Top 5 Shortcuts to Customer Satisfaction
There is very little that will be more important to business (any business) than customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction measures how services or products of a company surpass or meet the expectation of its clients. It is also referred to as the degree of satisfaction provided by the goods or services of a business with the number of repeated customers. Customer satisfaction is highly important for any business or company as it has been proven to help improve and manage businesses and enterprises and also assist in retaining and gaining more customers.
The best practices to achieve excellent customer satisfaction are thus highlighted below; if these specific practices are vehemently put into work, then a business or company will no doubt flourish in time.
Do Not Forget, Your Whole Business Is Your Client
There are times when you might be flooded by endlessly frustrated requests from some customers. When this happens, the fault lies with you, something is clearly wrong with either your service or the product itself and it needs to be addressed. So, instead of blaming the client, or place them in the ‘rager bin’, be poised to understand the feelings of your client, and put yourself in their shoes.
When dealing with your customers, always be polite, patient, and understand their needs only this will let you provide secure and efficient solutions to their problems. “Treat your customers right, the same way you would like to be treated’’, that is one of the best ways to obtain and maintain customer satisfaction.
Make Your Client Side Resources Actually Resourceful, Simple, And Easy To Find
One of the ways to make sure you abide by the industry’s best practices when it comes to helpdesk etiquette is to make sure that the resources you provide to your clients are useful, and for them to be useful, they must be easy to find and to understand. If your resources are hard to find on your products and website, or if they are in plain sight but contain none of the frequently asked questions you receive, then they are useless.
BONUS TIP: Frequently asked questions (FAQ) are a staple format that helps curb recurring demands from clients, they must however be subject to change. If you suddenly get a lot more of one question, don’t be daft, add it to the FAQs and solve your problem internally to make sure to stop this question from rolling in so much. The only thing that should be constant in any business is the patience and smiles of your helpdesk service personnel.
The central theme we are going for here is that your resources need to be user-friendly and informative. Making sure that your resources meet these two criteria will aid your clients in helping themselves and cut your job significantly. Prevention is better than cure.
Be Quick With Your Responses
Other essential short-cuts to customer satisfaction are the rapid response rate of your services. It is important that you respond promptly to any ticket filed by your client. By doing so, it relieves the customer, and helps them see that their issue is being attended to. You can take advantage of the automated features certain helpdesk provide, but it is highly recommended that you respond promptly even after the bot has notified the client that their request was noted. Bots can help a lot if they are able to spew contextual answers or note important information pages like the FAQs. Barring that, if the bot can simply say the message is received by the team, and let them get means of receiving their answer by email is a great solution too.
It is also easier to solve your customer’s problem when you respond to their request quickly. For example everyone knows bugs disappear fast and then are gone until they strike their next unsuspecting victims. Answering fast allows for you to request key information like print screens and clear lists of actions taken by the client.
For these reasons we can say without a doubt that a quick response is one of the best practices when it comes to customer satisfaction.
Keep the Clients Informed as their Tickets are Processed
When your client gets an update, i.e., gets to know the status of their existing tickets, they will be more likely to be satisfied by your services. Until you can resolve their problem, make sure they know the steps you have taken, and the next steps that you will take. You can also give them an estimated time for their ticket to be resolved. Clients aren’t not omniscient, they do not understand what your job is, they think your entire life is their ticket. They also do not posess x-ray vision and cannot see all that you have tried to do, or have done.
You must be patient with them, but you also must communicate with them.
Let them know where you are and what is being done for them. If communication is the key to your marriage, trust me, it is the key to keeping clients and customers happy as well.
This added layer of communication and trust will no doubt help in achieving an excellent customer satisfaction rating.
Do not Forget About your Client Once the Ticket is Resolved!
The customer is a client; they know what they want. If you would like to achieve an excellent customer satisfaction rating, ask your client what they want. You can then, once all is resolved and have done what they want, ask them how you can improve your service. This is done to show them that their opinion matters, be sure to use their feedback to make required amendments to your protocols and the appropriate changes to your services or products.
After each ticket has been resolved, you can send surveys to customers and compile precious data about how you excel and where you lack the right skills or knowledge. When writing your surveys, make sure your questions are neutral and easy to understand. This way you could get a good and honest response from your customers and clients.
The following advice should be taken to heart for your helpdesk to function in an acceptable way: customers are to be treated with respect, you should ask for their feedback, and provide other helpful ways by which they can solve their problems themselves. Be sure to make a report at the end of the month to see if your customers are happy or not with the services and responses they get from you.
OneDesk has the means to allow to track, gauge and engage with customers and effectively manage and promote customer satisfaction. All these helpful ways you can make your business better are hardcoded into our software and available for usage right out of the box. Give us a spin, and note your progress through our intuitive and sleek reporting options.
Photo Credit: XOXO Smiley Face Sign / Duncan Rowlinson / CC BY