Many startups will emphasize product development and marketing as growth pillars and focus their investments and resources accordingly. However, many will also neglect reputation building and customer experience. As a small business, each customer interaction carries more weight. It is in interactions with customers that trust and good reputation are established. Get it wrong and you’ll fail before you even get off the ground.
Whether it’s slow responses or dismissive responses – or automation that can’t handle a particular customer issue – unaddressed customer service complaints will persist in the form of negative online reviews and poor customer satisfaction. These are guaranteed growth killers. Fortunately, the most common customer service mistakes are easily avoided if caught early and will rarely be a cause for concern if customer feedback is heeded.
For a small business looking to build a solid reputationTop-notch customer service is mandatory from the start. But how can you guarantee good customer support? The answer lies in understanding the importance of a few key points, and that starts with learning from the mistakes of others.
Lessons from the Best and Worst Customer Service
Understanding where others have gone wrong and how they have gotten things done is a vital asset to any fledgling business. Knowing which missteps have the biggest impact on the customer will save your business a lot of time and resources. Recent research into what defines best and worst customer service reveal what really influences the customer support experience.
The PissedConsumer report shows that consumers are prepared to deal with occasional, isolated incidents; It’s when failures recur or errors go uncorrected that customers tend to get frustrated. Slow response times, rigid chatbots, and having to repeat the same details over and over are often the most common problems.
For a small business trying to build a brand, the impact of these failures is magnified and could spell the end of a young business if not corrected.
Slow response times
Convenience is at the heart of many business models, and with so many “one-click” solutions, similar expectations carry over to customer service. Yet despite this well-understood expectation, among the most common customer service complaints are slow response times and slow progress toward a resolution.
Delays disappoint customers’ expectations, and making them wait unreasonably long for a response will likely turn a rational complaint into an emotionally charged one, sending the signal that your business isn’t really bothered.
Create barriers with automation
Relying on automation to accommodate increased volume when scaling is a common strategy, but it can often turn off customers if not done carefully. While chatbots and one-size-fits-all answers can perform certain tasks well, over-reliance on them is a sure way to alienate your customers in a time where building customer relationships must be a top priority.
Finding the balance between efficiency and customer satisfaction is a difficult task that must consider customer needs at every step. Chief among these needs is the customer’s insistence on having easy access to a human agent when they deem it necessary. Find a thoughtful balance between AI and human customer service is therefore a major aspect of maintaining customer satisfaction.
Inconsistent communication
Building brand identity starts with visibility. A presence on all popular social media and networking sites is therefore mandatory. A problem arises, however, if your customer service is not in sync across all of these channels.
Say, for example, a customer makes a request through your Facebook page and then resumes the discussion directly through your customer service email. If the latter has no way of accessing the file and details shared in the previous communication (via Facebook), the customer will be forced to repeat themselves and start again. They will see it as just a waste of time.
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How Small Businesses Can Provide Great Customer Service From the Start
A common misunderstanding about customer service is that it’s about “solving problems,” when in fact the best customer service will go a long way toward stopping problems from occurring in the first place. A startup that prioritizes customer service from the start will be created to anticipate problems rather than simply react to them.
Excellent customer service is all about listening and communicating. So make productive dialogue a goal of your customer service strategy:
- Encourage and engage with customer feedback. The most successful brands know that customer opinion is the best source of actionable information; it tells you what the demand really is and where the gaps are. While it’s important to actively solicit feedback, it’s not everything; It’s also crucial to respond publicly to open comments because potential customers also read online reviews.
- Capitalize on complaints. Not sure what steps to take to improve the customer experience and move toward a trusted reputation? Look no further than customer reviews to find the answers. Each bad review is an opportunity for your brand to show the customer that their satisfaction matters and that things have changed.
- Practice empathy. Efficiency is important, but when the focus is on customer experience, how, tone and sensitivity in handling a request are equally important. The basis of this point is that what frustrates customers more than anything else is the feeling of not being listened to. Fix this and you will have already mitigated the risk of unnecessary escalations.
Customer experience is your brand reputation
Even the best brands aren’t perfect, but they are approachable, responsive and human when it counts.
The best and worst support experiences show that customers aren’t looking for a fight, nor do they expect perfection, much less from new and small businesses that demonstrate genuine intention and effort to improve. In fact, they are very forgiving. 78% are willing to give businesses a second chance if they receive excellent customer service.
When setting customer support goals, every new business should first look at its contemporaries and their customer service journeys. Understand where similar businesses have made mistakes and avoid similar mistakes as the first step to giving customers what they want.
From the start, invest in a customer service approach that is fast, attentive, and attentive to common customer complaints. Resist the temptation to brush aside problems or make improvements based on what you think is best rather than what your customer tells you, and maintain a continuous and productive dialogue with your customers.
Simple actions, executed well, will show your customers that you truly care about their concerns and that you are a brand they can trust, listen to and take action. A reputation for putting customers first might just be your greatest competitive advantage.
