If your employees do a wonderful and professional job at communicating through e-mail, then let them know, so they can keep up the good work. If they could use some improvement, then this is a great coaching opportunity for you. Below are some tips to keep in mind to help your company’s e-mail communications to be clear, positive and professional.

• Respond promptly to incoming e-mails
• Create a relevant, concise subject line—and be sure to change it if the subject changes!
• If readers need to do something, let them know in the first paragraph
• Use bold and italic formatting when appropriate, but not in excess
• Check spelling and grammar before sending
• Avoid using jargon and emoticons
• Use a professional signature line that includes your contact information.

As a manager, you set the standard.  Take a look at your own e-mails, and see if you are consistently sending professional messages to your internal and external customers. Remember, you set the standard for your employees to follow. How your employees are perceived through the e-mails  they write impacts the impression your clients have of your employees and your organization. This is one aspect you cannot afford to overlook!

Coaching Tip

Make coaching on e-mail professionalism part of your next team meeting. Draft a sample e-mail and make a copy for each employee. Ask everyone to suggest changes that would make the e-mail look and sound more professional. This activity will allow you to gauge where your employees stand with e-mail communication and provide some valuable practice for them. If you find your employees need additional training, be sure to include these topics.

This experience got me thinking: was the dessert enough to turn the unhappy diners into repeat and loyal customers? Ask yourself this question: would you rather pay full price for a meal and receive good service or get a complimentary dessert for bad service?

Although I appreciate, and sometimes expect, some kind of compensation for bad service, I would much rather pay for a positive experience. People don’t go to restaurants hoping to get bad service so they won’t have to pay. Or at least I don’t think so.

An article from QSRweb.com stated, “What makes a restaurant experience memorable for a customer, nine times out of 10, is how they're made to feel rather than what they eat.”

So why are companies investing money in reimbursing upset customers when they should be training their employees to provide the best customer experience possible? If gaining loyal, repeat customers is the goal, training is the answer.

Customer service training teaches employees first and foremost how to communicate positively and professionally with customers. Training also helps employees with:

• Developing skills to help build rapport with customers
• Learning how to respond to customer requests
• Questioning and confirming customer needs
• Handling angry and upset customers

Some say customer service is a dying art. John Sullivan, a restaurant industry analyst and consultant, disagrees. He says, “All restaurants better pay attention to service or they will lose customers almost instantly.”

Use Product Knowledge to Simplify Explanations

Salespeople may understand how a product works, but they may not know how to explain the product clearly and succinctly to a prospective buyer.

Think about the last software demonstration you viewed.. The salesperson has given the presentation countless times, whereas you were seeing it for the first time. Were you able to follow along with every mouse click and screen transition? Or did the salesperson run through each slide too quickly for you to understand how the software might help you in your business? Did the salesperson use jargon? Or were you able to clearly understand the product’s features and the benefits to you?

Salespeople need to simplify the explanation. Joe Rawlinson, from Return Customer says, “Use a mental anchor that connects what you offer to something the customer already understands.” The goal is for the customer to be able to visualize what the end result will look like. No surprises.

Key Takeaway: The easier it is for a buyer to understand what the product does, how it relates to them, and how they would benefit from using it, the easier it is to close the sale.

Use Product Knowledge to Gain Confident Customers

Customers expect sales representatives to be knowledgeable. When salespeople are knowledgeable, customers have confidence in the company, the product, and their buying experience. If a salesperson hesitates or doesn’t have clear answers to simple questions, customers begin to question their purchase decision.

Key Takeaway: The more confident sales representatives are in their presentations, the more confident the prospect and the more likely the sale.

Use Product Knowledge to Put the Customer at Ease

When potential customers call, will they receive a clear explanation of the product and the purchase process? Or will be they be overwhelmed with terms and concepts they don’t understand?

One of the first times I walked into Starbucks, I ordered a medium coffee. The barista replied, “We have Tall, Grande, or Venti.” Rather annoyed, I said, “Whichever one’s the medium size.” She retorted with, “Well different people have different definitions of what medium means to them.” My initial annoyance quickly turned to extreme irritation.

