How to Create Killer Customer Service

Have you ever bought something (big or small) only to have it fail shortly after receiving it? Extremely irritating! You put your trust into a company, gave them your hard earned money for their product, and they let you down.

Now comes a critical point for the company you purchased from - your support request. If handled poorly, you’ll return the item and be hard pressed to buy from them again. If handled well, then you will be singing their praises to family, friends, colleagues, etc.... Doing so generates word of mouth promotion and is a huge win for the company.

Highly paid marketers across the world work tirelessly everyday to create positive word of mouth promotion like this. Instead of it coming from the marketing team, it came from the simple “do what’s right” efforts from the customer service team. As you are building your company, it’s important to understand and take advantage of the unique position your support team has to create positive word of mouth - and possibly even more so than your marketing team.

Invest in it
Never underestimate the power and importance of good customer service. Some even consider it to be the bones of the business as it structures how you will interact with and are ultimately perceived by customers. Having a strong support organization creates incredible benefits to your company and helps you win more than just sales.

It may be easy to consider the costs of the correct people and technical systems for high quality customer support as an expense. Simply put - don’t. It’s an investment from which you can reap serious returns. Have a look at how fixing their notoriously horrific customer service, Comcast says it has helped increase the company’s bottom line.

Anytime a current customer contacts you with an issue, resolving their support issue is first and foremost. However, it is also an opening for a sales conversation. Your support personnel are in a great position to ask questions and uncover new opportunities with the client.  And it is often information that wouldn’t be divulged to their sales person. By having the proper systems in place and good communication between the support and sales teams, customer issues can often lead to new sales opportunities.

Connect behaviors and methods to customers
Customer service provides the link between the customer and the business. It is embodied by the behaviors shown and methods used and carries complete alignment across the organization. A basic example is the person who answers phone calls for the company. They could be the first human contact a client may have with your business. How you are represented in this brief interaction is a critical first impression (behavior). Did you have a pleasant tone? Were you helpful? Was the call answered promptly? These behaviors can all impact how that first impression is formed.

The call may then need to be transferred to the correct person. The technical system your company uses should support a continuation of this positive first impression (method). Is the hold tone or music annoying? Did the connection to the next caller go through to the correct person? Was the call dropped? If your personnel do an amazing job with setting a great tone for the caller but your phone system fails to make the transfer, the behaviors and methods are not aligned.

The correct behaviors for your support team to exhibit are learned through training and experience. However, one of the best things you can do as a leader to encourage the right behavior is to empower the support team. Give them the autonomy and ability to do what’s right for the client, even though it may not always seem right for the balance sheet.

Keep the right people and keep score
Some signs of good customer service and customer support are a friendly staff, the willingness to go above and beyond what is requested or required, the ability to anticipate needs, and the drive to better someone else's experience. Finding a person who is a perfect fit for a customer service job can be tricky, and it's often a good idea for customer support personnel to have required educational hours to ensure that they are the best fit for their job and are constantly improving. The budget for this education will be earned back times over when you have a strong customer service department to help your customers.

What you measure will encourage the behaviors you are seeking from your support organization and indicates how well your team is delivering support. The measured areas can vary across organizations and industries, so here are some general performance indicators to consider tracking:

• Active support issues
• Resolved issued
• Average response time
• Average resolution time
• Complaint escalation rate
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The goal with customer support goes beyond helping a client solve an issue. Winning with customer support creates loyal customers who can rely on you as their preferred supplier. Your support organization is often one of the first contacts a client has with your company and is an ongoing connection to your clients. Understand this and use it to your advantage. Empower your people, invest in them and the tools for them to do their job well, and have the proper performance metrics to grow positive word of mouth and increase your sales.

I'd love to hear what you or your company are doing to create killer customer support organizations, so feel free to give your input in the comments below. Share to your network so we get their input as well! Interested in contributing to Flicker Effect? Send me a message and let's talk!