| |
| |
|
Customer Service Information |
|
|
|
4 Easy Steps to Better Online Customer Support
Customer support is very important when you're running a business, whether your business is on or off the net. If your customer support is hopeless, you'll soon find your customers running away from you and worse, telling others to stay away too. If you're like many of us out there, the last thing you want to do is to spend the whole day replying to customer support emails. Here are 4 easy steps to help improve your customer support and at the same time reduce the time you spend replying to queries. The trick here is to help your customers help themselves before you help them. - Step 1: Start with a Knowledge base / FAQs The first step to your support system is to set up a knowledge base or, if you have a quite straight forward product, a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section. This will save you a lot of time. Your customers will also be happier since they can find answers to their questions immediately. If you're just starting out, it is still a good idea to set up a knowledge base/FAQs. Just sit down and think of all the possible questions that your customer would ask. Maybe not all. Start with a few and you can always add more to it as time goes by. - Step 2: Set up a Forum A forum is a great addition to your customer support system. The forum should be the second place your customer would turn to for help. A lot of people associate a forum to discussions, moderating, a lot of work and a headache to maintain. This is only true if you use a forum as a discussion area. Instead, you should use it as a customer support tool. Just create different forum categories for eg., pre sale questions, member questions, one category for each product. A forum is an excellent way to provide customer support because:
- Step 3: Install a Ticket help desk Not all queries can be handled via a knowledge base and a forum. Sometimes there is a need for your customers to send you private information such as usernames and passwords. When a situation like this arises, you will need a way for your customers to send you the information without others being able to see it. One of the best ways to handle this is to set up an online ticket help desk. A ticket help desk system will allow your customers to create a user account and log a ticket into your system. They can then send whatever information they need to send. You can even allow them to attach files. Most good help desks will also allow you to prepare pre-written responses for repetitive queries. Again, a good web host would also have some kind of help desk script installation available at a click. - Step 4: Use a good email software And finally, you have the good ole e-mail. Which should be the last thing your customers resort to. After implementing the above three systems, you will find a remarkably reduced amount of e-mails you need to reply to. Customers are getting wiser. Most know that e-mails are seldom replied to. So, they would only resort to this as a last resort. Don't make a mistake of putting your email address on your web site. Use a form. With email filters rampant on the net, also remember to inform your customers that your e-mail may be trapped by their email filter. There you go. Just set these up and you'll find your customer support a lot easier to handle. © 2004 Bina Omar About The Author Bina runs the WebSite Workshop that provides tools & training to help newbies build web sites. Subscribe to Bina's ezine 'WebBriefcase!' & get your free course on "How to Make Your Own Web Site in 7 Easy Steps" mailto:subscribe@website-workshop.com
MORE RESOURCES:
: Kudos and Demerit Points in Customer Service by Gloria Starr - NewsReleaseWire.com (press release)
Customer-Service - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Establishing Yourself as an Expert in the Eyes of Your Customers The most important aspect of a successful business is developing the correct mindset toward your customers. And this is not the over used phrase The customer is always right. Handling Customer Complaints Even the best business will receive an occasional customer complaint. Knowing how to resolve these complaints will help you gain loyal customers who will then refer others to your business. Carpet Cleaning in Surrey Like any business, carpet and upholstery cleaning requires excellent customer service and great value for money. There are a number of ways in which one can obtain these. Find Out Where Your Firm Stands in Today's Customer Looking For Ways to Improve Sales and Customer Relationships?Find Out Where Your Firm Stands in Today's Customer Touchpoint Management (CTM) Revolution by Taking the CTM Quiz(San Rafael, CA) What could be more important than improving sales and your customer relationships? Today, there is a fast growing movement, a revolution, among organizations interested in improving their customer-centricity through a better understanding of customer interactions, or "touchpoints." Called "Customer Touchpoint Management" (CTM), the goal of this new movement is to improve customer experiences, and as a result, improve customer relationships. Cultivating the Trust Factor In today's highly competitive economy, it is difficult to maintain a significant