Imagine how customers feel when they don’t understand the salesperson’s jargon. Few people will ask the salesperson to explain. Instead, they’ll put off the purchase decision or purchase someplace else.

Key Takeaway: Put the customer at ease by giving easy-to-understand product information. The less accessible the information is to the customer, the less likely the sale.

How do you know if your sales staff is performing? Listen to calls, give out quizzes, be a secret shopper. From there you will find out what kind of job aids and training the sales staff may need. Develop product training that sticks. If the training department is overwhelmed, a number of companies offer custom training tailored specifically to the needs of your team.

Stay Tuned: This post is the first in a series of three on helping reps close more sales.

Why is Consistency Important?

Consistent support gives customers a sense of control over their technology infrastructure. For the vast majority of companies, technology is essential to delivering their product or service to the market. However, it is not their core competency. Nor should it be. Consistent service allows companies to focus on their core deliverables to the market. When end users are confident that their technical issues will be resolved, they can focus on their deliverables rather than their technical productivity tools.

We all know how frustrating it is to receive bad support, either face-to-face or remotely; to be served by someone that is incompetent or transferred from person to person and department to department before receiving service of any kind.  It doesn’t take many lack-luster support experiences to undermine belief in the service provider and the brand behind the service. Inconsistent service is remembered by the poor experience rather than the exceptional experience.  Inconsistency is a quick way to increase customer defection and develop a reputation for mediocrity.

The Role of Consistency in Professional Support

If customers want timely, professional, and consistent service, what are the essential drivers and how is consistency achieved? There are six essential elements driving consistent, professional support:

1. Streamlined processes that ensure timely responsiveness
2. Exemplary product knowledge to support issue resolution and trusted advisor relationships
3. Efficient troubleshooting skills to increase time-to-resolution
4. Superior customer service skills to enhance the customer relationship
5. Service delivery alignment with company values and behavioral standards to ensure consistency
6. Effective coaching by supervisors and managers to optimize the adoption of the previous five elements

The first four elements are necessary for timely, professional service. The last two elements are essential for consistent professional service. How well a company executes these last two elements will determine if their service is exceptional.  Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of employee coaching.

Coaching as a Tipping Point for Consistency

The tipping point for developing consistent, professional service is clearly the ability of team leads, supervisors, and managers to coach frontline engineers.  Training, as an event that may last a few hours or a few days, cannot compete with established individual behavioral habits developed over a lifetime of interactions. Nor can training compete with the cultural norms of the support center.  Behavioral change requires support and intervention. Coaching is the critical intervention tool to facilitate that behavioral change.

Everyone benefits from training and follow-up coaching:

• Employees feel more appreciated and better informed
• Supervisors have the coaching tools to intervene and correct behavior in a positive manner
• Managers see lower employee turnover, increased call quality, and increased customer satisfaction

By setting common behavioral expectation and performance standards to judge behavior, management creates a mechanism for transforming disparate individual habits and styles into a common service standard that is consistent with the values and strategic objectives of company.  The result is an increase in customer loyalty that translates into longer relationships.

Unfortunately not everyone is a natural coach and some may require coaching training to develop and nurture the skills required to effectively lead a team or department. Implementing a formal coaching system allows companies to align service delivery across the organization with company values and behavioral standards. Controlling the consistency of service delivery ensures companies will meet and exceed customer service expectations. This leads to improved overall customer satisfaction, loyalty, and customer longevity.

“As a sales manager for a distributor, coaching my call center reps is crucial. Coaching training has provided me with the tools necessary to accomplish this in an effective, well-documented manner.” -Mike Cadwell, Sales Operations Manager

This post is part one in The Role of Consistency in Professional Support series. Stay tuned for the second post on Efficient Troubleshooting Skills.

Click here to read an employee coaching success story.

Customer service games are fun, motivational activities. The key is to use them in conjunction with skill learning and skill use. When relevant to participants and their jobs, the games build confidence, lift morale, spark enthusiasm, stimulate creativity, and ultimately achieve results.

Games can be quick, fun energizers that raise participants' awareness of customer service issues. Games can also be full-scale activities that teach a skill and offer participants the opportunity to practice the skill in an informal, onthreatening environment.

