When customer service works it seems like a smooth and easy process. However, the truth is that it can be stressful for all parties involved. Customer service stress causes problems for both staff and customers. It shortens tempers, increases dissatisfaction and gives a general air of negativity around the customer service process and the business itself.
Fortunately, identifying and resolving many of the issues causing customer service stress isn’t that difficult. Here are 10 things that can help reduce customer service stress for customers and your customer service staff.
Reduce Customer Service Stress for Staff
Flowcharts
Use flowcharts to document processes in a way that’s easy for staff to follow. Experienced staff will probably rarely need to use them. But, new staff or people filling in to cover illness or leave will find them invaluable.
Be clear on staff authority
Have clear, documented delegations that make it clear what staff can and can’t do to help resolve customer problems. If you’re happy for your staff to offer refunds or discount vouchers up to a certain value, document it. If you want supervisors to approve everything over a certain value, document that too. The more clearly these things are documented, the less time staff will have to spend searching for answers and approvals.
Give staff the ability to resolve issues quickly
One of the most frustrating things for any customer service staff member is to know what needs to be done, but not have the authority to do it. If you can’t give your staff authority to solve issues, then make it easy for them to contact someone who can. By that I mean have someone permanently available in the customer service department. Or, have a list of managers who can (and will) make final decisions quickly.
The ability to switch off
No matter how great your customer service staff are it’s imperative that they have the ability to get some peace and quiet every day to deal with more complicated issues; check their emails; return calls and the like. If they’re stuck answering calls or in a loud and bustling area it’s much, much harder to concentrate and get your mind focused on the job at hand. Giving staff the ability to “switch off” and get focused helps them to keep on top of their work while reducing stress. You don’t need to have a suite of offices, just a single “communal” office or quiet area that people can go to when they need a little extra space to get things done.
Make sure benchmarks and KPIs are realistic
Benchmarks and KPIs are essential in customer service – but you need to be measuring the right things. Exactly what those things are will be entirely dependent on what your customer service ethos is and could include things such as: time taken to answer calls/emails/social media queries, time taken to come to a successful resolution, the number and types of complaints, customer service staff up-sell, customers won/lost due to customer service issues.
Reduce Stress for Customers
Make sure your marketing positions your business correctly
If you’re going to be offering cheap & cheerful customer service don’t market yourself as a boutique business, likewise if you want to offer a service tailored to the needs of each customer then don’t market yourself on price. If your customers know what to expect when they come to your business it’s going to be a lot easier to manage their customer service expectations.
Make it easy to contact your business
Give your customers multiple ways to contact you and make sure you have staff that are good with each channel. It’s one thing to have contact available by phone, email, fax, social media etc, but if your staff have a bad phone manner, poor grammar and spelling or no idea how to use social media it can make the experience super frustrating for everyone. So multiple channels is necessary, but make sure that staff are trained to use all channels well.
Have processes to allow for quick resolution to common problems
This idea ties in with the use of flowcharts to reduce stress for staff. Processes that can be implemented on the spot to resolve queries allows for quick resolution and happier customers. For example: All complaints about late delivery should be offered a gift voucher of a certain value. That way, there’s no need for staff to track down someone to give approval. And, customers leave with a good impression, and an inducement to buy again.
Keep relevant statistics and set benchmarks
To provide a great service, you need to keep statistics and set benchmarks so you can monitor service levels. However you have to be prepared for staff to want to focus on meeting benchmarks and KPIs and to want to be able to record good statistics each month. With that in mind, be very careful what benchmarks, KPIs and statistics you decide on – because if you’re recording things that aren’t important to the bottom line, they could quite easily become what your staff is working towards. So do set targets, but make sure that they are relevant targets for the service you want to provide.
Keep your promises
This is probably the number one customer service strategy and it’s also probably one of the most forgotten. No matter how hard it is, you need to be honest with your customers about the service you provide. If a company says it’ll take two weeks to get back to me, I may not be happy. But, if a company tells me they’ll get back to me in a day or two then takes two weeks to get back to me. I’ll be furious and would probably never use the business again. The trust between a business and their customers is hugely important. So make sure that you are honest with your customers and keep your promises.
So there are 10 things that will reduce customer service stress for both customer service staff and customers. While you might think that being overly concerned with your customer service staff is a waste of time and money. You’ll find the level of service given by happy, engaged staff leads to customers who are singing your praises. And doing some of your marketing for you!
If you’d like some more ideas, check out my previous Customer Service posts
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