The disconnect on customer service

Image by Evil Paulie via Flickr

The problem that I’ve seen with customer service issues usually stem from larger corporations. There’s always an obvious disconnect between the communication between customer support and actual service. Those that solve this problem seem to be in a better stance on customer approval ratings.

If you take a look at current technologies, there really isn’t a reason that you should only be marketing and communicating with your customers via email and telephone. There are a number of cheap or even free solutions that allow you to touch base with your clientele without having to give up too much in the expenses arena.

Micro social networks
Twitter obviously is the one that comes to mind, but it’s a channel of for speaking back and forth with your clients. Don’t make it a one-way communication. Too many PR people make it as such and it doesn’t solve the issue that you need to be closer to your clients, not holding them off at an arm’s length.

Blogs
This can be done a number of ways, but from my personal experience, there has to be an open channel. Thus meaning that you really shouldn’t moderate comments unless they violate your terms of service, and allow complete conversation to pass. Granted that there will always be trolls. Just ignore them and move on.

Positive reaction
As a customer, you’re usually in an irate position and disgruntled with the product and/or services. As the CSR, you’re going up against a wall of flames with a water bottle. And usually, the response is to answer via a list instead of trying to listen and solve the issue. Now I admit, that there are some out there that try to game the system. Costco had a few people that kept abusing their return policy as did Sam’s Club. But there should be a good way to manage this type of issue. Netflix does a great job with this by admitting to fault even if the customer didn’t see or know about it. Compensation creates customer loyalty.

Proactive not reactive
It’s not that you have to do something for your clients, nor does it mean that you should with your employees. But usually, people are the most touched by gifts they least expect. Especially from customer service. It’s always good to send out Christmas cards, or little gifts, or random “nice things”. It’s something I had picked up working consulting but it ties directly into how to create customer loyalty. Sure, you have to stand by your work, but the little extra something doesn’t hurt either in reinforcing the thought that you still love their business.

Synopsis
Like I had said, these points are fairly common sense, but for some reason this is lost in the corporate beast. Much of these thoughts are carried through by B2B from SMBs. With these thoughts in mind, you too, can create a better customer service support team that really closes that gap to the customer.