3 Must-Try Ways to Boost Your Customer Service Skills

Customer service via flickr
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Whether you provide customer service to people outside your business or other departments, customer service is a crucial component of any department.

If you want to cut down on misfiled complaints, tickets that can’t be followed up on, and uncertainty about procedures, knowledge base software is an important investment. Customer service depends on being able to give answers about any particular topic at any given time, and many departments are set up so that this isn’t possible.

The right software can improve customer service a great deal in a variety of ways, once properly implemented in your company. Here are some ways to improve your customer service, and information on how knowledge base software can help you with each improvement.

3) Provide faster, more consistent customer support

Even large companies fall victim to this trap and find their customer service lacking after a while. If you aren’t prepared to provide fast and consistent customer support, your customers will soon grow unhappy. Most customers don’t have to ask for support, but those that do expect a professional and knowledgeable response.

Knowledge base software allows you to track and quickly resolve problems across a whole company, and can be accessed by customers themselves online so they never even have to talk to you. It helps you provide the same correct answer each time, rather than a variety of “self-tested” answers by each individual support person.

2) Track what has already been done

Open support tickets are a major potential stumbling point. If someone asked for equipment to be shipped and another person doesn’t know that, you can end up placing duplicate orders, giving customers different answers on the status of their requests, and simply not knowing the status of every individual open request when asked.

This is embarrassing for any corporate manager or decision-maker. Knowledge base software benefits include the fact that you can easily share the status of open requests with other employees and keep track of solutions that have been attempted and any changes made.

There are other ways, but few are as efficient as this kind of software, as your employees may find themselves having to mass-email people or even share a whiteboard with important status information.

1) Centralize employee knowledge

Every department has that one superstar employee who knows how to do anything you might need to do. What happens if that employee gets sick or has to leave? It is crucial to centralize and retain employee knowledge so that others can benefit from it.

This makes it much easier to train new employees, as they don’t have to suddenly take in years of support and knowledge in a few weeks or months, and makes it easier for every employee to be very helpful.

If customers complain that they have to call back to talk to an employee who knows what to do, knowledge base software will ensure that every employee can help that customer.

Customer service is the difference between a successful business and one that doesn’t quite make it. If you want to keep your customers happy, you have to be able to provide service and support on-demand at any hour of the day.

Knowledge base software helps decrease the call volume and ensure that every individual support person in your company knows how to help any given customer.

To improve your customer service, centralizing and prioritizing employee knowledge is key. One employee knowing how a particular request is going is not very helpful when higher-up managers ask for a status update or the customer calls back when that employee isn’t there. Make sure your customer service is up to par by adopting knowledge base software to manage, track, and centralize knowledge.

Additional Readings:
* http://www.forbes.com/sites/sundaysteinkirchner/2012/08/22/5-ways-to-improve-your-customer-service/
* http://visual.ly/importance-customer-service
* http://www.businessinsider.com/6-ways-to-instantly-make-someones-day-2013-5

About the Author


Gravatar Pic - CopyBill Nixon is a customer service manager. He loves sharing his best tips with others on small business blogs.Click to find out more information about Novo Solutions.

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6 Comments on "3 Must-Try Ways to Boost Your Customer Service Skills"

  1. Bill – Great tips. I would also add that as a business owner you need to create a customer service centric culture in your company so that everyone (from janitor to CEO) keeps customer front and center. The technology you mentioned in the post certainly helps, but it starts with people and culture first.

  2. Really awesome tips, Bill. I for one really love when I get fast and effective customer support. It’s on of the best feelings to me and I really show my appreciate and loyalty to a company who puts me and it’s customers first. Thanks for sharing your insights with us. Look forward to seeing more of your content on BizSugar.com.

    Ti

  3. Thank you for sharing your insight! Many people would agree that customer service is not only in an evolving process right now, but companies look to these important front line associates for many additional enhancements. In addition to providing exceptional customer service, they are considered the next marketers for the company. How customer service is delivered to the customers is rapidly changing, and new technologies will be added. Videos will be added to knowledge databases, and customer support software will be changing to meet this needs. Line monitoring, voice inflection, reports, and the ability to “listen” to social media comments and turn questions and concerns into help desk tickets, are all possible. Each company will need to determine what works best for their customers. As others have mentioned, when all is said and done, the customers are everyone’s top priority, that never changes, how this is deployed and implemented will be interesting to observe.

  4. Thank you for sharing your insight! Many people would agree that customer service is not only in an evolving process right now, but companies look to these important front line associates for many additional enhancements. In addition to providing exceptional customer service, they are considered the next marketers for the company. How customer service is delivered to the customers is rapidly changing, and new technologies will be added. Videos will be added to knowledge databases, and customer support software will be changing to meet this need. Line monitoring, voice inflection, reports, and the ability to “listen” to social media comments and turn questions and concerns into help desk tickets, are all possible. Each company will need to determine what works best for their customers. As others have mentioned, when all is said and done, the customers are everyone’s top priority, that never changes, how this is deployed and implemented will be interesting to observe.

  5. Nice informative post. I agree with most part of your post. Customer service is very important. In fact in today’s world where you have large number of competitors selling substitutes, one of the distinctive things you can develop is good customer service. It can really be beneficial and can become one of your edge over competitors. I remember once I went to some one stop shops where customer service was so pathetic that I stopped using their product and went for substitute.

  6. Great post Bill! As you point out, the greatest benefit of having a knowledge base is that it allows a company to retain important information. If a field expert is not available, an employee or customer can use a knowledge base to find the answer.

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