Customer support is a vital component of any modern business. The way that you treat your customers and respond to any issues that they have will have a significant impact on the way that they come to view your business. In this way, customer support should be considered closely with your marketing efforts.
Building strong and positive relationships with your customers will put you in a powerful position for the rest of your business’s existence. Conversely, if you neglect the importance of customer relationships, your business will ultimately end up slipping into obscurity. The interactions that we have with the businesses we use tend to stick with us; we remember businesses that treat us very well or very poorly.
When you are training your own customer support department, there are certain things and concepts that you need to focus on more than others. Focusing on the wrong aspects of your customer support strategy will mean missing some important opportunities to add valuable skills and talents to your team. Here are some of the most important things to focus on when you are training your customer support reps.
Empathy, Patience, and Consistency
These can be thought of as the holy trinity of good customer service. If you can encourage your reps to always consider these three things, and to make sure that their every interaction with your customers is guided by these principles above all others, good customer support will follow naturally. Showing empathy for your customers means that you acknowledge their point of view, as well as any failures of your own business. With empathy comes patience, and with your support reps all operating with both empathy and patience, you will have no trouble achieving consistency.
Adaptability
Consistency is important in ensuring that all your customers receive a high level of service at all times. However, every customer and every situation is different. It is just as important that your support reps know when it is time to adapt their training and to take a different approach as it is that they follow procedure. Giving your support reps access to the right training and tools is essential for ensuring that they are able to adapt and respond to situations as they arise.
Clear Communication
This applies both to your communications with your support reps as you are training them, and your communications with customers who are having issues. In order to ensure that your communications with customers are always clear, you should make the process of reaching out to you as simple and straightforward for your customers as possible. A great way of doing this is to use a system like this hosted helpdesk. The easier communications can flow back and forth between you and your customers, the quicker and easier it will be to resolve any issues they encounter.
Knowledge
The more your support staff knowsabout your business and industry, the better the quality of the support they will be capable of rendering. It’s no good expecting support reps to do their jobs with incomplete information, or only a narrow view of your business’ ethos. Naturally, your support staff won’t be able to learn everythingabout your business and its operations, but you can make sure that they understand the most essential information for the most common issues. As long as you encourage adaptability on top of this, your support staff will be able to react to any issues when they need to.
If you train your customer support reps in the right way, they will become one of your business’ most valuable assets. With a strong and solid network of support reps in place, you can relax, safe in the knowledge that your workers are able to handle any customer issues without you having to watch over them.
