no one-size-fits-all approach to delivering the best in every industry. Still, being flexible while experimenting with these and other tips will help you discover what works best for your business and its customers.

Your clients and customers deserve nothing short of courteous, kind, speedy, and practical responses and solutions to their problems. If you’re able to streamline your processes while paying attention to patterns, you’ll be able to speed up effective deliveries and empathy even with phone and 24/7 availability already out of the picture.