If you want customers to say “wow” about your customer service, take this tip from Jerry Seinfeld.
Have many answers on hand.
That’s what the legendary comic tells men about to get married: You better have answers!
Why? Because Seinfeld’s theory is that the secret to a happy marriage is to be ready to answer the litany of questions — from the mundane to the outrageous — wives have.
The same goes for outstanding customer service: Be ready to answer.
Increasingly, those at-the-ready answers need to accurate, online and easily accessible. Nearly 60% of customers say a company website is the first place they go when looking for answers to a customer service question, according to a recent IntelliResponse Systems Inc. study.
Build a better experience
Customers will likely get the information they want if your online content and FAQs are regularly updated and follow these five rules:
- Simplify the language. Customers tend to scan information they read online. So it’s best to get rid of words with several syllables and long sentences. Make information reader-friendly with concise words and simple sentence structure.
- Eliminate null search results. These are the customer searches that yielded zero results. You might want to look at the searches that yielded few results, too. Look at the words customers used in recent null searches. Then build those search topics into your FAQs. So no matter what customers search for, they’ll find the right answer.
- Chunk related information. You don’t necessarily want to list FAQs in order of most asked questions to the least. Instead, clump questions together by subject matter. And keep them easy to read by using white space between questions, rather than putting too much info into large blocks of copy.
- Avoid jargon. It can’t be said enough: Use customers’ language and terms, not yours. One tip: Ask new employees to do a jargon search. Since they’re green, they aren’t likely speaking the company or industry lingo yet, and jargon will stand out to them.
- Use the active voice. It allows you to answer in clear, concise sentences that customers will understand easily. For instance, “Warranties vary by product line” is easier to search and understand than “Product lines have varying policies regarding the warranties.”
