6 Reasons Businesses Fail At Customer Service

Across many industries, it’s hard to differentiate the core aspects of products from any other competing market players. What compels customers to opt for one over the other is often the quality of their interaction with each business. It’s important to get customer service right. Here are the top reasons why companies fail to do that.

Failure To Keep Promises

In the heat of the moment, it’s tempting to commit to something that isn’t realistically attainable. Perhaps the customer is threatening to move. Maybe they had lodged a request that wasn’t acted on and you want to impress them with a super fast turnaround. It’s a common mistake.

One of the most important tenets of customer service is trustworthiness. The customer may react angrily when you insist that they can only get an exhaustive response in 24 hours. However, they will respect your business in the long run and know your word is bankable. In the age of social media, false promises can significantly damage your brand.

Ambiguity

Answers that are ambiguous or confusing can only irritate customers. The clearer your response, the better. When a customer first gets in touch with you, take time to understand the issue at hand.

Respond by briefly explaining what you believe the cause of the problem could be and share what options they have for resolution including a suggestion on which one’s best. If a resolution solely depends on your action, give a realistic time frame of when you can close the matter.

Absence Of Product Knowledge

Customers quickly lose interest in the conversation if it becomes apparent that the employee they are talking to does not understand the product. To avoid this, businesses should ensure all staff are taken through comprehensive training covering the company’s organizational structure and products.

In addition, a new product shouldn’t be rolled out to customers before product details are shared with customer-facing departments.

Ridicule

Employees are likely to be more familiar with the product than the customers. It shouldn’t therefore be surprising that customers will not always understand the underlying reason the product isn’t working as it should. Ridiculing a customer’s view however is a sure way of showing them the exit door.

Instead, service representatives should empathize with the customer’s view then calmly and respectfully explain what’s happening.

Disregard

A customer who doesn’t feel like the business is paying attention to what they have to say will have little motivation to stay. Organizations must endeavor to have all calls, emails, Facebook posts and tweets quickly acknowledged and the pertinent issue resolved in the shortest time.

According to Varun Sharma, Head of Product Management at Geckolyst, automated aggregation of data from diverse customer touch points can help prevent inquiries and feedback from falling between the cracks.

Inconsistency

When customers receive different responses each time they speak to a representative of an organization, they lose confidence in the business. Inconsistent and conflicting answers are particularly common in institutions where different departments work in silos. They’re characterized by little intra-departmental communication.

By making all relevant product and customer information available to customer-facing staff, businesses will be in a better position to show a consistent front.

Even with a world class product, customers can choose to shift their purchases elsewhere if they feel they aren’t getting the quality of service they deserve. After doing the technical work necessary to create an excellent product, it’s vital that businesses don’t end up failing at the last hurdle that is customer service.