Customer Support Strategies You Must Know
“A company is only as good as its customer success team”
These were the words of my boss in our recent meeting and this is a honest truth about the customer success team of any business. No cap 🧢
The customer success team has such great power over a business and is saddled with a great responsibility— customer experience, customer satisfaction, retention, brand success, and growth… Phew! That is a lot!
And with great power comes great responsibility.
Knowing all of these, it is very obvious that customer support is not just vibes and insha Allah. There is a need to strategize.
Before we start with the strategies, it is most important to note that “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and neither was the third mainland bridge (3MB). I guess what I am trying to say is that these strategies will require a lot of hard work and legwork (and I don’t mean dancing 🌚) as well as implementation.
Now unto the strategies;
Know Your Brand
This involves anything and everything about your brand. What you stand for as a brand, your goals and how you hope to achieve them, in-depth knowledge of products and services. Only by this would you be able to render support to your customers effectively and efficiently. Nothing turns off a customer faster than a confused support team. Be proactive and be efficient.
Communication
What you say is just as important as how you say it. In communication, it is not uncommon for meanings to be misconstrued. To avoid this, communication needs to be;
Easy: forgo the big grammar and technical jargon and adapt simpler and understandable terms. The goal is to communicate with your customer and not a show of language prowess.
Effective: if you are the only one understanding what you are saying, you are not communicating.
Genuine: there is a need to be genuine while responding to customers and not perfunctorily. More often than not, customers can perceive genuine responses from a mile away.
Let Customers be King
This is simply putting the needs of the customers first most especially when resolving a customer’s complaint. Let the focus be on how best to resolve complaints and give value to customers rather than the process. Processes can be a bit robotic. Step out of the process and relate with the customer. It works wonders.
Develop a Process
I know!!! 👀
I just said to step out of the process and now I am saying to develop a process. Processes in this context are all the steps taken towards effective and efficient problem resolution. As a customer support executive, you will often have to work with other departments in the process of resolving customers’ complaints. However, you are the only one answerable to the customers. This is why you need to develop a process that allows for the complaints to be resolved while ensuring that customer experience and satisfaction is at the maximum. 💯
These strategies are not one-size-fits-all. Always remember to take into consideration the dynamics of your brand and team.
Cheers,
Seun