Implement Best Practices To Make Social Customer Service Stick

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Respond immediately

The reality is social media implies immediacy, and customers expect brands to respond immediately. In fact, Facebook Pages show a company’s response times to resolve issues.  Brands need to respond in minutes. Social customer service isn’t only about solving problems; it’s also an opportunity to connect authentically, engage, and leave a lasting positive impression that will drive loyalty. In fact, 71% of customers who have a positive social media service experience are likely to recommend that brand.

Be consistent.

Consistency is one of the most important things to providing a great experience. It builds trust. It illustrates what customers can come to expect from a brand. Consistency also drives retention, loyalty, and advocacy, and helps you acquire new customers in the process.

Personalize the experience.

According to Accenture, 81% of consumers want brands to understand them better. Being authentic and showing empathy creates experiences that drive loyalty. You’ll be able to connect and engage on a deeper, more personal level and customers will leave feeling happy.

Be proactive.

Social customer service isn’t only about resolving issues timely and effectively. It’s also about anticipating needs and acting accordingly. And that means regularly monitoring customer activities on social media to determine when it’s appropriate to engage with a customer or alert other employees to get involved.

It also provides an excellent opportunity to obtain customer feedback, encourages customers to share their experiences with their social networks or offer additional tools to help customers be more successful. Brands should always be on the lookout for opportunities to drive customer value.

Share insights with other organizational teams.

The information you obtain from engaging with customers is vital to be able to improve the customer experience. Thus, you should share insights with other stakeholders so these insights can be acted on and improvements to existing processes can be made to enhance customers’ experiences.

Measure and monitor.

Measure the social customer service you’re providing through such metrics as CSAT, CES, NPS, and others. Be methodical. Know the KPI’s you need to achieve your desired outcomes. It’s important not only to measure but also to monitor and analyze trends so you can make improvements to enhance a customer’s experience.

Bringing it all Together

Providing an excellent customer experience is a must. Including social customer service in the mix will help brands create experiences customers expect. Social Customer Service will help brands shape conversations by engaging customers before and after purchase to drive customer lifetime value.

Job brief for a customer service representative

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The following are duties and responsibilities for a customer service representative: 

A customer service representative, or CSR, will act as a liaison, provide product/services information and resolve any emerging problems that our customer accounts might face with accuracy and efficiency.

  • Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries
  • Generating sales leads that develop into new customers
  • Identifying and assessing customers’ needs to achieve satisfaction

The best CSRs are genuinely excited to help customers. They’re patient, empathetic, and passionately communicative. They love to talk. Customer service representatives can put themselves in their customers’ shoes and advocate for them when necessary. Customer feedback is priceless, and these CSRs can gather that for you. Problem-solving also comes naturally to customer care specialists. They are confident at troubleshooting and investigate if they don’t have enough information to resolve customer complaints.
The target is to ensure excellent service standards, respond efficiently to customer inquiries and maintain high customer satisfaction.

Responsibilities

Customer Service Responsibilities list:

  • Manage large amounts of incoming calls
  • Generate sales leads
  • Identify and assess customers’ needs to achieve satisfaction
  • Build sustainable relationships and trust with customer accounts through open and interactive communication
  • Provide accurate, valid and complete information by using the right methods/tools
  • Meet personal/customer service team sales targets and call handling quotas
  • Handle customer complaints, provide appropriate solutions and alternatives within the time limits; follow up to ensure resolution
  • Keep records of customer interactions, process customer accounts and file documents
  • Follow communication procedures, guidelines and policies
  • Take the extra mile to engage customers

Requirements

  • 1. Proven customer support experience or experience as a client service representative
  • 2. Track record of over-achieving quota
  • 3. Strong phone contact handling skills and active listening
  • 4. Familiarity with CRM systems and practices
  • 5. Customer orientation and ability to adapt/respond to different types of characters
  • 6. Excellent communication and presentation skills
  • 7. Ability to multi-task, prioritize, and manage time effectively.

If You Don’t Take Care of Your Customers, Someone Else Will

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Why you have to care for your customers

The basic truth is, to be successful in sales you need to be a Jack of all trades and a Master of looking after your customers, else, you will realise that, other outlet will take your customers away from you. So there is a HUGE financial link between high levels of customer satisfaction and the bottom line of a company.
 For example,  if a company eliminates just four representatives in a call center of about 36 agents (that’s about a 10% layoff), the number of customers put on hold for four minutes will increase from 0 to 80.  

