Which is more important, product quality or customer service? According to 80% of consumers, they’re equal. In fact, 70% of people say they will buy more from brands offering a great customer experience.
These statistics make it clear: you need to invest just as much in improving your customer service as you do in improving your products.
If you’re unsure how to improve customer service, start with these strategies to eliminate customer service headaches.
5 Strategies to avoid customer service headaches
When you’re considering how to improve customer service, put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What are their pain points? Here are five common customer service problems and what you can do to solve them:
1. Provide information when items are unavailable or out of stock
Product availability issues can send even your most loyal customers to your competitors. Reduce customer frustration by providing useful information, including:
- Local availability
- Date of restock
- Low stock warnings
If customers do experience an inaccurate inventory shopping experience, make sure to reduce frustration by offering discounts to customers who agree to wait.
2. Resolve issues on the first call
Wondering how to reduce complaints in call centers? Increase the number of cases you resolve within one call. To do so, carefully listen to and answer all customer questions, clarify their issues, and anticipate future needs.
You must also ensure that your customer service team receives quality training. Your customer service training should always teach customer service representatives how to properly engage with and be empathetic towards an unhappy customer in a calm, kind, and helpful way. This is an important initial step to reduce complaints in call centers caused by inadequate agent response.
3. Resolve issues with products or services
Even when problems occur that are out of your team’s control, such as shipping errors, product quality, or even an issue on the customer’s end, all complaints should be validated rather than dismissed. Your support agents should make every effort to find a resolution quickly.
Additionally, brands should track these complaints to identify ongoing issues like poor-quality products from suppliers.
4. Don’t forget to follow-up
When a customer submits a ticket, you could have your best support agent immediately jump on it. But this means nothing to the customer if you don’t communicate that your team is working on a solution. A lack of follow-up sends a clear message: you don’t care.
To ensure you don’t miss this critical step, invest in technology that automates these follow-ups immediately and makes your customers feel heard.
5. Streamline order cancellation protocols
No matter how good your product or service is, customers may cancel their orders for any number of reasons. When a customer is already unhappy, the worst thing you can do is make it difficult for them to cancel their order.
Remove any needless roadblocks from your returns processes, and ensure that customers can easily communicate why they’re canceling their order or making a return.
How Fluent Order Management can reduce customer service issues
You can drastically improve your processes by implementing these strategies to eliminate customer service headaches. But there’s another way to instantly improve the customer experience, and that’s by automation.
Leverage the power of automation and send real-time order status updates, enable digital self-service, and create rules to automatically manage pick exceptions.. Automation solutions from Fluent Order Management can empower your staff, reduce calls, and keep your customers happy.
Ready to see how Fluent Order Management can help you boost customer service? Schedule a free demo to learn more.
