Restore deleted content, catch missing attachments before replies go out, and enjoy small but powerful UI improvements in this Helprace update.

We’ve introduced two new features to enhance feedback and content management in Helprace. Make customer comments mandatory for negative ticket ratings. Export knowledge base articles and community posts in one click.

No one likes insincerity, especially when you've got a problem that needs solving. That's why scripting is a dirty word in customer service. It's enough to bring up an image of pushy…]]> Liking this one? You might also enjoy How to Write the Best Email Ever: A Style and Etiquette Guide

Scripting is a dirty word in customer service.

It’s enough to bring up an image of pushy salesmen with fake smiles and cheap platitudes from faraway call centers. At the same time, it’s important to understand the purpose of scripting, when and why they could be beneficial in your support department.

Read More: The Best 25-Step Customer Service Training Guide

Back in 2012 the Journal of Service Research led an experiment, conducting low to high levels of scripted conversations between a reception clerk and a customer checking into a hotel. In the study customers correctly detected scripted conversations, which affected their experience in a negative way.

Companies that “follow the script” are singled out by customers and ridiculed online and offline. As a result, support departments tend to practice discretion in their use of scripts to help them approach every support situation as a unique one.

Companies like Bonobos, Dollar Shave Club and Zappos have long claimed to invest in completely unscripted customer service. They chalk up the increased cost of removing scripts from support guidelines or training manuals an inseparable part of their brand image.

Could there be any middle ground?

Why use scripts?

Scripts may be used by customer support staff in many routine situations:

• To follow up or send automated emails.
• To steer conversations the right way.
• To convey complex instructions regularly.
• When you don’t know the answer.

Scripts may be used by customer support departments for the purpose of working more effectively:

• To save time when replying to a ticket.
• To train support staff on typical user cases.
• To reduce error rates in their answers.
• Support staff may be tiered, or divided into teams with different skills.

Scripts may be used to manage support interactions and offering a specific level of service:

• Companies may have strict instructions on how a reply is crafted to ensure that support employees do not deviate too much from the company line.
• Specific questions may need to be answered according to the company’s standard. Feedback channels, media and manuals could be incorporated into a script.
• Some support departments work independently of the company actually selling the product. These outsourced call centers may need to rely on specific rules and regulations relayed by the parent company that they’d have to adhere to.

Why not use scripts?

Whatever industry you’re in, customers that are “on the fence” can easily switch to a brand that better connects with them. Even customers that are loyal to a particular brand can jump to someone that addresses their concerns better (even if the product or service may not necessarily be).

Script-heavy support can make customers feel unappreciated, and be a major pain point in the support experience. If not addressed by the company, it can contribute to churn over a longer period of time, too.

When not to use scripts:

• In situations where genuine feelings, empathy is needed. Empathy is difficult to get right and to teach to support representatives.
• When dealing with sad, angry or overly emotional customers. Instead, learn to pay attention to what customers are saying with active listening.
• When your comments could be interpreted as closed-minded, judgmental or insincere. Instead, learn to re-read customer requests and see the situation from their eyes.

How to find out if you’re overdoing it:

• Observe how your customer reacts to your support interactions, compare scripted interactions with non-scripted ones.
• Measure customer satisfaction after every support interaction and record it. If customers are leaving comments, take them into account.
• Listen to your gut feeling. Is your customer confused and has to re-ask a question again? Chances are that script didn’t fully address their question.

Try removing “rigid” scripts and embracing more of a guideline or a cheat sheet system. One of the ways this can be done is using placeholders (PS. you can use placeholders in Helprace’s saved responses).

Crafting a great support script

1. When you start a script, or a saved reply, ensure that you include a part about a customer’s name and topic they are asking about. Give them your name, if possible. This humanizes the interaction and removes the impression of a script.

Hi (customer name), I’ll be happy to help you out.

Hi (customer name), I really appreciate you telling me about this!

2. Rephrase the topic, question or main points of the subject matter your customer is asking about. Ask for clarification just in case. This sets a positive tone and makes the customer feel like you have actually listened to their case before answering.

Is it ok if I ask you a few more questions about (topic)?

I’m sorry to ask again, but I want to make sure I understand correctly. Are you having issues with (topic)?

3. Eliminate useless back-and-forth. Customers appreciate when you save them time and do some legwork for them. Suggest information outside of their initial question. Branch your answer out in order to cover a number of different customer responses / scenarios.

Would you like to know more about (topic 1)? If so, (details of topic 1) if not, we can talk about (topic 2).

4. There are times when our answers aren’t helpful, and most customers won’t speak up about this. When finishing up your conversation, ask the customer if you’ve answered their questions sufficiently or if there’s anything else you can help them with.

Did I miss anything in your question? Please let me know if I did.

Is there anything else I can help you with?

Additional tips:

Scripts are an invaluable tool for company executive and customer service managers, allowing companies to save time, money and deliver the support experience they most want to.

However, it’s also easy to slip into being insincere and lose that personal touch with the customer. Here’s a set of guidelines to consider:

• Know to remove the script when you really must step into the customer’s shoes.
• Avoid cliche phrases and statements that may come across as empty platitudes.
• Keep scripts short (unless explaining complex instructions) with room for modification.
• Keep track of customer satisfaction and examine their reactions to your scripted replies.
• Keep track of your scripts, which ones you use often and which ones don’t see much activity.
• Build a FAQ website or a self-service portal that allows customers to find the answer they need.

Most importantly, establish a schedule to revisit your scripts once in a while to reflect changes in support requests, company policy or your products.

With today’s customers stressed for time (and companies looking out for the bottom line), foregoing the use of scripts completely is just not practical. Besides, when used properly, scripts can help your staff offer better support and keep customers happier, for longer.

Read More: 10 Customer Service Skills to Look for in Employees

It’s a great feeling when customers come back to purchase more. Not surprisingly, the average business loses a fifth of its customers annually simply by failing to put the foot forward and…]]> Enjoying this one? You might also like New Customers vs. Return Customers: What’s the Difference?

It’s a great feeling when customers come back to purchase more. Not surprisingly, the average business loses a fifth of its customers annually simply by failing to put the foot forward and engage with their dormant customers. Statistics also claim that it’s easy money – retaining existing customers costs just a fraction (a fifth less) than seeking out new ones.

Customer retention refers to the multiple ways customers can re-purchase after purchasing from you before. This typically happens because you:

• Make it possible for customers to upgrade their plan or product after the initial purchase.
• Automatically renew, reactivate or repurchase after the initial purchase of the product has expired.
• May have a number of products and services that complement each other and are useful for the customer at different points in time.

Retention doesn’t have to be about getting customers on your side with freebies and contests (although this list of 50 affordable giveaway ideas may be worth to take a look at). Depending on the business you’re in and how competitive the industry is, you may need a combination of product and strategy to get your customers to return.

So what should you focus on when courting your customer base? How can you guarantee they’ll come back for more? We try to break it down with a number of tips, hints and strategies below:

Purchase patterns

Talk to the account managers and team leaders and get access to customer purchase patters. In addition, familiarize yourself with everyone’s activity on your site, where they come from, their time on page and what kind of questions they ask.

Figure out what the customer could buy but does not.

Get deep into every customer’s purchase history, as well as their length of time with you as a customer. Keeping track of your metrics (such as reactivations, conversions) are important, but any previous behavior will probably give you the best indication of what they’re likely to do next.

Arrange by value

Rank customers according to likelihood to repurchase or their lifetime value to you. While a lot of work, this will allow you to manage your support and marketing resources more effectively now and in the future.

All customers are likely to repurchase to a varying degree.