Understand the following and work on the lapses if you are on this table: 

  • 90% of customers dissatisfied with the service they receive will not come back or buy again.
  • Only 4% of unhappy customers bother to complain.  For every complaint we hear, however, 24 others go un-communicated to the company.  Imagine that.  So, in theory, if you have 10 complaints in a month, that means that potentially 240 customers also have complaints but just didn’t share them with you.  But they did share them with others…
  • Unhappy customers tell his or her story to at least nine other people.  That’s not the “word of mouth” you want about your organization.  And with today’s social media, I think the number is growing.
  • Of the customers who register a complaint, between 54-70% will do business again with the organization if the complaint is resolved.  That number goes up to 95% if the customer feels the complaint was resolved quickly.  This is commonly referred to as “service recovery”: we all make mistakes, but it’s how quickly and thoroughly a company resolves those mistakes that determines whether a customer will remain loyal and engaged.
  • 68% of customers who quit doing business with an organization do so because of company indifference.  In other words, if you don’t respond and/or resolve a customer-related issue, your customers perceive that as not caring about their business.  And it takes 12 positive incidents to make up for one negative incident in the eyes of customers.

The following are the possible way out:

  • Develop listening and learning approaches to capture the voice of the customer.  We need a way to hear – and understand – their needs, expectations, and requirements, not just of the products and services they are buying but how they prefer to buy them…the whole customer experience pre-, during, and post-sale.
  • Consider the touchpoints you have with your customers – the phone calls, the face-to-face interactions, the emails, and so forth.  And then proactively think about how you can create positive interactions – experiences that satisfy or exceed customers’ expectations.  Consider doing this in a team or department meeting to get everyone on the same page and exchange ideas for better service touchpoints.
  • Identify processes that touch the customer – ordering processes, inquiry processes (like call/contact centers and your website), complaint and suggestion processes, physical space (your lobby, your “store”), and certainly service/product delivery processes – and ensure that each of these customer-facing processes is designed to ensure more service “deposits” than “withdrawals.”  Then,
  • Focus on your workers: train your staff to ensure that they have the skills and tools necessary to serve customers, internal and external.  Cross-train employees so they can step up to fill a variety of needs, which also gives you capacity and flexibility in your staffing model.
  • Reward staff for their good customer service (and for service recovery).

These tips don’t only apply to retail, service-oriented businesses.  They apply to manufacturers, schools, healthcare providers, non-profit and governmental agencies.  Remember, 90% of dissatisfied customers won’t come back: so there is a huge financial return for those organizations which truly focus on customers rather than just talk about customer service.

Think like a customer to deliver the best Face-to-Face service

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How can you think like a customer in other to deliver the best? 

You need to be aware of your body language and your tone of voice and how both are affecting the perception customers have of you and your company.

“Using professional actors to deliver immersive and interactive training makes perfect sense because they are the experts in voice, body language and how to calm nerves if someone lacks the confidence to approach customers or interact with them,” Lucy Morgans.

She adds: “Actors spend years understanding their body and characteristics. They are also aware of how their mood changes their body language and how energy levels can fall during a busy shift as tiredness kicks in and what to do.”

The importance of body language

  • Do you come across as bored and disinterested?
  • Be aware of your facial expressions and/or any physical habits (we all have them)
  • Does the customer look unhappy or confused? Or angry?
  • Are you making eye contact with the people you are talking to?
  • Are you coming across as friendly? Think about the power of a smile
  • Think about how you perceive people in different situations based on how they appear and act
  • You also need to be able to read other people’s body language so you can react accordingly.

It isn’t just what you say, it’s how you say it

Remember to be articulate. The words and phrases that are crucial to the information you need to convey must be spoken clearly

  • You need to add light and shade to your voice to sound interested and engaged
  • Think about accentuating key words to help you communicate more effectively
  • Use an upward inflection at the end of a sentence from time to time
  • Actors talk about he 5 ‘p’s’. These are Projection (can people hear you if you are talking to a table of people in a noisy restaurant, for example), Pace (how fast are you talking? If you are reading a list, give people time to take in the information), Pause (you pause for effect if you are talking about something important? Perhaps a special offer or meal), Pitch (how does your voice sound? Is it monotone, too high or too low, and is this affecting how people react to you?), and Power (do your words have the right impact? You may have certain words or phrases that have to resonate with the customer).

“It is also important to be a good listener so you take on board what the customer is saying and can offer the correct service. Sometimes we can be so focused on what we have to say that we do not actively listen,” says Morgans.

