Doing support feels like giving manner advices to a granny

von Angela-Roxana Calugar |
02. August 2017 |
Managed Services

Dieser Blogbeitrag ist nur in englischer Sprache verfügbar. | This blog post is only available in English.

Your Customer is Angry

If you’re in customer service, you will come across angry customers. Some are upset because they’re confused. Some are upset because of a mistake that you or your company might have made (whether it’s truly a mistake, or just a mistake in their eyes). And some are simply having a bad day. Getting defensive—or worse, trying to match the customer’s emotion—will only escalate the situation.

Attitude

Doing customer support means first of all having the right attitude, be positive and friendly even you are doing it over phone, email or in person and I think this Chinese proverb is correct: „A man without a smiling face must not open a shop“. HEARing their story with keeping a positive attitude is the best solution so far.

Evaluate customer’s level of technical expertise

Using intuition and clues from the conversation or correspondence could help you to approximate the customer’s level of technical knowledge in order to determine the best way to help them. For some customers, something that might seem like a simple fix could be a lot more complicated if they’re not technically inclined. EMPATHIZE; convey that you deeply understand how the customer feels. Use phrases like “I would be frustrated too” It’s your decision to choose the path you approach in dealing with the customer but you need to adapt it to your customer technical expertise, with the help of the tools you have at your disposal. Offer a customized experience.

You’re overwhelmed by a backlog of tickets

This issue happens all the time for most of the support teams. Your support inbox is full and there’s no way you’re going to be able to resolve all of these tickets fast. So when you’re swamped in support emails, focus on buying yourself more time by responding rather than resolving. What does this mean? Rather than to get in a hurry to try and make everything in a short time, you take one ticket at a time and focus on it like the rest of them does not exist. Of course, you do not want the other customers to feel neglected so it is recommended to keep in touch with everyone. The most commonly used phrase and annoying for that matter is „We’re sorry, but we’re experiencing unusually heavy call volumes. You can hold or try back at another time.“ Instead, it is better to write a personal email that tells the customer that you (not „we“) will be taking care of them, and give them a hard deadline by which you’ll help them and APOLOGIZE for the inconvenience.

Provide an easy and straight forward way for the client to follow up

Head towards a quick resolution even if that doesn’t solve the root problem. Sometimes, offering a workaround is more productive for the client, rather than waiting without being able to continue their activity. However, once you identify the issue and apply the workaround, give the incident reference to your colleagues and analyze the problem later to make sure it will not occur again in the future.

Failing to do so can be particularly frustrating, spurring some customers to give up entirely and remain unsatisfied with your company’s product or service. To avoid this, make sure customers are given a quick way to follow up if their issue persists and requires further assistance. This means RESOLVING and DIAGNOSING their crisis in the best way possible.

So, to sum this up, all of the problems and solutions add up to one simple technique: the H.E.A.R.D. technique

hear: let the customer tell their entire story without interruption

empathize: convey that you deeply understand how the customer feels.

apologize: as long as its sincere, you can never apologize enough

resolve: provide the client with a workaround

diagnose: get at the bottom of why the issue occurred, without blaming anyone; focus on fixing the process so that it does not happen again

 

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