Email is no doubt a life-saver 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? Here are some tips that will help you deliver effective customer service even when time may not be in your favor.
Invest in self-service
You have to give customers the power to solve their 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.
Under-promise but over-deliver
Auto replies are great. But when you send auto-replies that you’ll respond to their queries or requests within 24 hours, you should make a follow-up and respond within about three hours. Customers like it when you do this!
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 you intercept conversations.
You should always know that problems are inevitable and you should always look forward to them. Rather than waste your time apologizing to frustrated customers, get right into action and apologize later!
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.
Be empathetic
You may not always be able to solve all problems; you 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.
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 the phone, taking up much time that may have been used to attend to other urgent queries.
While phones are the best for building rapport, holding them up for emails may be more efficient in certain scenarios.
Be present at the right time
24/7 services are excellent but when this is not feasible, you have to maximize your presence.
There’s no point in staying up all the time your customers are all in bed. Depending on your 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.
Bottom Line
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.
