Customer Support and the Online Forum
Customer support is the delivery of exceptional service to existing customers prior, during, and even after a sale. The perception of such interactions depends on how well employees “can adjust themselves to this customer’s character”. It’s human nature to evaluate people based on how they act or appear in a public setting; it’s also human nature to be attracted to people who show a sense of humor. Unfortunately, the quality of customer service often has little to do with how one appears to others. It’s about the actions taken, not just the words spoken.
In a customer support center, technical support personnel assist customers with their computers or hardware problems by providing them with manuals, support tickets, online troubleshooting, and other options that might be able to solve their problem. Although technical support staff may not look like sales or marketing professionals, they do have a job. They are expected to be professional, on time, courteous, and knowledgeable about their products and services.
Being a good technical support worker entails knowing your stuff inside and out. To do this, you must know what your customers can expect from you, what they expect from you, and how to meet those expectations. For instance, it’s unlikely that angry customers will return to buy from you if you didn’t resolve their issue within the time allotted. In fact, many times, they don’t even bother to contact you because they feel that it was their “duty” to fix the problem. You need to be able to exceed expectations of both customers and yourself to be successful as a technical support specialist.
One sure way to do this is to make sure that you have excellent customer experiences, which entail overcoming poor customer experiences. One of the best ways to do this is to ensure that the technical support staff is always ready to help. The live chat feature on most sites enables staff to be available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This means staff can assist customers who call during the night or after business hours, as well as during other times.
Another way to have an excellent customer experience is to have a system in place for helping staff overcome angry customers. The online forum is one of the most effective ways for staff to do this. If an angry customer decides to post about a negative experience, other customers who are in the same boat can read it and get involved in the discussion. Staff can learn from other customers their mistakes and improve their customer experience even more by listening to their feedback. However, if an angry customer doesn’t feel like they got their needs met, it can be difficult for staff to talk to them in a sympathetic manner. As such, it is important for staff to know how to walk away from a bad customer experience while still making a sale.
Automation is also crucial to customer success. With so many customers are shopping online for products and services, it is impossible to handle each customer individually anymore. Online systems for customer service are designed to track the actions of customers and automate certain processes. For instance, if a customer returns a product that is faulty, the order is immediately handled, the faulty product is replaced and the customer is sent on his way. Without automation, companies would need to spend hundreds of man hours each year doing inventory checks, return shipping, receiving returns and handling unhappy customers
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