Dealing with complaints

If you are asked difficult questions or someone is complaining remember to remain calm and truthful. Authenticity, empathy and a willingness to help will go a long way.

  • By sympathetic that a problem has occurred. This is not admitting fault (unless this is obviously the case) but accepting that there has been some inconvenience for the customer
  • Explain why something went wrong. Why was the food cold/late? Why was their room not ready? Why are you out of stock? Why was there a delay in the service being offered? Basically, what happened?
  • Inform them of how you have responded. What changes have you implemented. What has happened to solve the problem and (hopefully) ensure it won’t happen again

How Healthy Employees and Customer Experience Are Connected

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Did you know that prioritising your physical and mental health can help you have more?

  The fact is being healthy has a different definition for everyone, which means when you’re in a good head-space and feel energised physically, you’re more likely to be productive and excel at work. 
Working at an office all day usually means a lot of sitting. Sitting at a desk has been proven to have detrimental effects on the body, including poor posture and even being linked to diseases like diabetes. There are plenty of ways you can achieve more movement throughout your day but first, try setting a goal for yourself.

Again, sitting at your desk all day, you’re likely looking at your computer screen. Did you know that the light coming off of your screen can actually cause symptoms like headaches and dry eyes? So, the best way to help reduce the strain on your eyes to avoid these symptoms is to ensure that the brightness of your screen is close to the brightness in the room you’re in.
There’s no denying that work causes a lot of stress for people. Being able to properly manage stress inside and outside of work can make you excel at your job, which means knowing and using the mental health tools that work best for yourself.

Managing stress at work and being mindful for your physical health can have amazing effects on the rest of your life. Small steps like this set you on a path for a happier, healthier lifestyle

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Easy Way to Level Up Your Customer Feedback Program

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Great impact of feedbacks.

The only way to know if your customers are satisfied or what issues constrain their positive experience with your brand is through customer feedback. Most customers are reluctant when it comes to filling out surveys or answering questions, which makes the compiling of information challenging.

Email marketing is still a leading form of digital advertising, even though it’s one of the oldest channels on the internet. There are two basic methods in which you can choose to implement a survey that your website visitors can fill out. Both methods are highly effective because they allow users to provide their answers on the spot without leaving the page.

The simplest way is to place your survey somewhere on the page where it’s easy to see and doesn’t affect the usability of the website. The other way is to create a pop-up survey that activates by various triggers. Per example, if you’re running a dissertation service, ask for feedback when the client confirms the reception of the order. This is inarguably the most cost-effective solution which can significantly improve the amount of data you can gather from your customers.There are more than 3.5 billion active social media users in the entire world. Analyze which network entertains the largest number of your clients to see where you should focus your attention. Keep in mind the audience engagement with your social media profiles because you want to address the audience that’s most likely to show interest in sending their feedback.

you can forget about surveys and simply create amusing posts and ask for opinions in the comments, whilst paying attention to the number of likes and shares as indicators. Numerous custom essay services could produce engaging social media content that captures the attention of your audience and provokes a response.

Progress is most commonly the result of creative and dedicated work as well as repeated testing and failing.

Customer Service Week: Good service is magical

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It is Customer Service Week in October and if you are  all out of ideas, do not despair, here are some awesome themes and activities. 
Customer Service Week is both an international and a national celebration and it brings out the importance of customer service and of the people who serve and support customers on a daily basis. National Customer Service Week is celebrated during the first full week of October, and this year it falls on October 7-11th. Each year, thousands of companies across the world celebrate Customer Service Week. They represent leading financial, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, retailing, hospitality, communications, not-for-profit, and educational organisations, as well as government agencies and others.
The theme recognizes that good service is magical. It can turn an unhappy customer into a satisfied long term customer. It can turn an occasional customer into a repeat customer. The best companies recognize that the celebration is actually focused on the employees. After all, they are the ones delivering the exceptional service, to both their internal and their external customers. They are the ones who impact the customers’ experience.

