What does one bad customer experience cost your company?
Many more sales, new research found.
Seventy percent of customer experience professionals said that their company lost a customer or a sale because of a poor experience, according to the recent Freshdesk+Dreamforce 2014 survey. In some cases, they admitted to losing customers and sales because of poor reputation for support.
But much can be gained by providing positive customer support, the survey found. Almost 90% of respondents said that a positive experience can or has changed a customer’s perception of a company.
So the goal is to make every experience positive — especially those that start negative because of a complaint.
Turn it around
These tips can help front-line customer service pros turn any experience into a positive one:
- Crank up the training. Amateurs irritate customers. Anyone who deals with customers directly must have up-to-the minute training on products, services and support. Plus, they need practice on showing empathy and courtesy.
- Be flexible. When customers’ problems are out of the ordinary, the response should be out of the ordinary, too. Maintain policies and procedures that keep customers and staff safe. But build flexibility into policies — and encourage front-liners to use it.
- Meet promises. Nearly all customers will rate an experience positive if their expectations are met. The best way to meet expectations: Ask customers what they’d like to see happen or the outcome they’re seeking when they contact you. More often than not, their expectations are something that can be easily met by trained, flexible staffers.
- Stick with them. Customers also consistently rate experiences when one person saw their issue through as positive. They don’t like being shuffled around. Ideally, you want to make the first person customers contact be the professional who fixes the issue, answers the question or carries them through the process until all is resolved. Then, that person should be the one who follows up to ensure everything worked out well.
- Be efficient. Your record-keeping could be one of the biggest reasons customers call their experiences positive. The less they have to do — repeat information, fill out forms, remember order preferences or history, etc. — the more likely they’ll be to appreciate you for being a great company to do business with. Front-line service pros want to note little details that will make the next contact easier, along with the important, must-do details in every interaction.