At the very bottom you’ll end up having the “low value” customers, that are probably just OK with your product, they could even be on the way to churning. You should not try to upsell these customers, rather, listen to their needs and try to coach them towards their objectives.

Segment customers

Not all your customers are created equal, and some are more apt to repurchase than others. This could be due to their financial situation, their relationship with you, the type of business they run, their geographic location, and more.

We all have different tastes, goals and values.

It should come as no surprise that your customers all have different objectives in mind, and use your product for different reasons. That’s why it makes sense to segment your customers into various groups based on what you know about them.

Put the customer first

Make every customer feel like they have a special relationship with you. Understand what business they’re in and the issues they face. Help them, offer ideas on how they could improve based on the information you know.

Customers must be at the forefront of all company decisions.

Get as much information about your customers as possible, demonstrate how and why you value why they are with you (and not with your competitors). Make it a habit to always learn more and uncover uncommon questions to learn even more about your users.

Communicate well

When initiating contact, be ready to adjust the communication medium (and style) to suit the customer. Pay attention to post-sale communication, as customers that already purchased will be influenced by your support in their future purchase decisions.

Get in touch for pre-sale, post-sale and important milestones.

Stay courteous, patient and polite. Don’t make the customer feel rushed in whatever medium or form you communicate with them. Customer service (and sales) quantity shouldn’t be prioritized over quality. Doing so will get customers running away instinctively.

Re-engage with all

Reactivating with customers who know you is one of the easiest ways to increase your revenues. Reselling and re-engaging should be part of deep-rooted culture, yet many companies still prioritize a culture of “sales” over reaching out to existing users.

Restarting conversations places customers in a position to purchase.

Show how your product or service can positively affect the customer’s performance. Point out their needs and create a compelling case for your solution – in other words, you should always upsell with happiness in mind.

Build a connection

In order to build credibility and trust in the eyes of customers, they must feel like they know you well enough to trust you. This happens when you always approach every customer service interaction as a relationship-building exercise.

Customers repurchase from companies they like and trust.

Aside from building an emotional connection, consider the practical aspect, too. Are you saving them time or giving them substantial value? It could be through faster service, better delivery, easier ordering, unique features and benefits.

Lose the policy

Carefully adhering to customer service policy isn’t sustainable if your goal is to get customers in the fold every time. Offering support that is personal, expertly tailored and effortless to the customer is.

This is not about losing integrity. Match words with actions.

This means a culture and dedication to customer satisfaction across the board, over-delivering on promises, removing “phone trees” even if it means bending a few rules and policies.

Staff training

Customers won’t always know the ins and outs of your product to the same level that you do. A support agent needs to inform, coach, and eventually, make the customer feel like they’ve made the right decision about their purchase.

Let them know their purchase is a smart decision.

Don’t dismiss innovation and embracing new ways of customer service training, new ways of doing things or new tools, especially those that respond to your customers’ unique needs and challenges. It may be tempting to innovate in the wrong areas. For example, innovating to improve response times is a great idea, but not at the expense of quality.

Remove friction

Friction is anything that could frustrate a user. It could be a pain point when executing a command. A convoluted way to perform a function. An excess number of steps needed to set up an account after registering.

Friction is frustrating, but not all friction is bad.

Positive friction has the ability of spicing up a mindless interaction and converting it into a memorable one. Lincoln Murphy claims that while a number of steps in an of itself could signify friction, the right value delivered may require the increased number of steps.

Be approachable

Give your customers some level of social proof. Where are your reviews and testimonials? How welcoming is your website, contact form, chat widget? Let your customers know that they can count on you to listen to their feedback.

Wherever your customers are, you should be.

After all, dissatisfied customers almost always (up to 98%) end up leaving without leaving any feedback. Don’t lose this opportunity – it can give you a second chance to delight them and win them over – so they repurchase.

Educate customers

You can’t expect your users to always understand the ins and outs of your products, how much time an upgrade or another product can help them save. That’s why educating your users while positioning your product the right way keeps their interest.

Never leave your customers to fend for themselves.

Customers nowadays are so bombarded with conflicting information, there’s an expectation for a company to act as a “consultant”, too. Customers want to feel good they choose your product. That feeling must be reinforced over a period of time, and a great way to do that is through education.

Say thanks

Get into the habit of showing appreciation when customers come back. It doesn’t matter if it’s for a product clarification or an upgrade. When you back up your words with actions, no matter how small, your customers will remember and share that experience with others.

Use words and actions your customers crave.

There are large companies like Nordstrom and Zappos that built their whole business on customer delight alone. We’ve gotten together 30 businesses to share how they thank their customers. They provided invaluable insight and ideas on how to better approach this issue.

Reciprocate often

Ever have a nice thing done to you, and felt a guilty need to return the favor? Some businesses may find it beneficial to put the first foot forward when engaging with, and working with their customers towards an objective.

Surprise, unexpected reciprocity packs and additional punch.

A first, it might sound unsustainable – but work with your customers towards their goals, such as growing their business or solving their problems. If you get your clients more business, they are likely to respond in kind, and put in a good word about you in their social circle.

Create a loyalty program

Customers are busy dealing with their own pressures and day-to-day issues. Give them a good reason to keep you in mind. Sometimes the easiest way of getting customers to come back is with a nudge – a loyalty program.

Ready an enticing offer, perk or time-sensitive opportunity.

A discount can be used once and forgotten. Give your customers a reason to remember you with a contest, sweepstakes, a rewards (points) system, or a reusable coupon. Reach out to different brands that you may want to combine your own product with as part of the deal.

Choose a help desk

A help desk lets you keep track and group customer conversations. Furthermore, it allows you to collaborate with other team members and send customizable, targeted follow ups.

A help desk makes communicating with customers easier.

If you want your customers to come back, your communication should be prompt, personalized and carefully organized. Choosing the right help desk software can make or break your support strategy and often is one of the most important company decisions of all.

Create a community

Getting customers interested in your brand, having the right content within easy reach, and giving users the ability to participate is difficult. If you have a customer-centric community, then it’s a lot easier.

Communities let customers know they matter to you.

Similarly, a community brings the whole company in line with the customer and their desired outcome. Isn’t that the most important thing when you’re trying to get them to stick around, buy more and stay engaged?

Maintain a knowledge base

Organizing information for customers (or just staying organized yourself) is a must for every company. Whether you need to build an internal document library or want to cut down on requests with a FAQ, it’s for you.

The right answers for everyone in every situation.

Building an engaging self-service experience is an art form. You need to offer fresh and useful information to everyone that comes in contact with your website. That is, for everyone with different levels of familiarity and experience with your industry and product.

Customer satisfaction needs an objective

Many business gain new customers, but very few of them actually are able to keep them. Users that join you in droves can leave just as quietly. That’s why tracking customer behavior and metrics like customer satisfaction, NPS scores and other purchase signals just can’t be ignored.

The question you should ask yourself is..

How well do you know your customer?

Read More: Measuring the Invisible ROI of Customer Loyalty

You may not realize it, but your knowledge base library is one of the most valuable tools for attracting new users and retaining existing customers. When you’re coming up with ideas…]]> Enjoying this post? You might also like 8 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Starting a Community

You may not realize it, but your knowledge base library is one of the most valuable tools for attracting new users and retaining existing customers.

When you’re coming up with ideas on how your knowledge base should look like, keep in mind that your articles are only half of the puzzle. The purpose of a knowledge base is to offer staff an easy document management interface while giving site visitors the ability to help themselves instead of hitting the support department with another question. At the same time, poorly organized content will fail to attract click-through rates and on-page time despite gaining a bunch of impressions.

What is a knowledge base anyway?

A knowledge base should inform, educate, motivate and enable users to make the most of your product. Its purpose is to make it easy for your users to navigate and find the information they need.

