Whether you are in the business of a highly technical product, such as customizable customer support software, or something non-technical, like clothing, the fact remains that in order to keep a high amount of customer retention, it is vital your customers continue to feel as if they are valued when they patronize your business. In order for this to happen, interactions with the customer must be personalized and unique, and this can only happen when the customer service has the appropriate context to do so. This doesn’t sound like a particularly difficult idea to grasp, but it is not as simple as it sounds when it comes to the online world.
Why is Customer Context So Hard to Create in an Online Environment?
The reason for this is that, when shopping in a traditional brick and mortar retailer, the staff is able to see and hear the customer in person and in real time. This means they can tailor their approach, based on the cues of vocal intonations and body language, to determine what the best course of interacting with a customer is. Also, it is far easier to do this when you have repeat customers in person, as you actually know what the person looks like, which often goes a surprisingly long way in helping to humanize a person.
By contrast, when you are dealing with a customer relationship conducted solely through e-mail or via phone call, it becomes much harder to get to utilize your company’s in-house imperative assets to assist you in getting to know the person. Because you do not have the benefit of face to face communication and all of the additional information about a customer it provides, how can you help compensate to fill the knowledge gap?
How Can Online Customer Service Agents Create Rapport with Their Customers?
In order to help create long standing, mutually beneficial relationships with customers, one thing online customer service agents should be focused on is using their knowledge base to help create a detailed set of notes for each customer. If you or one of your agents has recently had an issue with a customer, making a note of it in their profile will help you craft a more careful and empathetic response the next time you interact with them. The database can also be updated with positive notes when a customer is particularly happy with a ticket resolution, or when they have a suggested feature implementation that would make their lives considerably easier.
Another thing customer service departments can do is try and streamline their electronic toolkit, as much as humanly possible, into only a handful of tools so that valuable time spent resolving the ticket is not wasted. It is vitally important to remember the person calling your customer service department often has multiple things going on at once, and they most likely do not have a large amount of their workday available to devote to solving the problem.
If you would like to know more about how customizable customer support software can help you create customer context, contact PhaseWare through their website or by phone today.