Providing quality products and services is not enough anymore. These must be backed up with excellent service if you really want to keep your customers and turn them into loyal ones. Therefore, no business should underestimate the importance of a positive customer experience, as it plays a crucial role in its growth and development. Poor service affects the image of the company and makes customers look for alternatives and buy from your competitors, just for the better service.
What Does “Bad” Customer Service Mean?
In short, “bad” customer service is one that does not meet customer expectations in terms of quality, response time and overall customer experience.
Most of the time, customers get irritated and frustrated by being on hold for a long time, arrogant behavior on the other end, incompetent employees, and being asked the same questions over and over...among other reasons.
Here’s what’s the statistics reveal, based on a study by Zippia.
What Are the Consequences?
- Lost customers – if you don't solve your customers' issues, systematically ignore them or provide poor service, the probability that they will choose a competitor of yours is huge.
- Bad image – when customers are not satisfied with your service, they share it with their loved ones or on social media. This way you lose potential customers.
- High marketing costs – the decrease of customers leads to the need to acquire new ones, which is associated with funds for marketing campaigns.
Delivering top-notch service should be the driving force behind your contact center – make sure agents are doing their best to keep your customers satisfied. A basic on-the-job training is nowhere near enough to expect great performance from them. Regular trainings are necessary, as well as in-depth knowledge of the software solution used, in order to be able to take advantage of all the benefits its functionalities can offer.
As an executive and manager, monitoring and reporting are extremely important aspects for you – stay on top of your agents' performance, identify potential issues and help them find a solution.
To do this, however, you first need to know what to watch out for. Therefore, today we talk about the most common customer service mistakes and ways to avoid them.
Putting the Customers “On Hold”
This is one of the most common phone service mistakes. Even just a few minutes of putting the customer “On Hold” is enough to make even the most patient client anxious, simply because no one likes to wait, especially when there is an urgent inquiry or case to be resolved.
The Solution:
It is really important to reduce the waiting time. A well-developed call center solution has all the metrics you need to identify this problem, such as average and total wait time to connect to an operator, and service level metrics. Real-time monitoring lets you know which agents are busy and with what, and the number of customers waiting too long to connect to an operator.
Insufficient employees could also be the reason for making this mistake. There is a solution for this as well - Missed Call Distributor is a functionality that distributes missed calls (most often from customers who didn’t have the patience to wait to be connected) to agents, so that they can call back to the customer as soon as they are available.
Negative Language
Using the right tone when talking to a customer is just one of the aspects for positive attitude. Your customers want to feel like your agents have a solution to their every problem or case, even if they don't actually have one. If customers come across operators whose feedback is that there is nothing they can do to help them, that frustrates them and lowers their trust in your product or service, your brand and your company as a whole.
The Solution:
Training your agents to take a positive "can-do" approach is critical to the overall customer experience. And this is where monitoring using the Contact Center system comes into use. It gives you the ability to listen to conversations between agents and clients in real time or listen to their recordings later and see if they were positive and friendly or not. In case they are not, this is where your role comes in to take adequate measures and management decisions.
Transferring Calls from one Agent to Another
Again, a common customer service mistake. Such a transfer between operators indicates not only that none of them has the necessary competence to solve the specific case, but also that your entire structure is not functioning properly.
When a customer calls with a particular problem, whether it is more basic in nature or more technically complex, your team should have qualified personnel who specialize in the given area and offer options. Is that enough, though?
The Solution:
Thanks to the Automatic Call Distribution functionality, the customer is automatically directed to the most suitable employee based on the expertise they need or their client data featured in the Call Center solution. For example, if a customer has chosen to contact support through the IVR menu, then they need to be connected to an operator competent to address the type of issues specified through the IVR menu by the customer, and/or if they are calling from a foreign phone number, this carries information about the need for foreign language communication. In both cases, the system allocates the customer to the most relevant agent so they can be given a competent answer and not transferred to another operator. Also, with the Transferred Inbound Calls metric, you can find out how often customers are transferred to another operator, and listening to random calls will give you an idea of what effect the call transfer has on the customer. Take advantage of these features available in the call center system you are working with.
Repeatedly Requesting the Same Information
Customers simply don't like being asked the same questions multiple times or giving information about themselves or describing their problem more than once. If this is a practice in your contact center, consider it a mistake to prevent. These statistics show why this issue needs to be addressed.
Agents need to have easy access to customer data, such as names, previous orders and cases, communication history, etc. And all of this should be displayed on their screen so that they can get the information they need at a glance and not ask customers repetitive questions.
The Solution:
All of the above is fully possible with Call Center software features such as detailed Customer Profiles containing the complete data and full history for each customer, in combination with the Customer Screen Pop-Up functionality, which recognizes the customer by phone number or other identifier and opens his file on the agent screen completely automatically.
Lack of Empathy
Customers expect the operator they speak with to be "on their side" regarding the case they want resolved. They want to hear an apology from the brand for the inconvenience caused.
If the agent is not emotionally committed to the problem, the customer senses it and feels as if their case is not being taken seriously and the apology is not sincere. This can discourage the customer and they will simply end the conversation abruptly, file a complaint, or what’s even worst – will stop using your products or services and will go to your competitors.
The Solution:
In such situations, two Call Center system features can be used in combination for a more effective result. The Customer Satisfaction (CS) functionality provides the opportunity for the customer to rate the agent after the conversation has ended or to send an email with a request for customer service feedback on the service provided. Subsequently, all incoming calls with low ratings and emails with negative feedback can be listened to and action taken accordingly.
Rude Behavior and Bad Attitude
Everyone has good days and bad days. Surely, your agents go through moments where tension and nerves take over, and this affects their communication with customers.
Still, you need to make sure they maintain a good tone and behave politely and professionally, even when faced with personal attacks from customers. The easiest thing in these situations is to find a quick solution to the client's case and not respond to anger with anger.
The Solution:
Make sure that operators follow the pre-determined script (Call Scripting), as well as:
- Do they greet the customer and introduce themselves by name?
- Do they listen to the problem and identify it?
- Do they offer additional assistance to the customer at the end of the call?
In case they do not comply with any or all of the above, organize additional training focused on the behavior and attitude of the agents and adherence to the rules of conducting a conversation with a customer, set by you.
Contact Center solution InfoServ CRM has all the functionality mentioned in the article and many others, which help to improve the quality of service, increase customer satisfaction and preserve the good image of your company, as well as to enhance the productivity of your agents.
Request a free demo to see the system's capabilities first-hand.