If you want to provide great customer service, you need to have a variety of documentation. You also need to be able to find the correct, most recent version of any document quickly and easily. That is why managing customer service documents is so important.
Managing customer service documents well will help on a number of fronts:
- Ensures a consistent experience for your customers.
- Keeps the amount of time you need to spend on customer service to a manageable level.
- Allows customers to search for answers to their own problems.
- Gives staff a greater level of independence and allow them to ‘own’ their customers.
Templates for contact with customers
Having templates for customer service contacts makes it easy to contact customers at regular intervals along the sales process. Some of the templates you should consider having are:
- Acknowledgement of receipt of an email or order
- Your order has been dispatched, you should receive it …
- What did you think of our service and would you like to leave a review?
- Thank you
- Email to accompany an invoice
- Chase outstanding payment
- Thank you for your payment
The most recent version of each of these should all be kept in the location and format that they will be sent in. i.e.: in your CRM, your email system or an autoresponder. Older versions, should be stored separately if you want to keep them.
Policies and Processes for staff
The biggest benefit of having well documented policies for customer service is that it gives all staff the ability to provide good, consistent customer service. It also allows staff to have a greater ability to act on queries when they have documented processes for handling issues and authority levels. If they have to take each query to a manager for authorisation, it creates delays in resolving issues, makes staff less engaged, annoys the managers and can further aggravate customers.
Some of the main points to consider when you’re developing policy, procedure and processes for staff use are:
- Store polices and processes somewhere that is easy for all staff to access
- Regularly review and update and be sure that it’s easy to see which is the most recent version.
- Give someone / a specific department responsibility for maintaining policy and procedures and make sure that everybody knows who to contact if changes are required
Knowledge Bases and FAQ’s for staff and customers
Creating a knowledge base and/or FAQ for your customers can allow them to search for answers to their problems online. Having a group available where customers can discuss how to use your products and services allows you to crowdsource customer service and it also can act as a place to gather ideas for product development.
Key points to keep in mind when using a Knowledge base for FAQ are:
- Regularly update your knowledge base. Once you have a few of them, create a process to ensure they’re all looked at on a regular basis.
- Consider allowing customers to comment so that you can get feedback on the helpfulness of the files
- If customers can and do comment, make sure they get a prompt response. It doesn’t matter if the comments are negative or positive.
- Don’t be afraid to delete spam or irrelevant comments.
- Give someone / a specific department responsibility for updating the page. Make sure that customer service and sales staff can easily advise of anything they’re being asked often
I know this sounds like an awful lot of customer service documentation, but it’s easy to take shortcuts – for example when a new policy or process is developed, pull out key points and add it to your FAQ. Which ever way you choose to do it, by taking the time to create the documentation, in the long run you’ll have more satisfied customers. Managing customer service documents well make customer service easier and more fulfilling for both staff and customers. And that can never be a bad thing!
