Introduction
“To err is human”, but mistakes in customer service can lead to blunder. Customer service is an inevitable part of any successful businesses. Positive customer service can lead a company to reach heights. On the other hand, a negative customer experience can cause a significant impact on the success of the business. In this fast-paced technological advancement, both businesses and customers are having more expectations from each other. With consumers being the foundation of any company, making them unhappy is the most dangerous thing that any company would wish for.
Common Customer Service Mistakes that Companies Need to Avoid
Below are the 6 customer service mistakes that need to be avoided by any business to become successful in the market.
1. Less Proactive to your customers
Considered as one of the most common customer support mistakes done by companies, it leads to customer dissatisfaction and finally to customer churn. It can happen due to multiple reasons such as inadequate people in customer service, lack of skilled professionals. Make sure that the customer service team has enough knowledge base of the products and services so that they can solve customer queries within a stipulated time.
2. Less Availability to the Customers
Being one of the most crucial customer service mistakes, companies do not afford to ignore their customers. Whether the company has customers overseas or in the country itself, irrespective of any time zone, it is the responsibility of the company to look after them and solve their issues. In this scenario, hiring an outsourcing partner is the most appropriate solution, giving prompt customer service.
3. Not Listening to Customers
Listening to customers is one of the most important skills that every customer service professional should have so that they can serve the customer with the exact solution. It is a complete failure if the customer service team is not able to provide the appropriate solutions to the customers. Hence, the listening skill needs to be cultivated rather than assuming things. The agents should be fully attentive while attending calls, taking notes, and making sure that the customer should not repeat the query. The practice of delighting the customers is the only way to gain a more customer base.
4. Inconsistency in Good Customer Service
Though the customer service team is quick and prompt in responding to the customers. But if they need to connect with the other team such as. IT or operations for any customer query and those teams are not responding in time with the required data, then it would again lead to bad customer service. No one wants to wait for a long time for a call to hear from the customer support team. Every single interaction should be relatively and timely consistent across all the channels with a positive attitude of helping the customers.
5. Lack of Omnichannel Support
Nowadays, customers do not use any specific set of channels to reach the companies’ customer support team. As a company, it is its responsibility to use omnichannel support in terms of extensive customer support. It can be a social media conversation or can be a hotline number, live chat, and so on. Research said that companies using omnichannel support retain almost 89% of the customers while those who are not using have 33% customer retention. A support forum or frequently asked questions needs to be updated regularly so that customers can solve the issues on their own.
6. Scarcity of Product Knowledge
Many companies do not care to think about the customers, which leads to a bad reputation in the market. To maintain a good rapport in the market the company needs to take care of its customers and serve them accordingly. If the customer support team lacks product knowledge, then it would lead to dissatisfied customers. The more the company knows the customers, the more they will serve them in terms of products and services.
To summarize, always avoid interrupted, inconsistent customer service. Make sure that your team is working uniformly towards serving customers while leveraging data as required from various organizational levels. Keeping your customer happy is the key to the success of any business. And by avoiding common customer service mistakes, customer satisfaction can be improved to the next level.
