In one of last week’s blogs, I mentioned two things to avoid when you try to incorporate multichannel customer service. While it is essential when starting a new project, you also need to know what you should do. Here are three resolutions to make in 2011 for the success of your multichannel customer service initiative.
- Make your information easily accessible
- Educate your employees and customers
- Continually remind yourself of the impact of customer service
Make Information Easily Accessible
When customers access a company website for customer service, they aren’t planning on spending hours trying to find an answer or the location of the FAQs or suggestion box. If they wanted to wait around twiddling their thumbs, they’d call the automated help line on the phone (something else to fix if this is really the case).
No! Your customers want accessible information right now to go with the rest of the world of instant results. Your knowledge base needs to have an excellent search application plus guided search capabilities that uses the customer’s query to suggest possible answers.
Educate your employees and customers
Part of making your information easily accessible is educating your customers and employees where information can be located, how to respond to issues, about upcoming events, etc. etc. etc.
When you educate your customers, they can more easily navigate your website and find what they need on their own, giving them a larger degree of freedom and reduces the burden on your call center. Now you can more quickly deal with those who must call in. Fast (and first call) resolutions make happy customers.
Of course, to get those fast (and first call) resolutions, you must make sure that your employees are properly trained to handle every situation that pops up from the simplest of problems to dealing with abusive customers without snapping back (a huge talent that should be greatly admired by all of us).
The school systems have it right—education is the key to success, so start educating everybody.
Continually remind yourself of the impact of customer service
Always remind yourself why you’re investing so much time and effort into your customer service department. Your customers are the life of your company. Without them, your company will die. If you want happy customers, you have to bend over backwards for them. Show them that you truly care about them as individuals, not numbers, and you will have a higher retention rate and helping your company to grow.
These three resolutions aren’t the only actions you need to take, but they are most certainly key to achieving the top ranks of multichannel companies. Follow these resolutions and you’ll be well on your way to keeping your customers happy.