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BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS
Free Business Customer Service Guide
How to Use Customer Problems to Benefit Your Business www.BusinessBulletpoints.com
BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Customer Service Guide – How to Use Customer Problems to Benefit Your Business
Introduction Welcome to this Free Business Customer Service Guide from Business Bulletpoints. This guide is designed to let you know about how you can use customer problems to benefit your business. Share this tool – You are welcome to use, distribute, publish and share this tool; license terms are available on the last page
Get the most out of this tool You’ll get the most out of this tool if you use it alongside the Business Bulletpoints Blog Article which you can access via the link to the right.
How to use customer problems to benefit your business
BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Customer Service Guide – How to Use Customer Problems to Benefit Your Business
An introduction and ‘Moments of Truth’ Customer service and support is a key reason that customers choose to spend their money with a particular business. Estimates of how many people a dissatisfied customer will tell about their bad experience do vary but they will tell people. If you treat your customers well, resolve problems quickly and effectively manage expectations, you can build up a solid reputation for quality and reliability, leading to future business success. This is all based on building great ‘Moments of Truth’. A ‘moment of truth’ is simply a time that a customer: Interacts with your business Makes a decision as a result Has an emotional reaction of some kind These moments of truth may occur multiple times, such as using your website for the first time, signing up for a product or service, paying for a product or service or receiving / using a product or service. Moments of truth are important because they have an emotional impact on your customer, whether that’s of satisfaction, frustration, happiness or anger. Find out how this all fits together and what you can do about it over the next few pages
BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Customer Service Guide – How to Use Customer Problems to Benefit Your Business
How can you turn customer problems into benefits? There are lots of steps that you can take to prevent issues happening in the first place, provide support and guidance when they do and resolve problems quickly and efficiently. You can accomplish this in several main areas: Provide reliable, tested, clearly documented products and services Allow customers to self-diagnose problems Make it easy for people to contact your business for help
Fix the problem as quickly and efficiently as you can Keep up with communication Follow up and learn from the problem
Provide reliable, tested, documented products & services Test everything yourself first – Although you may know your product or service well, it’s very important to test it and make sure it performs as a customer would expect it to Get external usability testing and feedback – Get a group of testers to try using your website, products or services. There are lots of places online where you can ask for feedback and testing Create clear instructions and guides on using your products and services – Next to having a great offering, you need to make sure that all of your instructions, guides and supporting documentation are clear, easy to follow and relevant
BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Customer Service Guide – How to Use Customer Problems to Benefit Your Business
Allow customers to self-diagnose problems Ensure your website has a support section – Have a clearly and easily identified support section on your site; this should contain links to all your main support tools Provide a knowledge base, FAQ and trouble shooting guides – People can only self-diagnose if they have the information to do so Provide a support forum – If your products or services are popular and you have quite a few visitors to your site, then a support forum can be a good idea
Make it easy for people to contact your business for help Make it obvious for how people can get in touch if they have a problem – If someone wants a problem sorted out, they will want it to be as quick and easy as possible to contact you Let people know that they are welcome to contact you for advice or support – Because so many of us have experienced bad customer service, we can be reluctant to approach businesses when things go wrong. Make it clear to your customers that you would like them to contact you with any problems and that you will resolve them as quickly as possible. Gather the information you need at the first point of contact – It’s much easier to fix a problem if you have all the relevant information, and customers will find it much less frustrating if you don’t need to go back to them several times for further details
BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Customer Service Guide – How to Use Customer Problems to Benefit Your Business
Fix the problem as quickly and efficiently as you can Let them now that you’ve received the problem and you’re working on it – Whether this is an automated or personal response, let your customer know that you have the information you need and that you’ll have the problem resolved ASAP Resolve problems quickly and effectively – This really goes without saying, but resolve the issue as quickly as you can, while still ensuring a quality fix Go the extra mile to fix things, do more than the customer expects – Go ‘above and beyond’ if you need to Demonstrate empathy – Apologize for the issue and demonstrate empathy with your customer
Keep up with communication Keep people updated on progress – People like to be kept informed of what is happening. Even if things are progressing slowly, there’s value in letting people know Meet your commitments and promises to your customers – If you’ve promised to provide updates at a particular time, make sure that you do Make the responses personable – People like to be treated as, well, people. If your responses are personable and professional, it will reassure a customer that you’re taking their issue seriously
BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Customer Service Guide – How to Use Customer Problems to Benefit Your Business
Follow up and learn from the problem Follow up with your customer – A day or two after you have resolved the issue, consider sending a friendly follow up to check that everything is working as it should and that the customer is happy Learn from the issues that people have and correct accordingly – Once the issue is resolved and you have an understanding of what the cause of the problem was, can you correct your service, product, website or documentation to stop it happening again? See how this all links together on the next page
BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Customer Service Guide – How to Use Customer Problems to Benefit Your Business
BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Customer Service Guide – How to Use Customer Problems to Benefit Your Business
Please find links to useful books below
Further Resources – Useful books Book Title I Love You More Than My Dog
Amazon US
View / Buy
Amazon UK
View / Buy
Amazon CA
View / Buy
‘Only an elite few businesses have passionate, loyal, vocal fans. This book teaches you how to join them.’
Achieving Excellence Through Customer Service
View / Buy
View / Buy
View / Buy
‘Proven techniques and hundreds of practical ideas that develop customer satisfaction and loyaltytwo ingredients to increase profits.’
Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service
View / Buy
View / Buy
View / Buy
‘This book includes startling new tips and innovative techniques that can help anyone create a revolution in any workplace.’
Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry View / Buy Customers Tell 3,000
View / Buy
View / Buy
‘This book shows you how to establish and maintain credibility for your brand by being authentic, listening and responding to customers, and forming relationships built on openness, transparency, and trust.’
More books on customer service
View / Buy
View / Buy
View / Buy
Other popular and relevant books on customer service.
Please note that the book links above are affiliate links; this means we get a small commission when you visit and purchase from Amazon. This doesn’t cost you anything but helps us to maintain and produce our free guides.
BUSINESS BULLETPOINTS Customer Service Guide – How to Use Customer Problems to Benefit Your Business
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