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It is normal to have angry customers but how you deal with them is what is crucial. Here are 4 brilliant tips for dealing with angry customers

1. There is Power in a Name.

Addressing your client with “I’m sorry ma’am,” for example, sounds a lot more formal and much less sincere than “I’m so sorry, Monalisa.” Once you use a name, you’re suddenly speaking with a real person; a client who has a job and a life and a legitimate reason behind his or her frustration, rather than a faceless “ma’am.”

2. Smile When You Talk

Donning a pleasant expression immediately helps your voice convey friendliness and openness. Staying straight-faced, on the other hand, immediately removes that kindness from your voice. You can easily hear more of a strain indicating that you don’t really want to be talking to this person right now (which, no matter how true that may be, isn’t how you should want to come across).

You’ll probably feel silly, and in the cases of angry clients, you might have to fake it but forcing a smile does wonders when it comes to calming someone down.

3. Connect With Your Audience

It is about picking up on the tone, knowledge and personality of the person you’re talking to. Some customers have high technical knowledge; some need high-level explanations. Some need extra reassurance that things are going to be OK; others don’t want to waste time unless you can offer a solution on the spot.

This kind of mirroring can help you connect better with your clients; they’ll feel more like you truly understand what they’re saying and that will help them be more open to your assistance.

4. Hit the Mute Button

Often, clients are looking to release their frustration. It’s not exactly fun to be subject to it; but it is part of the job. But giving the client full rein over the conversation for the first few minutes helps him or her get out those frustrations, blow off some steam, and eventually, be able to focus on getting to a resolution.

Talking to a dissatisfied client will never be easy, but by using these techniques to put your customers at ease and show them that you want to help, you’ll get to a resolution much quicker.

Credit: Avery Augustine

Looking to get ahead of the curve? Use these 10 excellent customer service phrases to delight and excite your customers while they are in contact with you.

1. “Thank you.”

Customers love to feel valued. Thanking them throughout the call will dramatically increase the feelings of goodwill from the interaction.

2. “I can absolutely help you with that.”

The phrase, “I can absolutely help you with that,” signals your willingness and ability to help the customer address whatever issue he or she is facing.

3. “Great question.”

When a customer hits you with a reasonable query, this phrase affirms the validity of their call and signals that the conversation is heading down a good path.

4. “I understand.”

Another response that alleviates customer anxiety and signals your own competency and ability to help. This phrase reassures your customer that they’re on track to solving their problem.

15. “What else can I help you with?”

Solving for the main customer query is great but solving for ancillary questions and issues that prevent future call backs is better.

6. “How is your day going?”

This customer service phrase is the inverse of complaining about your day. It shows empathy and curiosity about your customer’s state of mind outside of merely solving their problem.

7. “I appreciate you bringing this to our attention.”

If a customer raises an issue, it’s wise to thank them for surfacing the problem in the first place. Doing so shows that your company is committed to serving customer needs.

8. “We appreciate your feedback.”

Thanking a customer for feedback is a basic move you can execute that signals to your customer that your company is genuinely committed to problem-solving and improving the overall customer experience.

9. “I can do that for you.”

When a customer requests something that is within your scope of execution, let him or her know. Again, this customer service phrase quickly signals that the conversation is heading towards a positive resolution of the customer’s problems.

10. “Your business means a lot to us.”

Every customer is important, regardless of how much they are paying your business. Treat them as such.

Credit: Jeremy Boudinet

Good customer service is the lifeblood of any business. You can offer promotions and slash prices to bring in as many new customers as you want, but unless you can get some of those customers to come back, your business won’t be profitable for long.

Good customer service is all about bringing customers back. It is also about sending them away happy, happy enough to pass positive feedback about your business along to others, who may then try the product or service you offer for themselves and in their turn become repeat customers. If you truly want to have good customer service, all you have to do is ensure that your business consistently follows the five golden rules:

1. Answer Your Phone

The first rule of good customer service is that your business phone needs to be answered. Hire staff if you need to, but make sure that someone is picking up the phone when someone calls your business and also answer properly to make sure that customers calling your business are thrilled with the way the phone is answered rather than put off.

