Customer service departments have long wanted to shed the “cost center” image. These three ideas may be their ticket to being considered rocking “profit centers.”
Many companies treated customer service like the ugly stepchild. Every time a customer called, it cost them money to answer the phone and have staff available to answer questions.
That was then. Now things are different.
Try adding these things in your customer service offerings, to see the bottom line increase:
- Drop-in Fridays. If your customers are near you, advertise a time each week when they can bring in their products and get advice from your product experts – and even fellow users. Schedule short training sessions — perhaps one or two throughout the day — in which customers can learn ways to get the most from the products they have and potentially gain interest in others.
- Hang out online. Google has a tool called Google+ Hangouts, which allows you to host video Q&A sessions, lessons or a series of tips from expert advisers inside your customer service department. You can broadcast the sessions or make them password protected, and archive them on YouTube so customers can access a library of them when they want them.
- Trade-in days. Make it attractive to customers to upgrade their products. When they contact Customer Service, let reps recommend products that better fit their needs, and give them the authority to grant customers credit for trading in products.