It should also offer customers a more convenient support experience. Meaning, accessible on mobile devices and from your main website. Essentially, your goal is to get readers to stick around and leave satisfied instead of contacting your help desk or support hotline.

Before you get started, ask yourself what your target audience is. What is their skill level, what are they able to look for, what type of content they prefer. Your help center should address the problems you want to solve for your readers. As a result, you may want to look at your internal document repositories (where there could be overlap with end-user documentation).

1. Listen to your customers

It’s estimated that our attention span online averages around 10 seconds. There’s only 24 hours in the day but there’s cat videos to catch up on, friends to chat with and also some work to do. So capturing user attention all starts with how you structure your knowledge base.

Order your content by difficulty. Start off with short, generic phrases and get more specific down the list. This works not only for structuring articles within categories but structuring your categories themselves, too.

Remember who you’re writing to and what their reading habits may be. Is the reader someone who’s familiar with your product, or someone who’s coming across it for the first time? When you’re finished setting up your content, give it a test-run. Ask others if they would read the whole piece or stop mid-way. Can you improve it?

2. Identify the subject matter

Your best content can only be created when you know what type of questions your customers are asking.

An obvious place to start would be your ticket library. What kind of questions are your customers asking most? Use tags to group them together. This will tell you what content you should be creating. Then, you can add saved replies with links to your documentation, to supplement your answer.

Helprace has a feature which allows your readers to rate knowledge base articles as “useful” and “not useful”. You can even integrate your knowledge base with user analytics to track site activity. Based on this data, you can see which articles are helping out your visitors and which are just gathering dust, so to speak.

3.Create a template for articles

A standardized template keeps your support documentation looking great over a long period of time, especially as your content library grows. It will get your users coming back to your knowledge base, because it’s easy to navigate and and answers their questions.

While you may only have a few articles to start with, consider establishing a standard for visuals and graphics. Establish a template or at least a formatting guide for all of your articles. Keep this article internal for staff-only access.

Here are some of the things you can include:

• The title, subheading and article tags
• Table of contents or quick jump links in your content
• Summaries, quotes or highlited texts
• Icons for your headings, graphics, other media
• Tables, graphs or checklists

Ensure that every article is easy to read, is coherent and relevant to topic type. Put thought in your structure just as you do for wording and media. Even little things like color matters when it comes to keeping readers on your page longer!

4. Separate articles into types

Is it a how-to or troubleshooting article? Is it an informative article? Are you sharing new product updates? Grouping articles into certain categories will allow you to offer relevant information that balances solving customer problems, capturing their interest, and keeping them on your site longer. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do users require step-by-step instructions? A how-to or troubleshooting article may be for you.
• Do you have to post regular updates? A What’s New or Updates self-service category is in order.
• Do you want to offer quick answers to questions? Create a FAQ, a Best Practices or a Get Started article.
• Do you want users to participate? Enable comments or feedback and votes on your articles.

Consider creating separate templates for each article type, as well.

5. Make use of tagging and linking

A well thought out tagging and linking system makes it easy for customers to find the right information (even though they typed something else entirely as the search query). It also helps you offer the most information on every given self-service page.

For example, you can tag your articles with select keywords and that will make it easier for users to find them. Similarly, you can utilize links liberally for the same purpose. Helparce allows you to link articles in the admin panel by simply searching an existing article’s title.

You also get article suggestions in Related Articles sidebar, it’s easier for your articles to gain visibility regardless what page your user is viewing.

6. Make content easy to browse

Get a pen and paper and jot down ideas for most pressing articles. A good place to start is to look at the pain points of your customers. What types of tickets keep coming in? What types of questions and feedback they are sending you? This is an excellent starting point.

As a next step, draw out lines to sub-categories you’d want to create. Again, this depends on your company, user base and product offering – but you should avoid going crazy with content categories. Here are some key tips to consider:

• Link your articles between each other well as to your company website
• Create a different portal or sub-category if you must get specific
• Constantly update articles with new information and remove duplicates

7. Keep the best stuff at the top

Have links that are easy to scan and understand to keep users reading. Try putting up these general links at the very top. Think of easy-to read titles that jump out at the user. Include action words in or consider phrasing titles as questions. There is no right or wrong way to title your articles, but here are some suggestions:

• How do I set up my profile?
• What is the return policy?
• How can I submit a complaint?

Lastly, don’t forget to collect feedback and traffic data on your knowledge base. That way you’ll always know what type of articles are popular and adjust their position on your knowledge base.

Keep going back to your articles!

There are many seemingly great knowledge base websites with a number of “bad apple” articles. Some articles may be too complicated, assuming that the reader has a clear understanding of the subject matter. Some articles mention integrations without linking to supporting documentation. Other articles give step by step instructions without clear screenshots or videos. Practice revisiting your articles after a certain time and adding up-to-date information.

How can Helprace help?

Helprace allows you to work behind the scenes, create private or public articles, save them as Unpublished to work on them behind the scenes. You can even choose publish dates for accurate revision management. Find out how else Helprace can help with your document management by trying out your free, no-obligation test run:

Since customer service is such a routine (and sometimes dreadful) experience in our lives, we love hearing about companies that break all the rules of the game. Stories that…]]>

Since customer service is such a routine (and sometimes dreadful) experience in our lives, we love hearing about companies that break all the rules of the game. Stories that turn ordinary situations into extraordinary, into something short of miraculous. Stories that turn regular people into heroes. Stories that, in a way, make us feel that anything ins possible.

Indeed, there seem to be no shortage of awesome customer service stories, some even a few years old, that continue making rounds on social media, or talked about on a random blog on entrepreneurship.

Zappos has long been known for its customer service. They took it to a new level when one support call lasted for over 10 hours and 29 minutes. Eventually, the phone call resulted in a shoe purchase, but the many subjects of the conversation still remain a mystery to us.

Three year old Lily wrote in to Sainsbury’s (a UK supermarket chain) concerned about the tiger bread having the spots of a giraffe. Chris King, a customer service representative responded, agreeing with her. Months later the chain renamed their tiger bread to giraffe bread.

Peter Shankman once, as a joke, tweeted that Mortons steakhouse should meet him at Newark Airport with a steak when he lands there. Indeed, two hours later, a Mortons representative came to meet Peter with a steak, shrimp, side potatoes and bread. This story immediately blew up on social media.

Six year old Owen lost his favorite toy Hobbes at the Tampa Bay Airport, but the staff had something else on their mind when they found it. Employees took picture of Hobbes at different places in the airport and quickly made a photo album of his adventures before returning the toy.

Two things stand out: they’re definitely not everyday events and didn’t take place at a small business. While no question that they are inspiring and beneficial (bringing positive word of mouth), how are these stories interpreted by customers, managers and business owners, particularly in the context of today’s customer expectations?

After all, if customers expect support staff to break policies in the name of wow-ing them, it could set a dangerous precedent. First, it normalizes exemplary, unattainable service as something ordinary and attainable. Second, it prioritizes needs of one customer over the majority. Third, it removes the brand from the equation. What is the brand’s (or even the manager’s) take on the fact that a frontline support rep went above and beyond their responsibilities, are they empowered to do so or was an invisible boundary crossed? It’s difficult to tell looking at the situation from the outside in.

A customer service story involving a large corporation or a chain restaurant can end up making a superhero out of one customer. A small business makes a hero out of everyone.

Why? It all just sounds more realistic to us. We assume a small business has a smaller team of people similar to us. We think they’ll be offering more sincere, human service. Most importantly, it proves that one doesn’t need a multi-million marketing budget to offer great support.