There are a number of ways you can use customer service games: as stand-alone training activities, as warm-ups to a more intensive training session, or in combination with one another to constitute a segments of a comprehensive customer service training event.

Following are some resources for customer service game:

• The Big Book of Customer Service Training Games
• Training Games by Thiagi
• Customer Service Training Helper
• Training Games, Inc.

And if you need to plan a more comprehensive training event, check out one of these:

• Customer service training
• Customer service training for technical support professionals
• Customer service training for field service engineers

Developing a connection with your customers can do wonders for your company and give you a competitive edge by increasing customer loyalty, the potential for outside referrals, and of course the chance to sell more.

So, how do you build this connection? Following are a few tips and tricks to help you establish a rapport and transform a simple sale into a good relationship.

• Show interest in the human element. Showing interest in your customer is one of the easiest ways to start building rapport. Ask him how his day has been, refer to him by name, or talk with him about more than just the topic at hand. You’d be surprised how just a little gesture can affect the tone of the call and the tenure of the relationship.
• Listen. Focus your attention on what your customer is saying—not on what you want to say as soon as he finishes speaking. Not only will you find out more about his needs than you otherwise might, but you’ll also give him the satisfaction of being heard and understood.

• Find something in common.  Large or small, finding something you and your customer have in common provides a little token for your customer to remember you by.

• Follow Up. Take a couple minutes out of your day and send your customers a follow-up email thanking them for their time and interest. Or, if it’s been awhile since you spoke, give them a call to ask them how the product or service is working out.

• Be a person that your customer wants to know. If you’re honest and sincere and if you act with integrity in all you do, your customers will have a positive impression of you, your company, and the products and services you provide.

There are dozens of techniques for building good rapport with your customers—and hundreds of reasons why doing this is a good idea. For more tips and tricks, check out another blog post on maintaining meaningful relationships with your customers.

Following are seven tips to keep in mind.

1. Deal with the issue right away. If you delay your response or ignore the issue altogether, you may look weak and ineffective. You’ll also send a message to other employees that they too can get away with inappropriate behavior.
2. Stay calm and poised. Because you’re the one in the position of authority, you’ll set the tone of the discussion. Always maintain a professional demeanor and convey a tone that says,  “This isn’t working. How can we fix it?”
3. Allow the employee to vent. Just as you would an upset customer, give the employee a few moments to air his or her grievances. Sometimes this venting is exactly what a person needs to do before calming down and discussing the issue more rationally.
4. Empathize. Let an upset or disgruntled employee know that you’re aware he or she has strong feelings about the issue and that you’re interested in helping the employee to resolve them. Empathizing is not the same thing as agreeing. It just lets people feel heard and acknowledged.
5. Focus on the issue, not the person. No matter how strongly you believe that the employee’s behavior or attitude is at the root of the problem, don’t make the issue a personal one. You want to communicate that you are for the employee but against the behavior.
6. Always give the employee an out. It will only further upset employees if they feel that they’re being backed up against a wall. When working to resolve an issue, be sure to give the employee an opportunity to choose the correct outcome of the discussion.
7. Focus on a solution. When emotions are running high, it’s all too easy to get stuck in a continuous cycle of discussing the problem. Once the issue has been clearly identified, move the discussion forward by focusing on ways to resolve it.

Print this list and keep it handy for the next time you need to coach a problem employee.

Traditionally, employee incentives come in the form of a pay increase or bonus money. While this monetary compensation can undoubtedly motivate your employees in the short term, it is by no means the only way to encourage top-notch performance from your staff.   Many employees are motivated to increase their skills and knowledge by the prospect of promotion or job enhancement. In fact, according to some studies, employees have cited various incentives besides a pay increase that motivate them to achieve goals. Some of these include:

• Recognition for hard work.
• Better work environment and working conditions.
• Job security.
• Employer contribution to a retirement plan.

In addition to these ideas, you can also create an incentive system that is tailored to the specific needs and wants of the staff in your company. A way to do this is to ask your employees, either through a survey or in a private meeting, to identify what rewards would be most meaningful to them. Include this “wish list” in their employee file. When the time comes around to show your appreciation of the employee’s hard work, you can reference this list to help you reward them in a way that they would appreciate. For example, if Rich, an agent in your contact center, loves coffee, you might want to reward his small successes with a gift card to his favorite coffee shop. Other ideas could include free movie tickets, a gift certificate to a favorite store/restaurant, or even someone’s favorite chocolate treat!