  1. Start the Week with Breakfast – Have a kickoff breakfast when everyone comes to work. If you want to get the C-suite involved, have the executives serve all the employees. According to Gessert, “There’s no better way to say, ‘You’re important to us.’”
  2. Dress Up Day – Set one of the days of National Customer Week aside to let people do something different clothing-wise. Maybe it’s a casual day – or let employees come up with a theme that includes colors or uniforms. Maybe they dress in the attire of their favorite sports teams. The key is to have fun with it.
  3. Internal Recognition and Rewards – It’s always motivational for employees to be recognized for their accomplishments. Consider a town hall meeting and use it as an opportunity to celebrate the success of the organization.
  4. External Recognition – Consider taking the celebration outside of the company. Let your customers know about some of the people “behind the scenes” who deliver the service and support they need.
  5. The Power of the Pen – Executives and managers can take time to pen handwritten notes to employees. Many employees keep these notes. This type of recognition is personal, meaningful and gives the employees a sense of pride about who they work for. Provide a blank thank-you card to every employee and ask each of them to write a note to another fellow employee. This is peer-to-peer recognition and appreciation.
  6. Have a Charitable Fundraiser – Doing something special during the customer service week as part of your “Giving Back” program is always a fun and meaningful activity. It’s a rallying point for employees and makes the statement, “Yes, our business is important, but life is more important.”
  7. Bring in an Outside Speaker – Many of you reading this article will know of a professional keynote speaker on customer service,  We are suggesting  you bring in a customer service speaker  to talk to the employees about the great work they are doing.  and ask if they would join you and deliver a few words at the kickoff breakfast or another time throughout the week.
  8. Recognize Your Customers – Even though we want to focus on employees, it’s still okay to shine the spotlight on your customers too. After all, it is called National Customer Service Week!

Reasons why You May Not Be Getting your dream Job

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Can you remember how many job vacancies you have applied for?

Have you imagined why you have applied for several jobs and attended countless job interviews and you have still not been able to get a job?

Applying for jobs and landing those jobs are two different ball games, you know why? It is how you apply for a job that determines if you would ultimately land the job or not. Yeah, this may sound shocking because you have felt like you are close to getting a job, after sending out hundreds of your CV and probably landed job interviews that impressed you, but at the end no job!

We understand that putting in all your effort to search for a job and getting no result at the end could be exhausting because it sure takes courage to keep trying after failing many times.

Regardless of how many times you have tried to get a job and failed, one thing you should know is that job search is an intentional process, and you must be intentional about the right things you should do if you want to get results.

Landing the job of your dreams has little or nothing to do with how many applications you send out, but it has everything to do with the quality of the applications that you send out. You must learn how to apply for fewer jobs and land more interviews that will ultimately get you the job you want. So let’s take a look at some reasons why you are not getting hired:

1. Not Knowing your Career Path

Knowing your career path is the first step you need to take even before you start searching for a job, you know why? It is simply because you need to know the kind of job that best fits your education, skills and even your personality. The truth is that most job seekers think that they can do any job, but that is not true because they cannot do any job. Nobody can do every and any job, there are different jobs for different people.

Discovering your career path is key to finding a job. Employers find it annoying when you apply for a job that you are not even qualified for. Discovering your career path will help you apply for jobs that you are most suited for.

2. Lack of Experience

As it is the dream of every job seeker to land a job, it is also the dream of every employer to get an employee that will get the job done.

Your prospective employer has not worked with you before and does not know what you can or cannot do. The only way an employer is convinced that a candidate can do the job is from the candidate’s experience. An experienced candidate is a better choice for an employer because a least the employer is sure that the candidate has done the job before, and the employer can ride on the candidate’s residual knowledge.

When you lack the experience needed to do a particular job, you would likely not be given the job. Most job vacancies come with stipulated years of experience needed to do the job (some 2 years, 5 years, etc.), and if you apply for that kind of job with no experience there is a higher probability that you would not get the job. However, not having a job experience is not a write off for you. You can still get a job even without any experience, you know how?

3. Poorly Written CV

Do you know that recruiters spend an average of 6 seconds reading your CV? This simply means that you have 6 seconds to convince the recruiter that you are the best person for the job, but how can you do that with a poorly written CV? Gone are the days when you take someone else CV and just duplicate the content without caring if it corresponds or not. If you are still doing that, then you are probably the reason why you not gotten a job offer yet.

Your CV is regarded as your marketing tool, and as a marketing tool, you should use it to sell yourself to your prospective employer. If your CV is poorly written, then it will not fulfill its purpose as a marketing tool. To land the job that you have been waiting for, you have to make sure that your CV is properly written. If you find it challenging to write a good CV, then this CV writing tips is what you need to create an amazing CV.

4. Not Preparation for Interview

A job interview is an opportunity for you to physically meet with your prospective employer to convince him that you are the best person for the position and to also find out if that organization is the best place for you. Many job seekers have the mindset that they are going for an interview to answer questions that the recruiter will ask them, but that is not the essence of an interview.

