5 Tenets of Customer Service in a Real Time World

Customer service is still one of the most important part of building any company. After all, your product services customers, and without treating them well, they will go to the competition. Customer service, thus, needs to be prioritized for any company.

Here are ways to rock your customer service world.

Answer in Real Time

You couldn’t tell that this is the most important tenet, right? Let me tell you a little story about a person we call Shari. Shari is my insurance agent. I contact her when I need help with insurance. When I first dropped her a note, until I bought the service, she would email me immediately about everything I needed. She went on vacation for a few weeks in the summer, and I needed her again the day she got back. Did she make me wait? Nope. And I still remember this to this day.

She delivered, of course. But the speed at which she did it blew me away. (I thought only I could do that.)

The Customer is Right

Well, not all the time. In my history of handling customer service inquiries, the customer usually needs some direction. But coming into the conversation with the attitude of “I’m superior than you because I represent said company” is the wrong way to go.

Take Feedback to the Right People

This is the one that always gets me. I see a lot of “Hey ABC, your service could be better if…” or “Hey, here’s a suggestion for…” these days, and many companies don’t respond to them. They won’t escalate them either.

Low level customer service especially thinks, “We do it our way. You’ll have to accept that.”

Not a cool response. And silence is even worse.

Be Transparent

Sometimes, you can’t implement those changes. And sometimes, it’s appropriate to tell them why X, Y, and Z can’t be done. I know I’d very much rather appreciate a, “We can’t integrate this feature into our platform because we’re on a Windows server and not Linux and Windows doesn’t support the infrastructure to do that. But we appreciate the feedback and may consider it for the future!”

Transparency is welcome in the real time world. Are you transparent?

Be Kind

As in killing the customer with kindness. Let’s say you have sir haughty pants over there trolling with a negative Facebook post. His friends start chiming in.

“If you can’t beat them, join them,” you may think.

But that’s not the way to go. If you have lemons, make lemonade. Help them in every way possible, even if it hurts.

Sometimes, unfortunately, it will.

Remember the goals of customer service: they’re about helping the customer and solving their problems. Sure, some problems aren’t solvable, but sometimes, a few written words can go way above and beyond what they’d ever expect, and you know what that means? They’ll sing your praises.