Rewards are also a good way to boost employee morale during changes within the company. If your business is implementing a new telephone sales system, for example, you can use small gifts and perks to help smooth the transition and make sure employees feel appreciated for the effort they are putting forth to adjust to a new system. Following are additional ideas for promoting success and rewarding accomplishments within your company:

• Give people their birthday off with pay. Honor them and encourage them to have fun on their special day!
• Reward agents for reporting other agents doing something well.
• For exceptional achievements or milestones, write a personal letter of acknowledgment.

Incentives motivate your employees and show them you value their contributions to the company.

Douglas Matthews, president and chief operating officer for Right Management, reported in Chief Learning Officer that 80 percent of workers may now be actively seeking new jobs. In another article, Metlife reported “…only 47 percent of employees surveyed feel very strong loyalty to their employers. Just three years ago the same survey showed 59 percent of workers felt very strong loyalty.” It’s time for companies to respond by taking on a new mantra for 2012: motivate, empower, invest.

Motivate

Employees need to be connected and engaged to enjoy working at a company. Goals and motivation help in this endeavor. Tim Houlihan, vice president of Reward Systems at BI Worldwide, says “…the stimulants that get us into high achievement are these: our ability to set challenging goals, our ability to get emotionally engaged in our work, and our ability to focus.”

Sit down with employees and find out what motivates them. Elaine Varelas, a managing partner at Camden Consulting Group, says “After a certain threshold of earnings, there are more things to motivate people – fun things such as trips, dinners at expensive restaurants, experiences…The VIP treatment may mean more than the actual cash value.”

Empower

Some companies are empowering their employees to make serving their customers the number one priority.

Southwest Airlines

I heard a story recently about a Southwest pilot that held a plane 12 minutes for a grandfather to make the flight. His grandson was ill and only had a few hours to live. Southwest teaches their employees to not hold a plane for anyone. Waiting for his customer was more important than meeting his requirement. The pilot made his own decision based on special circumstances.

Ritz-Carlton Hotels

Employee empowerment is at the forefront of Ritz-Carlton. When co-founder Horst Schulze was in charge, employees each had $2,000 to use to serve customers without getting prior approval.

Nordstrom

When new employees start at Nordstrom, they receive an employee handbook that includes this single rule: “Use best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.”

Invest

Investing in employees is the way to show them you value their contributions to the company. This can be shown in several ways. Consider training for example. If metric levels are difficult for an employee to meet, provide training opportunities to improve skills.

Lori Freifeld writes in an article for Training Magazine, “When it comes to training, the most important part of motivating is letting people know what the value of the training is to them personally – will they be more knowledgeable about the stock market; will they learn how to deal with conflict in the office, etc.”

Now that the New Year is well on its way, consider how you can incorporate this trend into your management strategy. Soon enough, employees will be saying “I HEART my job!”

Post #10 in the Top Ten Customer Service and Support Trends for 2012 series.

What’s important to measure depends on who you are

Customer service and support managers want to measure the operational metrics listed above along with others like transfer rates and queue length to help them run an efficient organization.

Executives, on the other hand, want to measure customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, market share, and profitability by product or service line so they can see how effective the company is at maximizing the shareholder’s return on investment. The two do not always jive.

The disconnect between efficient and effective

A company could go out of business if their only concern is having happy customers at all costs. So while it’s important to be cost-effective, this doesn’t always mean seeking the lowest cost. Take for example, the usual focus on average handle time. Of course, customers want to keep a call as short as possible, too. But they care more about getting their questions answered accurately and getting their problems resolved.

And guess what? Most customers don’t mind taking a little extra time to hear about something that will save them from having to call back in the future. So there’s a disconnect between keeping a call short (efficient) and taking enough time to resolve the caller’s issue and give information to minimize a call back (effective).

To meet the goals of the executive team, there’s a trend among customer service and support managers to re-examine their metrics in light of the larger objectives of the business.

