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Diversifying your business offering in today’s competitive markets is more important than ever and demands an outside-of-the-box approach. This does not always mean having to come up with a brand new, innovative concept that no one has ever thought of before. Rather, it is about understanding every aspect of your product or service, from beginning to end, and recognising areas to improve which would be deemed valuable by your customer.
Customer service is a prime example of this. No one enjoys having to call a support desk, which is exactly why this aspect of your business is perfect for a radical overhaul. Changing the experience clients have with your support desk could dramatically improve customer satisfaction.
6 tips for making the support desk your hidden USP
1) Personality (still) goes a long way
As with every aspect of business, it is the people who bring true value to the process. During the recruitment process, pay particular attention to the selection of your support engineers. Determine not only the skills necessary to the role but the personality characteristics you want your clients to interact with.
Not only should a support engineer be a natural problem solver, but they should be overflowing with a can-do attitude. These are the people who ‘make it happen’ and follow through on their commitments to the very last.
2) No more transferring calls!
There is nothing more irritating than ringing a support desk only to be continuously transferred, all the while having to repeatedly explain your problem to each new support engineer who picks up the phone. Not only is this woeful customer service, but it is eating up valuable time your support desk could be using more efficiently elsewhere.
Instead, you could save time and impress your clients by designating a support engineer to a client, offering the option to call the same support engineer back, or committing to returning their call within a designated amount of time.
3) What is your client’s preferred channel of communication?
Chances are your workday and your client’s workday are rarely, if ever, going to be perfectly in sync. Avoid the frustration of unanswered callbacks at both ends by offering multiple channels of communication.
Traditionally, voice call and email would be the two main contenders, but 2018 is predicted to be the year of the chatbot. Chatbots can be employed to directly solve a minor issue your client is experiencing, or they could be part of a filtering process so that both the client and the support desk are using their time most effectively.
4) Maintain your brand
When a business plan is initially drawn up, growing the brand is carefully designed and scrupulously maintained. However, often this prudent process barely encompasses the support desk. By building your client’s expectations only to fail them when your client needs you the most can leave a bad taste in their mouth.
To retain your clients and encourage long-lasting client relationships, it’s worth taking the time to extend the building blocks of your brand to your support desk. Consider every step of the process your client will take when getting in contact with you and decide what kind of experience this should be to reflect your brand.
Not only must their problem be solved, but they should leave with a positive impression of your business, reaffirming why they chose you in the first place.
5) Map out your client’s journey
Understanding every step of your client’s journey, from a vague awareness of your business offering to a fully-fledged and loyal customer, is valuable knowledge for successful client acquisition as well as retention. By taking an innovative approach, you can apply your in-depth understanding of your client’s journey to pinpoint new ways your support team can bolster this process.
Perhaps your team could act as a knowledge bank at the beginning of your client’s journey instead of simply at the end? If your potential client seems to be spending a particularly long time on a product page of your website, your support team could make themselves available to answer any questions they may have via a popup webchat.
By mapping your client’s journey in this way not only do you become more aware of new opportunities for your support team, but consistency is more likely to be maintained throughout the entire process.
6) Support your support technicians
Highly trained and knowledgeable support technicians do not rely on scripts. Scripts can be helpful in the initial stages of a conversation to quickly filter the specific problem for effective time management. However, turning your support technicians into robots is not only demotivating for your team, but it is something easily recognised by clients and never receives a favourable response.
By investing in high-quality training which encompasses both the hard and soft skills necessary for the task, you can ensure a first-class customer service with every interaction.