I had just ordered prescription food for my old cat. Then my cat suddenly passed away. I was heartbroken. I was wondering if I could now return all this food given that the box was unopened. After I contacted the store I noticed on their return policy that they didn’t accept returns on prescription foods. The agent wrote back saying they would be more than happy to credit me in full and their one request was that I donate the food to my local animal shelter. I started to cry – in such a dark time of my life, someone had shown such incredible empathy. It made getting past the death just a little bit easier.

I told all my friends about this experience and they were blown away. One of them even signed up for auto-ship after!– Alaina from advicemedia

A veteran came into our clinic. He had been to a few different clinics before and by the time he had his appointment with us, he was understandably frustrated. He started with something like, I know y’all don’t care about me and I’m just another number to you, so do whatever you have to do. Instead of proceeding with my normal assessment routine, I sat down across from him and asked him question: what’s going on? How has that made you feel? He opened up in a way that I didn’t anticipate or was prepared for. By the end of our appointment, he went from crying, to smiling and laughing..

As he headed out of the clinic that afternoon he said, Thanks. This has been different. You really care about us here.– Rafael from Rehab U Practice Solutions

I am a project manager for a commercial painting contractor and was using one paint supplier. While I was managing a job, it was becoming obvious that we were running short on paint. With seemingly no way out, I decided to call my paint rep over the weekend. And even though it was his day off, he managed get a rush delivery sent to the job site on the spot. This pretty much saved the job. When someone goes out of their way so you make your own customer happy, that’s definitely an unforgettable moment of great customer service.

It was unforgettable. His actions pretty much saved the job. – Jeff from Penn Coat Inc.

A long time ago there was this tiny dry cleaner place with one elderly Italian gentleman as the owner. When he saw your car pull up, he would go to the back and get your clothes, so by the time you entered his store, your bundle was ready to be picked up. Never mind the pink slip which was in your other pocket or other coat, he knew what was yours and always had it ready for you. It was truly out of this world. This level of care and customer service I’ve never seen before.

There was one dry cleaner who was different from the rest.– Adeodata from Business of Manners

There was an 86-year-old man, who was in search of a VCR so he could play his old VHS tapes reminding of his younger days. He signed up for eBay for the first time in his life. To his surprise, he found a guy in Phoenix who was selling his VCR player. The old man purchased it for $40. While most buyers usually leave an online review, the seller was surprised when he received a letter of appreciation in the mail. The man wrote that he was able to watch his life events including his retirement party and even his wedding that included appearances from family and friends, many of which are no longer around.

I never thought that selling a VCR could mean so much.– Nooria from GigWorker

In Mississippi there’s a locally owned restaurant called Taste of Detroit that I had heard about and decided to try. I went in, but from the moment I met the manager, John, I knew this place was something special. The way he engaged with the customers, checked in on them personally and actually tried to get to know people impressed me. During our conversation he found out I hosted book events and said that if we wanted to have our events there and were getting food we could use the place at no additional charge. I remembered that and it made me want to do what I could to help promote his business.

A local restaurant with a desire to listen and help out.– Curys from Curys Webb

Some time ago I worked with guitar majors at a nearby university. Most students lived on campus—making getting their guitar serviced difficult—so I offered to make repairs in the field. Piano technicians make house calls regularly: why couldn’t guitar technicians? My customers turned out to love the ease and convenience it provided. As a final note, excellent customer service starts with being present, simple as that. Turn the radio down, put away the phone or computer, and acknowledge the customer as another person with valid needs similar to yours.

Simply be present and listen. Make it easy for the customer.– Nathan from Learning to Speak Guitar

Years ago, I planned a Mad Hatter birthday tea party at a hotel. The catering manager suggested that the party be on the outdoor terrace. On the day of the party, however, the weather was abysmal. So she took it upon herself and surrounded the ballroom with 8-foot-high hedges. She completed the picture with one long table for 70 people with a great big ornate chair at one end for the Birthday Boy. Best of all, when the party was over, she presented me with a shopping bag of gifts, and, seeing that I was too busy to eat much, several boxes of goodies from the event.

This catering manager (literally) made the day brighter.– Allen Klein from Mango Publishing and VivaEditions

At one fast food place, my to-go order of fries didn’t have the cheese I had ordered on them so I went to the counter and asked for the cheese. The worker apologized and got out an entire new tray of fries, put fresh cheese on top, then told me to keep both. Little did I know, the company really overdelivered. When I got home I saw my fries had a tiny to-go cup of cheese. I ended up getting two cheese fries for the price of one, based on a mistake I made combined with their no-questions, great customer service.

This catering manager (literally) made the day brighter.– Stacy from Stacy Caprio

In conclusion…

Small business stories have a way of sticking with us. It’s that human touch, that individual approach, it’s the simple fact that the company owner can directly interact with the customer.

Most of what we hear we rightly assume was conceived and executed by frontline staff. But let’s not forget about the role company culture plays in this, too. Even at a small business, it takes a level of leadership to let employees in on it. This means establishing a culture that either taught such employee behavior, or empowered them to make certain support decisions using their own judgement.

What are some of the ways you can give your customers an unforgettable experience?

If you have great customer service agents, you'll get loyal customers that repurchase and recommend you to everyone in their circle. That's where your training program comes in…]]>

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If you have great customer service agents, you’ll get loyal customers that repurchase and recommend you to everyone in their circle. That’s where your training program comes in.

Along with crafting a catchy posting at a career site, scheduling interviews and hiring the best candidate, investing in customer service training is probably the most valuable thing you can do for the long term success of your business. It’s also one of the most effective ways an organization can connect with its customer base: by better understanding and faster resolving their issues.

Simply spending more time on your employees (including looking for the right skills, hiring the right individual, ensuring a rewarding work environment) is important and all, but it’s certainly not the complete picture. The other part is a well-functioning customer service training program, essentially the “glue” that motivates and gets your employees doing their best, which by extension, keeps your customers interested in you.

Read More: New Customers vs. Return Customers: What’s the Difference?

It should come as no surprise that training your customer service team is just as important as offering great customer service in the first place. More so, the perfectly trained customer service team will bring you more sales, lower your marketing costs, encourage loyalty (from team members as well as the end-user) and create a self-sustaining culture of customer success throughout your company.

The way you approach your customer service training depends on your organization. The skills and knowledge you want your trainees to absorb, the language and behavior you want them to utilize, and the degree of self-learning or self-autonomy you want them to have.

Why train for customer service anyway?

Imagine you’re starting a new job and receive no training at all. No matter how well you think you know the job, no matter how quick and talented you may be, you’ll be doing a lot of guesswork when working together with others or trying to best position yourself within the company.

Training does more than the obvious (that is, prepare you for your new role).

How you get trained affects your first impression of the company and give you a glimpse of your journey ahead. Naturally, it also affects your quality of work. When it comes to customer service, it can make a difference between a helpful, enthusiastic response and a mediocre one.

After you identify the right customer service skills and properly vet your new hires, you’ll have to settle on the type of training you want to provide. Before you come up with a training program for new staff, you should step back and consider your overall training strategy (now’s a good time as any!)

Companies launch new products or enact changes that can affect their customers constantly. Managers end up scrambling to get everyone on the same page (particularly in large organizations).

For example, when we release a new Helprace feature, we anticipate an increase in questions about it. That’s why we publish new documentation and add it to a saved response, as well as an internal note (with internal documentation) with a specific tag. This not only helps customers, but gets employees up to speed quickly, too.

Whenever your product undergoes changes, your website or contact form gets a makeover, make it a priority to get all your employees up to speed as fast as humanely possible.

Train for better support

Keep training short not to overload your audience and consider having a small test session at the end. Do the way they speak about the product in the context of the recent updates make sense?