What is the customer’s point of view?

Start examining your metrics from the customer’s point of view. Consider escalations, for example. Managers seek to drive escalations down. Of course! Who wants their supervisors or Tier 2 engineers tied up on simple problems. But what will satisfy the customer? A speedy escalation if that’s what it takes to get the problem resolved.

A customer-focused metric then, would be to track "appropriate" vs. “inappropriate” escalations. Inappropriate escalations are those where the agent should be able to handle the problem, but can’t, and therefore escalates the customer to the next level. Too many inappropriate escalations point out a training issue. Once you identify inappropriate escalations as a problem, you can then provide additional training and give your staff the tools they need to handle their level of calls. The result will be fewer inappropriate escalations, happier customers, and lower costs.

How about call quality scores? Many centers we've worked with tracked behaviors that did not affect customer satisfaction (such as using the customer’s name three times during the call) and left out things that did, (such as providing an accurate answer). Why not conduct a focus group with customers this year to find out what you should add to your form and what you can stop tracking.

What else should you track?

There’s a real business case for first-contact resolution because it’s one of the prime drivers of customer satisfaction and it keeps costs down.

As Richard Snow from Ventana Research puts it:

“First contact resolution can be even more useful when linked with other metrics and actions. Applied to agents, for example, it lets companies identify best practices and adjust process and training so more agents can resolve more issues the first time. Linked to customers, it can tell who are the difficult customers and how they can be handled in the future. It can help identify why issues occur and what can be done to generate fewer calls. It can influence behavior, because agents will strive harder to resolve more calls at the first attempt. It can influence call-routing rules, so that more calls are routed to agents who resolve more issues the first time.”

If you have first contact resolution within benchmark levels, then go for next issue avoidance, also called proactive service. This is another one of the top 10 trends for the upcoming year.

Conferences, webinars, and customer service forums are all a-buzz about customer satisfaction, retention, and net promoter scores—the same issues executives pay attention to. This year, be sure your center metrics are well-aligned to deliver solid business results.

Post #8 in the Top Ten Customer Service and Support Trends for 2012 series. 

Who’s upselling and cross-selling now?

While sales teams have long had goals for upselling and cross-selling, more companies than ever are asking their customer service reps to do the same. And they’re asking their support engineers to  recommend product upgrades and contact customers to renew warranty agreements. This growing trend is particularly true in the financial services, telecommunications, high technology, and services industries.

Why is upselling and cross-selling an important trend for service and support departments?

Most industries are dealing with the problem of selling a commodity, since competitors are able to quickly copy what was, originally, an innovative product differentiator. In fact, the Corporate Executive Board in their ECSB Insider report 67 percent of business owners feel that more suppliers are now offering competing products than five years ago. This makes new sales more difficult and buyers less loyal since they have multiple places where they can purchase similar products or services. While it's important to increase market share, it's also easier to focus on your existing buyers who already trust your organization and find value in your offering. Plus, the more products and services people buy from an organization, the more likely they are to remain engaged rather than take their business elsewhere.

There’s a benefit for customers, too. Purchasing more at once saves them time and shipping costs, and maybe even money if there’s a quantity discount. Upgrading to a new product version saves on repair costs. Purchasing a maintenance contract reduces risk, helps with budgeting, and smooths cash flow.

What’s required for success?

According to MarketSoft Corporation, a provider of cross-selling technology, nearly three quarters of all businesses say they have cross-selling programs, but as many as 70 percent of such efforts fail to increase revenue in any significant way. Why?

Despite advancements in technology to identify sales opportunities through segmentation and behavior analysis, if the agents speaking with customers don’t want to sell or don’t introduce the sale in a way that benefits the buyer, there will be no sale.

When presented with an upsell and cross-sell initiative, many customer service and support representatives are not happy! They perceive themselves as service professionals, not salespeople. In fact, some companies have lost as much as 25% of their department when embarking on a cross-selling program. Giving representatives a script to read at the end of a call won’t work. I’m sure you’ve been on the other end of those types of calls! What’s needed is a training program to help agents understand how selling—appropriately—is offering service. It truly is! When a customer service or support rep thinks ahead about what products and services might serve customers, then presents the offer in a way that shows it meets a need the customer has, cross-selling is offering the customer “total” service.

