Startup owners handle a lot of tasks on a daily basis from sales, human resources, and business analysts, among others. There is so much going on their plate that taking care of the customer service part is often left behind. Aside from this fact, startups are always competing with each other. Having said this, one of the best strategies you can do is to give your customers the best experience.
Great customer service can be your advantage only if you know how to properly utilize it. This means that you should have skilled agents that can address the queries of your customers 24/7. But it is indeed challenging if you are new to this business. So, here are some basic customer service tips you can apply.
Customer Support For Startups
Crafting the best customer support requires you to have extensive knowledge about your patrons. You must know their needs, wants, likes, and dislikes, so you can create a plan fitted for them. Take these tactics as your guide.
Set your goals
To say that you want to make your customers satisfied is different from doing something to make this a reality. Without any clear goal as to how you will keep them happy and contented, most likely you will lose your customers in the process. That is why having a specific plan of action is needed.
What you can do is to come up with quantitative and qualitative measurements that your customer service agents can use in order to see if your customers are really satisfied. For example, analyzing your net promoter score is a great you for you to know if your patrons are most likely to recommend your product or service.
The thing is, as long as your goals are measurable and achievable, you can craft plans and strategies on how you can achieve that success. Everything you do should fall under the goal you want to achieve.
Listen to feedbacks
One common trait startups have is their lack of asking questions to the right people, particularly their customers. Being new in the business doesn’t mean that you have to guess which areas you should improve or retain. The best way to know whether you are doing great or not is to ask for feedback from your customers and listen to them.
There are several ways in which you can seek feedback. One of the most common ways is through a survey where you can ask about their buying experience, their satisfaction with the product or service, the likelihood of recommending your business to others, and more. Now, seeking their feedback will only be useless if you don’t act upon it. Once you have evaluated their responses, make sure that you do something to address the concerns they voiced out.
Choose your medium
No matter if you have the best customer service agents, as long as you don’t know the right channels to use when communicating with them, your skilled workers will not be properly utilized. In this day and age where social media is everyone’s preferred medium, are you actually being seen and heard through these platforms?
The most effective way to reach out to your customers and vice versa is to be present in several available channels where they can interact with you. This can mean having an active Facebook page, email, call support, among others. However, take note that your customers have their preferred channels. So, despite being present in several mediums, you should prioritize those that they want to use more often.
Keep the whole team/company involved
Pleasing your customers is not only the job of customer service agents. Sure, they do the talking and on-the-spot analysis. However, the set of guidelines needed to formulate the responses should be discussed among all employees or specific people involved in the decision-making part. Take note that the agents do not randomly give responses to customers out of nowhere. Everything they say has to be based on the company rules.
Moreover, when analyzing the feedbacks given by customers, include the key people in the team. You don’t have to make a decision on your own since customer support is an inclusive process that requires everyone to be aware and contribute accordingly.
Invest in skilled agents
One of the most common feedback that businesses hear from customers is how the agents converse with them or help them deal with their problems. Therefore, startups need to invest in agents that are helpful, knowledgeable, and good speakers.
If you are cutting costs or cannot identify great candidates for the position, you can opt to outsource your customer support instead. Outsourcing this area to an English-speaking country like the Philippines is an advantage to your business since you don’t need to worry anymore about the onboarding part.
Virtua Outsourcing Solutions for Startups
With over eight years of experience in doing sales and customer support, Virtua Outsourcing Solutions can provide skilled customer support agents that will be your frontline team in handling all customer queries and problems. Whether you need phone support, chat support, email support, and social media support.