Being prepared for emergencies means reacting to them the right way. When an unscheduled downtime or outage occurs, your team needs to be updated thoroughly so they can respond in the best possible manner.

Train for the right response

Prepare your course of action beforehand and try to get everyone trained all at once. Don’t wait until a crisis or emergency happens to inform everyone about how they should act.

What happens when you adopt a new tool or change how you use it? Some tools in your arsenal may be unrelated to your product, but you should still keep up with them (and get that across to your team).

Train for productivity and efficiency

Decide how much time you want to train for each tool based on how crucial it is to your sales, marketing or customer service efforts.

Keeping your skills fresh is the key to customer service excellence. Determine your training structure and how often you want to do it. Every quarter, half-year, or more often than that?

For example, we at Helprace have a “review” period where we go over some of the more negative support experiences and have a brainstorming session about how we could have improved. In the end, everyone (and not only our support staff) benefits from this!

Customer expectations don’t stay static over time, and neither should your support department. Even if they come naturally, certain skills must be reinforced and maintained through regular training intervals.

Conduct role-playing activities

Try mock calls that resemble a real issue common in your company. Proper crisis management and handling of difficult situations is imperative in keeping customers satisfied long term.

Team building activities gets everyone comfortable in working together. A sense of teamwork, purpose and direction is otherwise difficult to promote without team building training.

Introduce friendly competition and games

Here is a really fun list of 20 team building activities you can use. They can act as team energizers, helping with communication and problem-solving.

If you’re in an industry that goes through changes often, you’ll need to conduct training sessions for employees to relearn regulations, industry standards or keep up to date with legal requirements.

Look at what your competitors are doing

What kind of customer service and customer experience your competitors offering? If someone raises the bar in your industry, you’d better be aware and know how to deliver that to your team.

First days and weeks are tough for any customer support employee. Depending on the size of your organization or your support workflows, your onboarding may need to stretch over weeks and even months.

Excellent training and onboarding is essentially effectively introducing a new person to your existing working environment, but also a tremendous learning experience for the rest of the team. As you go over the support process, the interaction between team members, documentations and various tools that they use, you can make them feel comfortable early on – and that’s crucial for smooth sailing.

	Onboarding Before you even dive into training, spend the first day (or two) in a pressure-free social environment where everyone can get to know each other. Get your new hires comfortable where they are. Schedule an after work event, as a team lunch or a round-the-office tour might feel rushed for a true introduction.
	Training structure Optimize the structure of your training from start to finish. Plan out every day, including breaks, and leave enough room for questions and the possibility of tailoring training to individuals. Give your new hire an outline of the whole training process, including quick list of resources, office codes, etc.
	Product Devote the most time for theoretical and practical product training. No matter how great your agent is at communicating, they’ll be struggling to help customers if they don’t know your product well enough. Ready a “get started” guide for your recent hires with the most crucial features, useful shortcuts and internal documentation.
	Support tools Spend some time explaining the basics of the tools they’ll be relying on. Explain the roles of each tool and how they all work together to reach company goals. Include in your guide a list of tools, screenshots and their commands. This can act as a reference during training.
	Support process What is your typical support interaction like? Do you expect certain phrases to be used? How are your various support channels handled, support requests escalated, and so on. Draw a support flowchart, one that describes the customer support process from start to finish (with some examples).

	Positivity Part of being positive is about aligning your words and actions in a positive manner to present customers a solution. This is an essential skill when bearing bad news or in conflict resolution. Consider training exercises where you replace negative (or neutral) words with positive ones, as well as pointing out differences in tone.
	Empathy Whether it’s a happy, inspirational story or hearing about a negative situation, we tend to be empathetic by default. Train support employees to easily see things from the customer’s perspective. Tell a story (or ask your trainee) about a bad experience with a product. How did it make them feel and what did they end up doing?
	Clarity Keep an eye on how your trainee is conveying their thoughts to you. Can you understand them easily? Will your team and customers be able to understand them, both in written and spoken form? Get a trainee to present a complicated product fix to you as though you were a new customer. Limit them to five sentences or a few minutes.
	Decision-making What if the manager is not available? Your agents should be able to individually make difficult decisions. Figure out what warrants an “executive decision”, a certain type of customer or a certain situation. Consider support situations involving angry customers. Include examples with customers constrained by time, money, personal problems, etc. Ask your trainees how they would act.
	Self-control Understand the temptation of anger, irritation, procrastination, etc. Train your employees to have a positive outlook, to control their reaction to emotions, and to allow difficult support situations affect the next one. Ask your trainees what irritates them, what they have trouble dealing with. Ask how they calm themselves, how best to convey that “this is ok, nothing to be worked up about”.

	Demonstrations Demos can help communicate ideal customer service situations as you see it in your mind. You can demonstrate challenging requests that touch upon billing, discounts or refunds. Think of simulations: envision situations and ask trainees how they would react. Ask them for reasons for doing so. Avoid role playing, where trainees assume positions not natural to them (this could be useful in the soft skills stage, however.)
	Small-big Don’t expect your new staff to come up to speed all at once. Assign tasks with a complexity level of 1-5. Start trainees on a tasks with complexity of 1-2 for the first day, for example. Now is the time to finally give the reins to your employee. Start employees on only one support channel with an easy ticket queue (for example, “login problems”, “account change” or “feature requests”.)
	Mentorship A mentor is someone experienced in the support team, someone not too overzealous, or disingenuous either. Pick someone with enough product knowledge to coach and guide support trainees on real cases. Pick someone from a different department, team or someone at a higher level within the company. This can give the trainee a new perspective, help break the ice and give them a better understanding of their tasks.
	Shadowing Job shadowing refers to a mentor is left to work on their task themselves, with the trainee pitching in with questions or for clarification. This is effective when the trainee is already comfortable with the basics. Be aware of overstaying welcomes. Working while someone’s breathing over your shoulder can be uncomfortable. Have trainees pitch in by leaving internal notes in tickets, as well as link to internal knowledge base articles if needed.
	Trial runs Fit in some alone hands-on time in your training. No matter how much time you spend in the classroom, practical experience will likely be the best way for your employees to learn and retain information. During the last half of the day, give your new agent an opportunity to fly solo. Get them the freedom to work by themselves but be available if they have any questions.

	Feedback management Get your customer support staff involved in feedback logging and fix prioritization. Using the right tool (such as the Helprace idea portal) they can prioritize feedback via email, phone or portal. Support requests, complaints can all be seen as customer feedback in disguise. Get your agents to escalate these requests as feedback and follow up with the customer if any progress is made.
	Customer webinars If your staff are assigned to only one support channel, get them over on a different one once in a while. Another great opportunity for your support reps is participating in screen sharing sessions including sales or conference calls. They know your product and customers better than anyone, so why not get your best customer service staff to prepare a transcript and host a webinar or perform a one-on-one crash course session.
	Company blog Involve your support staff in your content marketing efforts, including blogging and email marketing. This can add much-needed variety to your content and hone up your employee’s writing and communication skills in the process. Why not have a support employee write a blog post on their desired topic of interest every three months? Aside from switching up their activities, it can prove to be a welcome opportunity to share their insights with the world.
	Help documentations Get your agents to pitch in with your help documentation. If you have a self-service portal or a FAQ site with a manger, you can move over some of their tasks (or give your agent the role of a proofreader). Don’t stop at your support documentation. If you have automatic actions, ticket tags, or canned responses in your help desk, you can get support employees provide suggestions on improving your workflows.
	Embrace improvement Your trainees are a perfect source of finding out what works and what doesn’t in your product. Take the opportunity to collect their feedback on your training program. Could you offer training on different mediums, such as video, text, discussion, etc? Test out other platforms, document the feedback and make the data available to the right echelon of your company.