market advantage based on your professional skills alone. Developing a trusting relationship with your clients is key to your success. Restaurant Scheduling for Success - Excerpt from Richard Saporito's latest e-book "How to Improve Dining Room Service"This Tip will Help Maintain the Staff Schedule Keeping the Dining Room Service Staff Tight and Content which is Essential for Pleasing Paying Guests.Staff scheduling is closely tied to dining room customer service and crucial for keeping your staff tight, happy and well connected. Why You Should Always Honour Your Guarantees - Even When The Customer Is In The Wrong The Reason Why Direct Internet Marketers Have To Work So Hard To Earn Our TrustA bad attitude to customer service can literally destroy your business.So, I thought I'd share my response to what I read on an Internet Marketing Forum recently to illustrate my point. 4 Things Your Clients Want From Your Company Sure, all clients are different. They have different kinds of strengths, weaknesses, cultures and goals. When the Customer Demands: Give a Discount or Lose the Order Periodically every sales person encounters the customer who refuses to buy unless they receive a discount. Sometimes this is driven by the organization's culture or the buyer wanting to look good to their boss and sometimes it is simply the mindset of the individual buyer them self. Develop Loyal Customers for a Lifetime - part 2 (11 - 20) Traditional marketing strategies encourage business owners to continually grow their businesses by adding new customers. In today's competitive world of business, it is more important than ever to aim for more transactions with existing customers by using the power of customer follow-up and attention to good service. Outsourcing: The Unspoken Costs Outsourcing seems to be the new-new thing and approximately 50% of our major corporations are doing it. What are the costs? The benefits? And what skills need to be managed in order to make it work optimally?Let's get a clear understanding of what we mean by outsourcing: it's the shifting of easily codified jobs - such as help desk support, call centers, system maintenance, and programming jobs - to countries that can manage them more cheaply. Setting Up a Customer of the Week Program for a Mobile Car Wash In a mobile detail or mobile car wash business you are on a first name basis with your customers. You sink or swim with your ability to please your customer and rely on them to build your business by referring their friends, associates and neighbors. Customer Service: Stop Sabotaging Your Customer Relationships If you've called for customer service recently you're familiar with this recorded message "This call may be recorded or monitored for quality purposes." I immediately think to myself, "Oh great, here comes the game of 20 questions. What You Need to Know About CRM 1. It's all about the customer. Whats The Customer Service Buzz About Your Business? If you're a regular reader of my column you know that my number one pet peeve is bad customer service. Nothing chaps my backside more than paying hard-earned money for a product or service only to have the provider of said product or service become apathetic, obnoxious or just downright rude after the transactional smoke has cleared. Be the Customer: See Yourself as Your Customers Do What do your customers experience when they interact with your business? As a mystery shopper, I help businesses see themselves through the eyes of their customers by posing as a typical customer and evaluating their service, quality and cleanliness. Was it easy to find what I needed? Were the employees polite and helpful? Was everything neat and clean? Was I thanked for my business? What happened when I made a return?Whether your business is an international retailer or a small one-person shop, what you don't know about your customers' perceptions of your quality and service can hurt you. Customer Feedback: Everyone has an Opinion - USE IT! Have you ever been in a department store and known exactly what you were looking for but couldn't locate any staff to help you find it? Think of your website as your very own department store, and your contact numbers, email addresses, and FAQ's navigational buttons as your staff. Without these handy interaction tools, your purchaser will get frustrated and E-shop somewhere else. Over Deliver - The Key to Customer Satisfaction Client satisfaction starts with meeting or beating the contractual obligations of the relationship. There are also some intangibles that can help you to over deliver to a client. Adjustment DENIED It's just a simple thing - I bought a new set of shelves for my office. It wasn't a real problem, but when I got the shelves home, I found dents on the front of the shelves where the package had been leaned up on some other object, the shelves had been removed from the original box and put into another box. How To Kick Your Customer Service Up A Notch! Welcome to the inaugural issue of Human Tech Tips -- Tip #1. How do we take your customer service and kick it up a notch?This is a big question so where do we begin?As an overview, it's a given that the answer is three-fold: People, Process, and Technology.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