The reason for an interview is for the organisation to meet with you and determine if you are the best person for the job, and for you to also meet with the organization to discover if that company is the best place for you or not. Since you now know the reason for a job interview, then it is important that you do not go for a job interview unprepared.

Getting to the stage of getting an interview invite in your job search means that you are a few steps away to landing the job of your dreams. You should not thwart all the effort you have put in so far to create a CV, cover letter, and even applying for the job by not preparing for your interview. Not preparing for an interview is not preparing to get a job. 

List of Customer Service Terms You Need to Know

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Customer service has its own lingo including dozens of distinct customer service terms.

The more of those customer service terms you know, the easier it’ll be to communicate clearly about the challenges your team faces. Together, you can strive toward improvement.

So let’s look at some of the top customer service terms you should know.

First Call Resolution (FCR)

First call resolution (usually expressed as a percentage or ratio) is when a customer’s question or complain is successfully dealt with the first time he or she makes contact. FCR is considered a vital sign of good customer service. It demonstrates that reps have the knowledge they need.

First Reply Time

First Reply Time is the time that elapses – hopefully in minutes or seconds – between the point when a support ticket is created and the point when an agent responds. A low first reply time makes a strong early impression with a customer who might already be frustrated.

Knowledge Base

A knowledge base is an online database of information support agents can look up to find ready resources for solving particular problems. That can include complete answers for troubleshooting technical issues. You can also develop customer-facing knowledge bases.

Business Rules

Business rules are the specific automation rules an enterprise uses to manage various functions. For example, your email marketing campaigns all have business rules. Business rules can also apply to how a customer service call is routed, responded to, and resolved.

Call Center

A call center is a type of contact center that focuses on handling a high volume of phone calls. On the other hand, a contact center may be devoted to all kinds of omni-channel customer service. Call centers can be inbound service departments or outbound sales departments.

Churn

Customer churn happens when an existing customer ceases doing business with a company. Your churn rate is a measure of the percentage of customers your business loses this way over a certain period of time. Poor customer service is a major contributor to churn.

Coaching

Coaching is where the rubber meets the road on your talent development program for agents. Coaching can take the form of feedback, one-on-one meetings, and contextual lessons delivered within the call management system itself. Good coaching is a predictor of performance gains.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT is one of the most basic metrics customer service teams need to track and grow. It is the average score customers give to a specific interaction with your brand.

Customer Experience

Customer experience has a lot of competing definitions, but you can think of it as the sum of feelings, beliefs, and expectations a customer develops about your brand at a point of contact or during his or her interactions with your company. Each individual can be said to have a different customer experience based on which aspects of the enterprise they’ve interacted with and how well those performed.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

LTV is the revenue impact of a single customer over their entire history (and projected future) interactions with the brand. Customer service teams support higher LTV by making sure product glitches don’t end a customer relationship. They can also do cross-selling and up-selling.

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How to write an effective complaint letter

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Customer complain

Having a problem with a product or service can be frustrating. When you’re trying to resolve a problem with a company, the first step should be to discuss your concerns with a representative of the business. If a phone call or email doesn’t resolve the problem, consider writing a complaint letter.

A letter is important. It puts your complaint on record with the company, helps preserve any legal rights you may have in the situation, and lets the company know you’re serious about pursuing the complaint.How to write an effective complaint letter

  1. Be clear and concise. …
  2. State exactly what you want done and how long you’re willing to wait for a response. …
  3. Don’t write an angry, sarcastic, or threatening letter. …
  4. Include copies of relevant documents, like receipts, work orders, and warranties. …
  5. Include your name and contact information.
  • Be clear and concise. Describe the item or service you bought and the problem. Include serial or model numbers, and the name and location of the seller. If you’re following up on a conversation, be sure to say who you spoke with and confirm the details of your discussion.
  • State exactly what you want done and how long you’re willing to wait for a response. Be reasonable.
  • Don’t write an angry, sarcastic, or threatening letter. The person reading your letter probably isn’t responsible for the problem, but may be very helpful in resolving it.
  • Include copies of relevant documents, like receipts, work orders, and warranties. You also may want to send copies of emails and notes from conversations you’ve had with the seller about the problem. Keep your originals.
  • Include your name and contact information. If an account is involved, be sure to include the account number.

You may want to send your letter by certified mail and request a return receipt. That way, you’ll have proof that the company got your letter and who signed for it. Was this helpful?