	Track progress There are many ways you can collect data on your employees and new hires. Aside from understanding how they stack up against one another, you’ll get a better understanding of what to expect and how to improve your training. Track training progress on your side (grades, assessment, milestone tracking) as well as the trainee’s side (pop quizzes, awards). Share accomlishments and skill progression with your employees.
	Rewards system You want your employees to value their workplace and grow in their role, while maintaining camaraderie and friendly competition. Rewards systems are great in recognizing unexpected, outstanding achievements beyond the regular line of duty. How you assign a reward might be more important than the reward itself. Does your team decide who gets it? Is everyone competing against themselves or against customer (or company) benchmarks?
	Guidelines, not rules Part of empowering employees means curbing reliance on scripts in support. More than that, it’s about trust and believing your employees will do what’s right on your behalf. Why did you hire him or her? Likely, because you have some trust in their abilities. So give them the freedom to do their best. If you can’t remove the rule book, at least implement feedback from your employees to improve it.
	Out-of-office activities Once in a while, treat your team to an event outside of work, unrelated to work. Think of team coaching events, team retreats where everyone can get to know each other better on a personal level. Over time, employees will know all about your product and their job. What about learning about each other, over a game of baseball, or a barbecue? These types of connections can’t be made in the confines of an office.
	Open Culture One great way for customer service agents to continue learning throughout their career in support is by establishing the right culture. Build a team that welcomes everyone and all types of discussions. Introduce a tradition of openness, where everyone can call on each other if they need help. Try out a system of rotating employee pairing or having a “go to” guy in the team.

In conclusion…

While “hiring the right person” may seem like the ultimate cheat code to better customer service, the reality is much different.

That is, a customer service representative is often times one of the company’s most crucial roles with a lot of responsibility. The individual entrusted with such responsibility becomes the eyes, ears and face of the brand, whose words and actions are a reflection of the brand’s philosophy.

Sure, there’s a lot that goes into proper, effective customer service training.

That’s why it’s important to approach training as a comprehensive, long-term process that can always be improved upon. Your training program must be flexible, be able to accommodate a constant alignment and re-alignment of the individual element within the context of team and company.

Great customer service matters, and it always will. Ultimately, it’s your competitive advantage: a way to get customers to choose you over someone else and do it often. It’s in your best interest to prepare your customer service team to deliver on that promise, against all possible odds.

Read More: How to Inspire Employees to Care About Customer Service

Imagine there are two companies with identical marketing strategies, adding new customers at a rate of 20 percent per year. However, one company retains 90 percent of their customers…]]> Liking this one? You might also enjoy 10 Employee Customer Service Skills & How to Identify Them

Imagine there are two companies with identical marketing strategies, adding new customers at a rate of 20 percent per year. However, one company retains 90 percent of their customers while the other 80. What this means is that the first company will have a 10 percent growth of their customer base every year, while the other will have none. If you stretch this over seven years, the first company will have doubled its customer base, while the second one will not have grown by much.

Read More: Measuring the Invisible ROI of Customer Loyalty

While a rise or fall in the number of acquired customers can be quite obvious (and have predictable immediate effects), a small change in customer retention can greatly affect long-term growth. As such, repeat customers are:

• Are already familiar with your product
• Eager to give feedback or share concerns
• Receptive to your marketing efforts
• Incredibly easy to convert or up-sell
• Tell their family and friends about you

The cost of new customers

Traditionally, the CAC (cost of acquisition) metric, which, along with the customer lifetime value (the value of the average customer’s lifespan), can offer companies a well balanced picture of the value each customer brings.

Cost of acquisition works hand in hand with the amount of sales that customer gets you over time. As a rough example, $10 to acquire a customer may be high if a customer only makes one purchase. But quite low if a customer makes a $25 purchase every month for 10 years.

The cost of repeat customers

In addition to the above, you need to understand what your customer retention rate is. That’s the percentage of customers who, over a period of time, repurchase when compared to the same period before.

Understanding what your cost per acquisition per each of your marketing type (or channel) could narrow down how many former customers you are targeting, too. That’s because a portion of the cost of gaining a new customer is used on a returning customer (you are re-engaging and converting your existing customers that already know and enjoy your product).

What keeps customers coming back?

What’s an easy way to get customers coming back? Just save them time.

In 2017, Statista discovered that customers required fast shipping and easy returns as a primary reason to stay – all things considered, saves customers tons of waiting. To a lesser degree, making a customer feel appreciated, valued and reinforcing their choice in sticking with you, all this makes them come back, too.

With virtually hundreds of options at our disposal at any given time (and with the paradox of choice fighting against us), we still prefer to stick to a few familiar brands that we choose to attach our loyalty to. This type of emotional connection is what every business fights for, and something that won’t easily be lost even if the competitor offers a lower price or a better product.

10 ways to increase customer retention

No matter how awesome you are, some customers will end up leaving, all thing considered. Few of us recognize this or spend time looking at these inactive customers – so instead of focusing all your time and energy on wooing over new blood, we’ve compiled a list of things you can do right now to reengage with your existing customers.

How do you talk to your customers? Do you reach them out of the blue? Is your message relevant to them? Take a look at your follow up strategy and ways you re-engage with customers. Pay attention to every communication channel, including:

• Emails. Whether you could have done something better, or to offer your availability, follow up often.
• Conference calls. Put a face to a name if needed. Keep barriers, commitment low and rewards high.
• In app notifications. After a specific milestone is accomplished, ask customers what they thought of it.

Often, a company’s perception doesn’t match with the customer’s reality. Short of contacting your customers with questions of importance to them, you’ll never know what they really want. Furthermore, over 95% of dissatisfied customers don’t complain or share feedback.

Tips: Create a system (such as help desk tags, public idea portal, etc) for uncovering complaints or ideas thrown your way. Engage with them and spend time on talking, hearing them out, and use it as an opportunity to get these customers to remain with you.

Don’t think of your loyalty efforts as a “loyalty program”, think of it as a process that is applicable to all your customers. Think of it as a guideline instead, the bare minimum you should do to get your customers hooked onto your product or service.

Tips: This doesn’t have to be limited to price or features – instead, you’ll have to put more effort into your customer service, branding, unique thank you’s, activities surrounding special causes, freebies. Make sure your loyalty strategy is human and sincere.

No matter how similar you think your customers are, they’re all naturally different and may be using your product in a different way for different reasons. In this case, even basic customer segmentation is something that could definitely help out.

Tips: You may want to segment customers in order to offer specialized support or create a customer list for email offers. Think of what you have at your disposal. Name, address, birthday. On a customer’s birthday, why not make a priority of sending a happy birthday email?

Consider implementing a points system for customer rewards. This will help quantify customer value more precisely and allow you to visualize how much profit a customer is bringing you. This will get you in control of customer relationships, not to mention marketing and other expenditures.

Tips: Establish a “star” system for each dollar spent and coordinate the number of points you need to receive a specified discount on the next purchase. Consider a freebie or a specific white-glove treatment you could offer to those customers.

Some people, particularly in the US are likely to buy from (or boycott) brands based on their corporate adherence to social causes. This means that social welfare, economic development and even controversial, divisive issues are top issues for cultivating loyalty.

Tips: Run a survey, find out what customers “expect” out of a company. What do they consider a responsible company? Could it mean being a good employer? Operating in a socially/environmentally beneficial way? Investing in social justice causes?

Aside from your product or customer service, the easiest way to get customers to stick around is to simply let them know they matter. Remember that actions speak louder than words, and sometimes, a surprise card, free sample or gift certificate can make anyone’s day.

Tips: There are many ways to express thanks. Send a surprise card for a new customer, free gift with a purchase or a post-purchase discount. However, don’t get your appreciation efforts to replace great customer service, have it complement your support.

