Providing customer service in a full cycle consists of a few steps. Firstly, you will need to give customers a way to research their problem on their own, via self-service portals. If the problem is irresolvable from the customer’s standpoint, you will then need to allow multiple methods of contact for customers to approach your service team for further support. It may seem that once that support is administered, your job as a company stops there… but this isn’t the case. For the full customer support experience, you will want to follow through with some customer service feedback as well.
There are a few routes to follow-up with your customer which will provide the kind of results from which you and your buyers can benefit:
#1. E-mail follow-ups. These are, of course, only usable if you’ve acquired the customer’s e-mail address — but they are incredibly versatile and helpful once you start implementing them. The format is fairly unassuming, as customers can respond in their own time and often have the ability to respond with greater depth and freedom than alternative feedback methods. E-mail replies have had great success rates of uncovering customer concerns, potential company improvements, and service requests for future interactions.
#2. Phone call check-ins. Once a customer has completed their interaction with your company, it may be in your best interest to give them a call and set the platform for an organic, honest conversation about what went well and what did not go well. Because this format is so intimate and free-formed, many customers who choose to participate may wind up providing extremely valuable insights on how the customer service model is affecting its users.
#3 Customer satisfaction surveys. If you choose to provide a survey follow-up, it’s imperative that you do it right. E-mail surveys following a customer interaction must be concise, direct, short, and poignant. There’s a lot riding on the wording and application of satisfaction surveys that will need to be perfected if your company is to gain from their use, but when done correctly, satisfaction surveys can wind up being the easiest, quickest route to a good chunk of actionable data for you and your team — invaluable for any growing company.
Follow-up, tacked onto the end of your base level customer service interactions, can be one of the most useful tools that you have in your possession once you get the hang of customer interactions. It’s important to keep the right mindset when approaching follow-ups: this exchange is about the customer experience entirely, and catering to their curiosity and listening to their whims is only going to play to your company’s advantage (and to your customer’s advantage) later on as the company uses that information to change and grow.
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