Today, the Internet offers businesses a powerful medium for identifying and solving customer service issues. It allows businesses to leverage new tools and methodologies for both customer feedback and response, allowing for almost immediate response to customer service issues. Mistakes are a critical part of every business service, even the best run operations can never prevent the occasional glitch. Though businesses may not be able to prevent all problems, they can learn to recover from them. A good Internet-based customer recovery and feedback system can turn unhappy customers back into loyal customers.Don’t be too quick to dismiss a problem as small, or a complaint as bothersome. No business can afford to lose customers or the bad PR that often accompanies them. Replacing a customer can cost five times more than it does to retain one.
Good recoveries from service problems are possible. The simplest way to deal with dissatisfied customers is to make it easy for them to complain. Most companies provide hotline support, usually with an 800 number so clients can report problems. But many companies are unable to staff these support lines 24/7. In these cases, companies should consider outsourcing this staffing to a customer service call center, as unanswered complaints tend to grow over time.
Of course the Internet offers a more immediate avenue for customers to provide feedback, and for businesses to rapidly regain customer loyalty. Your web site can be one of your best customer recovery tools. A dedicated customer help page on your website can make it quick and easy for your customers to reach out to your customer service team. The best help pages will offer a multitude of methods to contact customer service, including email, a web form, Twitter, and Facebook. Let the customer reach customer service from their preferred Internet venue.
Why It Works
Having a dedicated customer help section readily available on your web site, with the staffing and methodology in place to deal with these issues, empowers your dissatisfied customers and can help move them through your customer service process in a professional and efficient manner. Here’s why:
- It helps your company become more proactive in solving the issue.
- It allows your company to set a conciliatory and cooperative tone.
- It sets the tone for your willingness to take immediate action to solve the problem.
- It opens an effective channel of communication that the customer controls while avoiding a telephone call center interaction.
- It provides a built-in documentation trail for both you and the customer.
- It enables a reliable channel to follow up with assurances that this problem will not happen again.
Today, effective customer service and customer recovery and feedback solutions require a strong Internet component to ensure optimum customer retention. For more information on improving the Customer Experience, click here.