If you’re building loyalty on a small budget, run a simple contest or do a prize draw. This way you can reach a large number of your customer base, without spending much money in the way of prizes. Combine it with a short survey to gather feedback.

Tips: Create a number of contests for your most engaged, or most important customers. Make it a regular event, as it will maintain intrigue and build engagement – it’s a great excuse for sending that email newsletter or a way to follow up with those silent customers.

When companies join forces, their customers are taking notice. Brand image and values usually change once you partner up with a higher-value brand. Changes in operations, product prices or marketing costs can also help get a more loyal customer following.

Tips: Sometimes a strategic partnership is the fastest way to increase customer retention, but only if your partner has a loyal customer base and a reputation for excellent customer service. Partnering up with a poorer value brand however, could have the opposite effect.

Over nine out of ten customers don’t expect perfection from businesses – as long as a business is honest about their efforts. It’s not surprising that honesty and transparency is a key factor driving customer loyalty. Make your customers feel like they belong with you, like they can trust you.

Tips: Create a community that embraces criticism and dialogue, and engage with positive and negative comments alike. Engage with all customers equally, and extend a helping hand or lend an ear to everyone who’s raising concerns.

In conclusion…

Most businesses spend a large bulk of their time in building the initial customer relationship, building up the brand, the product, and eventually the sale. However, what happens after the sale? In some cases, the interest in continuing that relationship tapers off, (worse still, it happens when the customer runs into a problem).

Customers will take notice if you are open and honest with them, take initiative to care and be interested in them. If not, they’ll find excuses to avoid you at the next chance they get.

Read More: 20 Customer Service Management Tips to Implement Now

If there's anything you can single out that really can determine how well you do, then it's customer service. We spend countless hours agonizing over product development, trying to…]]>

If there’s anything you can single out that really determines how well you do, then it’s customer service. We spend countless hours agonizing over product development, trying to outdo our rivals and watching out for new entrants. So why don’t we revisit our customer service just as often?

Isn’t great customer service challenging to get right? You may ask. Perhaps – but with competition for market share (and new customers) being hotter than ever, there’s always room for implementing new ways to keep your customers sticking around – and new ones coming in.

Over the past years, marketing and business research firms have been predicting that customer service as a differentiation point will outshine all other product variables such as price or brand. This line of thinking continues unabated, so no one’s questioning whether it’s worth to invest in customer service – the only question is how much.

We’ve prepared 20 easy-to-implement ways you can make your customer service a bit better than the other guy.

Read More: 15 Secrets of Leading Customer Service Departments

1. Have a customer service policy

Once you process enough customer requests, you get a feel of what works and what doesn’t. Even a simple list of best practices and a policy of do’s and don’ts does wonders. Not only establishes a company culture on paper, but lets your employees know what’s expected of them and stay accountable.

A big part of this means being obsessed with customer service excellence, establishing a customer-first culture and holding regular meetings, going over reports and encouraging communication to improve all aspects of support.

2. Be customer-first, company-wide

What does being customer-first mean anyway? It means that customer service is given so much weight and importance in your operations that it receives substantial resources and investments to develop the customer service process.

Everyone in the organization must be engaged in customer service and have a say in it – this is the only way to build up a culture that will permeate every aspect of your organization.

3. Be willing to go the extra mile

Having a support policy is great, but only insofar as to set a general direction, expectations and the bare minimum that you’d like everyone to contribute to keep your support machine running smoothly.

However, an organization should give every employee enough autonomy to raise concerns or give feedback about every support experience. There should be a high a degree of individual autonomy for support employees, allowing them to react as they see fit in non-standard situations.

4. Measure your support trends

If you’re not measuring your customer service, how can you figure out where to improve? Ensure you know what’s happening behind the scenes in your help desk, and host regular meetings to go over general trends in request volumes and customer satisfaction.

Take the opportunity to note who’s doing what and give kudos where necessary. See if you can improve or change your responses, your response times, or service level standards.

5. Treat customer service as a philosophy

Great companies are always learning, and putting what they learn to use. And to do that, recording answers, solutions and documenting unique customer service experiences to improve future situations might be important.

Lastly, have that information available to the right group of people within the organization. Keep an open dialogue and encourage cross-department feedback from across the organization.

Read More: How to Inspire Employees to Care About Customer Service

6. Make everyone part of customer service

There’s no better way to set your policy in motion than getting everyone in your company involved in customer service, from the CEO to the accountant. It may sound like a resource drainer, but doing this gives you a much better understanding of your customers and employees at the same time.

This can help rile up various departments and individuals under one goal. It also gives you a balanced, diverse pool to collect feedback about customer service experiences, and ultimately pinpoint areas to improve upon.

7. Make it easy for the customer

Customers are a company’s most important asset, so approaching every customer interaction as if it’s your last – is seriously a must. However, this is easier said than done since this level of convenience takes a lot of coordination and resources to set up behind the scenes.

This means having multiple support options, easily accessible support channels on their website. For example, telephone, chat, a FAQ site, web portal, API or other ways of contacting you. Establish support profiles to allow you to better interact with your user base.

8. Know all about your customers

Great service means going above and beyond, sometimes going into the customer’s account and performing functions for them. You can also use customer data to solve a problem before it escalates into something bigger. In order to do all that, you must know as much as possible about the customer you’re talking to.

This means knowing their contact details, personal details, past interactions, order history and more. You may also want to pull in additional information about your customers from a CRM system or introduce an internal customer database right into your help desk software.

9. Identify and engage with devoted customers

Smart companies look at who their best customer advocates are – and these are the types of people that are happy to offer their time and insights in the first place. Build relationships with them, as they are literally a cradle of high quality, actionable feedback .

Feedback from devoted customers can uncover the problems they face, how they use your product, the features they’d appreciate most. Use this to shape buyer personas and ideas on how you can better market to them.

10. Throw in surprises and bonuses

Everyone loves surprises, it’s part of human nature. Customers that get taken aback (in a good way) by a surprise gift or discount will likely remember the company down the road. Keep a spreadsheet of who’s receiving what and update when necessary.

Part of this could be learning and optimizing effective follow-up strategies. This could mean reaching out to old clients for follow-up calls or business development calls for discussing business life, or for giving out advice.

Read More: Top 10 Things not to Say to Angry Customers

11. Be eager to help

If asked what they want and need, people are eager to share what’s on their mind. Sometimes all they need a green light, or simply an indication that someone is listening – without any guesswork or judgment.

Be inquisitive during every support interaction. Encourage support staff to ask “how can I help?” and listening. By doing so, you are leaving the conversation on a positive not and open-ended. You are not trying to push anything, sell anything – only seeing what the customer is trying to get done.

12. Respect the customer’s time

If a customer is the business’s greatest asset, time is the customer’s greatest asset. If a support rep promises something will be done by Friday 2 pm, then anything else is not acceptable to the customer. They don’t expect it “earlier than” or “around” 2 pm, but exactly at 2 pm.

This also means refraining from transfering customers around to different support staff or departments. In large companies and with specialized requests, this could be unavoidable, but these effects should still be minimized.

13. Take responsibility, and let it be known

You’ll never hear a great customer service employee say something like “that’s not my job”. A great support rep takes responsibility and lets the customer know about it every step of the way.

More than being a reassuring gesture, customers want to know they are being helped. While customer service can’t always deliver solutions, it should at least deliver on empathy, promises and clear, concise communication – that is a must.

14. Peraonalize, personalize, personalzie!

Regardless of your support medium (voice, email or chat), unless you’re talking to customers in person, there is always a risk of coming across as impersonal. Running a remote business? Jump on a call, a webinar, a screen sharing demo – something that will quickly ease up any misconceptions and misunderstandings.

