Improve Customer Satisfaction Ratings with Client Engagement
Being a Customer Support Manager is no easy task. You have to pay attention to so many things: reduce number of incoming tickets, add/edit content in the Knowledge Base, have a fast response time, improve your flows constantly, keep customers happy, keep management happy, manage your team, answer requests, escalate requests, mitigate requests and manage client compliancy. Tough job!
Clients don’t like to wait, and nor should they. Client is king. Also, if your client matches your Product Market FIT (PMF), then it’s important to get back to them as soon as possible.
Negative reviews from an ideal client can ripple across your network and can seriously affect your business.
Sometimes it’s just a communication issue: you have not communicated to your requester that you require some time to deal with their request.
Do your clients know what’s going on in the background?
Internal processes take time and that’s ok. However, your clients must also have an idea of that.
Let’s imagine you have a hotel booking business and the most common incoming request type is people asking for their invoice. In order to obtain this, a support agent has to reach out to your finance department - who is not part of the support system - and solicit the invoice in digital format. Janet from fiance is not a people person, however, she’s an excellent accountant. Janet doesn’t like interacting with people and that’s ok. She can do her job really well and can provide the support team with whatever they need. In this case, the invoice in digital format.
Janet has to
Check with the bank if the money has come in
Generate the invoice in an internal tool
Download invoice
Send invoice to your support agent via email
Your agent has to then get back to the client and provide them with the invoice. This process can take up to 2-3 days.
Imagine your client has sent their request Monday. You obviously have an automated response letting them know a human will be in touch. (Do you?) However, if you get back to them Thursday, and even if it’s the request resolution, during this time, your client can become frustrated if you don’t manage their expectations correctly. Have your agents communicate that you have to follow the steps mentioned earlier and that you will get back to them within 3-4 business days. This way, you have 1 day buffer. Good project management!
An elegant solution
If you have a form in place, have your request categorised automatically and have a trigger fire letting the client know of said process. If the request has come via email and no categorisation has been possible, an agent has to read the request and reply with a Macro or manually type their message explaining the process.
Set expectations. Ask your agents to assess how long a process can take by communicating amongst themselves. A team leader with more experience will know how long these processes would take. Add 1 day on top of what you think will take. Deliver early and surprise your client.
Sometimes, paying a little bit more attention to your clients, keeps them happy ☺️