Tag: Business and tips 2018

People Connect

How to strengthen your customer service skills?

August 10, 2018

First, it’s important to make sure that your customer service team has the right skills for your managing customers’ needs. No amount of CRM software can compensate for shortcomings in this area. But what skills should you be looking for in a customer service rep?

  • Empathy, patience, and consistency. Some customers will be irate. Others will be full of questions. And others will just be chatty. You must know how to handle all of them and provide the same level of service every time.
  • Adaptability. Every customer is different, and some may even seem to change week-to-week. You should be able to handle surprises, sense the customer’s mood and adapt accordingly. This also includes a willingness to learn– providing good customer service is a continuous learning process.
  • Clear communication. Ensure you convey to customers exactly what you mean. You don’t want your customer to think he’s getting 50% off when he’s actually getting 50% more product. Use authentically positive language, stay cheerful no matter what and never end a conversation without confirming the customer is satisfied.
  • Work ethic. Customers appreciate a rep who will see their problem through to its resolution. At the same time, you must have good time management skills and not spend too much time handling one customer while others are waiting. Stay focused on your goals to achieve the right balance.
  • Knowledge. Ultimately your customers rely on you for their knowledge of your product. Stay informed enough to respond to most inquiries and know where to turn if the questions become too detailed or technical for you to answer. But don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know” either. Customers will appreciate the honesty and your efforts to find the right answer.
  • Thick skin. The customer’s always right… right? The ability to swallow one’s pride and accept blame or negative feedback is crucial. Whether your team works directly with customers or looking for feedback on social media, they’ve got to keep the customer’s happiness in mind.

Not sure if your reps have the right customer service skills? Survey or interview your customers to understand whether your service team is showing each of these traits. Running a customer feedback survey through your CRM program, at the point of sale, or when you send customers an invoice is a great way to see where your team’s skills do and don’t measure up.

Support-Software

How to Choose the Right Software for Customer Support Services?

July 13, 2018
Choosing the right support software is the first step to tackle after scaling your customer support team or simply realizing you’ve outgrown email as your current support solution. However, there is a ton of different support software out there.
 
Not only are the options pretty much endless, but every single help desk or support solution provider is obviously trying to put their product a step ahead of others. This means that they all look good at first glance, and choosing just one can be a pretty intimidating task.
The Process of Choosing Support Software:
Choosing the tool for you might seem complicated, but if you approach it in a structured way and involve your team into the process, it’s going to be much easier⁠—and hopefully also fun and constructive.
 
Here’s what you need to do on a very high level:
 
1) Figure out what you need as a company

The most important groups to think of when specifying your requirements are:

  • Your customers
  • Your support team
  • Your managers
2) Talk to your team

After you’ve put together a basic overview of your needs and future plans, you should also have a chat with other people in the team. The crucial people are obviously the ones who will be using the tool every day as well as those directly managing them.

However, having this discussion in an even bigger circle is great for unexpected but useful feedback and points, especially if you’ve cultivated an “everyone does support” culture in your company.

3) Put together a list of options

Go through as many unbiased review sites and listicles as you can, and just write down names of support software providers⁠—don’t worry about diving deep into features quite yet.

After doing your own research, ask your own network for recommendations. The best advice always comes from people that have actual first hand experience using these tools.

Who knows, you might be able to eliminate some options from your big list straight away⁠—or add some.

However, be careful to not take these recommendations too seriously. The fact that a solution didn’t work out for another company, doesn’t mean it won’t for yours.

4) Evaluate
You don’t even have to sign up just yet⁠—most serious providers have a list of features on their website or offer demo videos to show you what they have.  This will help you see which tools immediately have (or don’t have) the things you’ve established you need for your team.Remove the options that don’t meet your criteria from your list. If the list is still long, you can also rely on your gut a little and get rid of the ones you feel are too complex, too expensive, or that you just don’t like the look of.

5) Play around and choose one

Now that you have your top options, it’s time to sign up and see how you like actually using them. Most awesome support software has a trial or a demo account you can use to get into it.Play around with it to get a feel of how it works and what the features you’re looking for actually look like.

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Source: GrooveHQ

 

Customer Service

3 Trends Shaping Customer Service In 2018

December 26, 2017

Is the current business year packing up the way you thought it would? For example, are your support or service centers well in hand, satisfying digital consumers? Or, are they lagging behind, out of satisfaction? How will you decide that? The star ratings? or any other criteria? Well, that doesn’t matter, what’s the important point here is: How well you do a customer retention? To get traction, trends need to be integrated into the business. Optimized to deliver great service and satisfaction. Before the year 2017 ends, let’s review a few trends that got traction—and will gain more ground in 2018.

Trend #1: Service solutions need advancement in technology i.e. AI and IAS

Automated processes including self-service solve simple, online transactions. Customers welcome the convenience. With the artificial intelligence, AI-enabled voice assistants are pleasing the consumers. But, they’re not truly human yet.

Trend #2: Customers are redefining their service experiences

As Forbes predicted for the year 2017 that there will be more retail businesses closing than the opening and this trend will likely to continue in the year 2018.  Consumers have started exploring their experience with online dealing and why they should not try when there exists a lot of offers, quality, and varieties for the same type of product they need. Remember, the money back guarantees played a devastating role for the retailers in the decorated and ornamented market.

Trend #3: On-Demand Workforce

This is a trend that is being used by the most of the big businesses. The idea of using this trend is to prepare a fully skilled, technically sound and experienced workforce of salaried professionals those are ready to serve on a business on-demand basis. The best part of it is the flexibility of reusing the workforce on the same day while the worst case is: the cost and structure of the company that hires them. But again, when a business needs fast services, better customer retention and maximum uptime, cost nowhere stands.

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