Keep customer information handy during every interaction, and make sure to make notes (Helprace has editable internal notes and sidebar notes to help out with this – not to mention Sidebar Apps that pull in external information about your customers).

15. Show appreciation wherever possible

Thank the customer when they contact you, for their time when they complain to you, and for their business as a whole. A customer that’s “on-the-fence” can be easily reinvested in your services

Learning how to spot strategic opportunities for thanks, doing so in the most effective manner, designing the right loyalty programs – all this can have tremendous ROI. There’s positive word of mouth, repeat business, and generally warm feelings you get from making your customers fall in love with you all over again.

Read More: How to Handle 7 Most Difficult Customer Service Situations

16. See things from the customer’s perspective

Put away the fine print and policies, if only for a second – listen to the customer’s story. The ability to step into a customer’s shoes and see the situation from another perspective allows companies to provide a tailored, relevant answer regardless of the situation.

Knowing how and when to say the right thing after listening is important – for example, empathizing with a customer’s anxiety about an event tomorrow may require you to do some fancy footwork to ensure they get their order before the end of the day.

17. Take every chance to inform

Smart businesses make sure they reach out to inform the customer, every single time, no matter how small the reason. It serves two things: the first is that it leaves the door open to conversation. The second is the customer aren’t hit with surprises (and likely, even more stress!)

Even if you think there’s a substitute that’s exactly what your client wants, avoid making such “executive decisions” without first checking in with the customer beforehand.

18. Know how to reassure when needed

When a customer is unhappy about something, more often than not they just want answers. Using positive language while stating facts (eg. exact time, date, and what you’re doing) is key. This (likely) diffuses the situation and shows that you’re actively working on resolving their issue.

One of the most valuable skills a customer support representative can possess is the ability to think on their feet. This means being able to calm down angry customers without losing their trust or your credibility.

19. Turn every “no” into a solution

We created a popular post about saying no the right way, but what’s more difficult is turning a “no” into a “yes”. This requires a particular level of skill and expertise honed over time.

This comes with proper customer service training, employee exercises where they’re presented with sample situations, wanting a certain feature, a refund or some sort of perk. A proper response will include a clear explanation, appeasement and reassurance, all craftily presented.

20. Reach out to unsatisfied customers

Practice reaching to to customers unhappy with you (or those you left on a bad note with). You may think that this is a huge waste of time (and a difficult proposition altogether), but you might be surprised. In fact, sometimes an unhappy customer just needs an listening ear or to know that their voice matters.

Who knows, maybe you can save the relationship. And even if you don’t, it can give you even more insights into their situation: how and why they could be a poor target audience or uncover valuable feedback you could use to improve your business.

Customers look for signs a business cares about them

One of the most important things you can do with your customer service is to make it visible. On your website, in your documentation. Share customer stories, positive reviews, experiences. Embrace customer feedback in your content strategy. Similarly, make customer service a priority in you company. Make it visible to your staff by treating them right – make them feel valued, important and part of something great.

I remember when I first heard about the "help desk". It was like hearing about UFOs - No matter what I read on the subject, I still had no clear idea what it was and how it could help me.…]]> Enjoying this one? You might also like 10 Reasons Why You Need Customer Service Software

I remember when I first heard about the help desk. It was like hearing about UFOs – No matter what I read on the subject, I still had no clear idea what it was and how it could help me.

Then there are the terms and acronyms that can make even the sanest person go mad. SLAs, ISTMS and IT help desks further muddle the waters. So what is what in this jargon maze, and what do all of these funny terms mean?

A help desk, in its broadest sense, is a place where users turn to get their questions answered. So how come the term has grown to mean many different, and sometimes conflicting things? For example:

• A help desk is likely all about email management and shared inboxes.
• A service desk is a trouble ticketing and issue tracking system.
• There’s ITIL, ITSM and IT Service Management related standards.
• Call centers, or departments that accepts and responds to calls.
• Knowledge base systems, internal or external help sites.

More or less, they refer to software, tools, departments and standards designed to provide customer service.

Read More: What Is Help Desk Software Anyway? Helpdesk Explained

Depending on who you talk to – IT professionals or customer service reps, some will claim that the words “help desk” and “service desk” are different in the sense that help desks are designed to offer “help” while a service desk provides “service”. In a way, they’d be right.

• One person’s “help desk” could be another person’s “service desk”, with their own vision of it.
• ITSM professionals, industry analysts, journalists, or even members within an organization can have their own name for it.
• Using one term over another depends on what you’re talking about, who you’re talking to, the level their knowledge on the subject, etc.

Individuals using this term are likely referring to a request management software beholden to an IT department or an organization charged with managing IT systems and services.

In this context, while a help desk is designed as an add-on for existing IT activities, the service desk designed to work as a service-based delivery method (hence its name). The word “service” suggests there’s a single point of contact between the service provider and the user.

Now, the full-fledged “service desk” can have a “help desk” component as part of it. For example, a service desk may recieve an “incident” or a “question” wich might be directed to a help desk, while the “service desk” only deals with the service requests essential to the operation of the IT department.

One could use the IT prefix to remove any doubt that they’re absolutely, positively referring to IT.

That’s right, a service desk can also be called an “IT Service Desk or IT Help Desk” – specifically, (to avoid confusion) to refer to a system capable of managing the “service life cycle” or the lifecycle of IT processes. Importance is placed on things like coordination and control across all necessary functions needed to manage IT services – with the aim of continuous improvement.

IT departments need a system flexible enough to changes with an effect on IT services (tools, processes, documentation, etc). This means that a desired system should enable beneficial changes to be made without (or with minimum) disruptions to IT services.

ITIL refers to an infrastructure library that offer best practices for incident management. It also allows organizations and departments to decide how and where to assign the work – including efficiency, accountability and service standards.

Essentially, the proper service desk definition was born out of the ITSM best practice framework. The idea of “managing IT as a service” had a definite role in guiding IT organizations to implement a service desk, including implementing and enforcing various ITIL recommendations for it.

According to the ITIL definition, a service desk is “The single point of contact between the service provider and the users. A typical service desk manages incidents and service requests, and also handles communication with the users.”

A call center (or call centre) refers to a place or area where telephone calls are handled, and is often used to describe an organization’s department of telephone support operators. The term “contact center” used interchangeably not only to include telephone systems but also help desk software, as well.

It’s also a loose term used to refer to a customer service department of an organization. A remote or virtual call center can refer to operators (in groups or as individuals) working from home, remotely or as part-time advisors to smaller branch offices.) This is largely possible due to cloud technology and the ability for centralized customer service software to accommodate such operators.

Businesses may want to build a help center (also known as a help portal) that allows users to find answers themselves. This could consist of a self-service guide, wiki, faq, online manual, user guide or a simple document depository. A powerful search, easy navigation and “suggestion” for the end-user is important in this case, as the user is presented with an answer with minimal clicks.

A knowledge base should be cleanly integrated with your help desk, not only for easy access and linking between content, but to understand how your users are using self-service to resolve support requests. This is important in order to keep customer satisfaction high.

In today’s world, with various definitions being strewn about left and right, you’re left to your own understanding of the subject matter to say (and mean) the right thing. It really depends on your organization, the work you do and what you expect out of your software.

Read More: How to Choose the Best Help Desk Software in 15 Easy Steps

Remember, even if you don’t meet your users face to face, your software is a conduit between real people. Building relationships isn’t only limited to small businesses or mom-and-pop stores – but also to IT or brick-and-mortar businesses.

The easier you make it for users to reach their goals, the more engaged they are with you – the more value you can extract from them.