Top 10 customer support mistakes (AND HOW TO AVOID THEM?)

Smart organizations understand the importance of customer support. They believe that great support service is the main key to customer loyalty and retention, which in other way results in greater revenues. However, there is a thin line between smartness and perfection. Sometimes, unknowingly we do things which make customers annoyed or angry. 

The below mentioned 10 customer service mistakes irritate them the most and you must avoid those. 

1. Delay in response

Customers get frustrated when they don’t get a quick response from the support team. Suppose, your prospect client was going through your website and decided to buy something, but he had some queries. In this case, he asked for help from your support team, but did not get a quick response. Being frustrated he left your website. So in this way you also have lost not only your revenue, but also that customer who may never come back to you for further business.

 Always try to respond quickly. For quick assistance you can go for live chat support solution which offers quick assistance in real-time. 

2. Telling the customer to switch channel

Suppose, for customer support, you offer several channels like email, live chat, and phone to choose from. If one customer is calling you over the phone, respect his decision, don’t ask him to change the channel for better assistance.  

It will be a bad customer experience because here you are ignoring that client’s personal preferences. 

3. Your support agents are lacking of product knowledge

It does not matter whether you have five or five hundred employees, all of them should get proper product knowledge, and must learn the art of excellent customer service. Customers get irritated when they see that the support staff lack proper product knowledge. They will not tolerate incorrect information, apathy or rudeness on the part of your support staff.

Not training all the employees thoroughly, from the bottom to the top is a big mistake done by several companies. One of the key solution to fix this is to monitor and record your customer support calls so that the team lead can understand how their agents are handing the customer issues and how to fix the gaps.

4. Grovelling after you have made a mistake

Suppose you have made a mistake which your client seems to have taken to heart. Here you have 2 options:

a. You can give excuse for that bad customer experience

b. You will start apologizing for making things better.

And, obviously you will start apologizing, a lot.

But you should maintain the fine line between grovelling and apologizing. Only just because you want to make up for your customer service mistakes, does not mean that you will bombard that client with emails. Accept your mistakes, apologize politely and try to make up for it, but just for one time.

If that customer is not ready to listen to you and don’t want to return again, respect his decision and stop bothering him. 

5. Using support templates in each and every case

In most of the companies, every new joiner in the customer support team is given a set of templates which mainly provide guidance to them for understanding what is acceptable and what is not while providing support to a customer.

But the problem occurs when that new joiner starts taking those templates to be his bible and tries to use those advices in each and every case.

For getting the first response from a customer, the template may work, but it will not be applicable for further interactions. It will only make you sound robotic.

6. Forgetting to acknowledge your repeat clients

Customers who return to you for business, can be loyal towards your brand. Knowing their names, preferences, needs, etc, let them understand that they are important and you care for them.

Greeting them cheerfully and politely or rewarding them with special discounts keeps them coming back to you again and again. 

 

7. Trying to win an argument with a client

Just remember that it’s five times harder to gain a new customer than to maintain the current ones.

If you want to get success in the business, then do not forget one thing, ‘the customer is always right.’ So never ever try to win an argument with them because at the end of the day you will not gain anything out of this but providing an example of the worst customer service. Customer support agents often do not listen carefully to the customers. This makes the situation even worse.

Your customer support executives need to be trained particularly in the art of listening, patience and even taking notes while needed. 

8. Being unreachable to customers

Want to see repeat business? Be reachable to your customers.

Customers never trust a business which is not easily reachable. Many times they need to talk to the support team for assistance and if they find it difficult to contact, they may leave your website being frustrated and will never return. 

Your company should be easily reachable to customers. 

9. Failing to keep any promise

It is an example of the worst customer service. If you promised a customer to deliver something by next Friday then it should be delivered before or by that day only- no exceptions! Don’t promise if you can’t fulfil it.

If you can’t keep your commitment to a client for issues beyond your hand, don’t give excuses. Here you only need to say, “We are SORRY” backed up by extra efforts to fulfil your promise. 

10. Overlooking the basics

Often the smallest things in your behaviour may change an angry customer’s perspective towards your business.

‘Thank you’, ‘Please’, ‘Kindly’, ‘We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused’ and so on are very simple and much appreciated words that take a very little effort to utter but these may melt the heart of an angry customer.