2. Don’t Make Promises Unless You Will Keep Them

This may well be the most important of all of these eight rules for good customer service. Reliability is one of the keys to any good relationship, and good customer service is no exception. If you say to a customer, “Your new bedroom furniture will be delivered on Tuesday”, make sure it is delivered on Tuesday. Otherwise, don’t say it. The same rule applies to client appointments, deadlines, etc.

3. Listen to Your Customers

Is there anything more exasperating than telling someone what you want or what your problem is and then discovering that that person hasn’t been paying attention and needs to have it explained again? Listening to everything your customer says or asks is very key

4. Deal With Complaints

No one likes hearing complaints, and many of us have developed a reflex shrug, saying, “You can’t please all the people all the time”. Maybe not, but if you give the complaint your attention, you may be able to please this one person this one time and position your business to reap the benefits of good customer service. Properly dealt with complaints can become opportunities.

5. Train Your Staff

If you have staff, train them to be always helpful, courteous, and knowledgeable. Do it yourself or hire someone to train them. Talk to your staff about good customer service and what it is (and isn’t) regularly. Most importantly, give every member of your staff enough information and power to make those small customer-pleasing decisions.

Credit: Susan Ward

 

Looking at recent times, technology has shown its importance and it has helped survive this unusual period where physical contact is restricted and places locked down for weeks etc.

The following are changes technology would make to the future of customer service in Nigeria:

1. Face-to-face video communication will increase:

Eye contact is powerful and customers, more and more, will look at non-video, real-time voice conversation as a thing of the past. We know that eye contact improves relationships and facilitates openness so video is not just a growing expectation of consumers, but a viable business-improving tool for vendors.

2. Real-time messaging will outpace email:

Email is dead, and long live chat. Right? Well, yes and no. Just like video, customers expect you to be always on and most prefer live chat to email. The world operates in synchronous time now, so that means you need to move up your communication technologies and strategies while still using email to share important information.

3. Remote work will become more normal:

The future of customer service will not only push customers online, but it’ll move service reps there, too. Rather than being confined to call centres, service reps will have more tools to work remotely. They’ll field customer inquiries from the comfort of their homes, instead of having to work in an office setting. Email, live chat, and social media can even be operated from a smartphone. As businesses see the potential savings of reducing office space, it’ll become much more common for service reps to work remotely.

4. Bots (and AI) will help professionals, not replace them: Bots can be there when you can’t, like while your customer service team is asleep. Bots can also improve self-service for customers, and reduce expenses for vendors, by providing a new, repeatable, and inexpensive method of communications. Over the next 10-25 years, this technology will continue to make huge advances and will be capable of doing even more of what humans are doing today. It will be smart for customer-facing teams to keep up with bot progress and stay on the cutting edge here to provide increasingly better experiences at increasingly lower costs.

Having a good and standard customer service is very key to the business. The following are secrets to having a standard customer care:

• Constantly improve the client experience

 

• Value people over profit: People keep business running. Profit can only be generated when people patronize the business. Happy customer breeds happy business and profit is made.

 

• Hire the right employees and be consistent: The right employees are always ready to move the business forward rather than do whatever they like. They are usually attentive, objective and ready to improve. A positive attitude is important for a customer service representative.

 

• Ensure the entire customer service team know about your products: To remain a top organization, the client experience must constantly improve and evolve. Customer service team need to think of how to constantly and continuously improve client experience and resolve issues better. To best serve them it is important that everyone in the organization knows the how, why and where of the company’s product from the creative inspiration behind them to the fit, nuances, care and durability. To disseminate product knowledge to the customer, it’s essential that team members know everything there is to know.

 

• Positivity, empathy and resolution time should be a priority: If a customer contacts you, you have a choice: be like everyone else, or every time exceed their expectations and leave a lasting impression that turns them into raving fans. After handling tens of thousands of calls, emails, and live chats for our clients, we have found three keys to standing out: positivity, empathy, and resolution time.