Amadeus-Forrester, in their recent report titled “Cross-Sell Your Way to Profits” predicts cross-selling to grow 30 percent by 2015, ten times faster than general sales. Are you ready to be part of this trend?

Post #6 in the Top Ten Customer Service and Support Trends for 2012 series. 

Carl Jung, one of the fathers of modern psychology, developed a theory of psychological types. The idea is that if we can identify others’ preferences and then modify our behavior, we’ll all get along better, prevent misunderstandings, and accomplish more. In the example above, if the sales or support agent can identify my personality type, then the agent can temper his or her need to build a relationship and get down to business. I’ll then leave the call as a satisfied customer.

Of course, this is overly simplified, but the theory works so well that a number of companies have created proprietary instruments and training programs around it. NASA even got into the game, using The Process Communication Model, to help predict how astronauts would jell in a capsule together.

Salespeople have long known about the power of adjusting their personality to that of their various customers. These concepts are now moving into the customer service and support realm and rapidly becoming a trend.

For example, on the high-tech front, ELoyalty uses speech recognition technology to compile personality profiles of callers and match them with a representative who works best with that personality type. Each time a customer calls back, the system uses the existing profile to deepen and enrich the profile. According to eLoyalty, one banking client saw the attrition rate among customers struggling with the most serious issues drop from 7% to 1%. Another saw their J.D. Power rating improve.

Other systems you may be familiar with are Meyers-Briggs, DiSC™, or Insights. One we particularly like is WorkTraits. It assesses not only personality traits, but core convictions and has some great back-end tools for use on the job. When paired with training, role plays, and job aids to help agents identify caller types and know what to do when selling or providing service, great results can be achieved.

Are your agents treating your customers the way they want to be treated? Look into one of these systems today. And don’t be surprised if you see WorkTraits wrapped into a course here at Impact soon.

Post #4 in the Top Ten Customer Service and Support Trends for 2012 series. 

People Leave Management – Not Companies

There are many reasons a company may have high turnover: poor working conditions, low pay, bad hours, and mandatory over-time to name a few. But, statistics show the number one reason an employee leaves a job is bad management. A bad supervisor can quickly compromise an otherwise well-performing team. The ripple effect of bad management reaches all aspects of business and will quickly affect not only employee morale but also customer loyalty.

"People leave managers not companies…in the end, turnover is mostly a manager issue," Gallup wrote in its survey findings. The effect of poor management is widely felt. Gallup also determined that poorly managed work groups are on average 50 percent less productive and 44 percent less profitable than well-managed groups. Compuserve

Front-line supervisors with excellent communication and coaching skills will transform a mediocre performing team into a good team and a good team into the envy of the entire center. Recently the Blue Cross Blue Shield Federal Employee Program needed to improve their customer satisfaction scores from an outsourced customer service department. Not only did they train agents, but they also invested in training supervisors with the critical skills needed to sustain agent training and improve performance over time. The results of a Gallup poll showed impressive survey results:

• 98% of customers said their call was treated in a professional manner.
• 91% said the CSR quickly understood why they called.
• 92% said the response they received was given in a clear and understandable fashion.
• 91% said the response they received was accurate as far as they knew.
• 96% said the service they received was outstanding, very good, or good.

Reduce Turnover with Great Management

Good front-line supervision is integral to lowering employee turnover. With the high costs of recruiting, hiring, and training new agents continually increasing, why not jump on the bandwagon and invest in existing employees and improve overall company operations? Some managers and supervisors naturally possess exemplary communication skills. Others need training and exposure to the positive effects of a learn-by doing-method of managing and motivating employees.

“Whether you are pushing your ready-now talent to do something new or helping your ready-soon players elevate their game, learning and career development is an essential ingredient in retaining employees and creating a motivated workforce; one that dramatically improves organizational culture, alignment, execution and performance results.” Lisa Rohland, director of learning and development, GlaxoSmithKline North America. (as quoted in Chief Learning Officer, November 2011.

The next time you review your training schedule, be sure to include time for your front-line supervisors. Improving their skills with call center coaching training will reduce employee turnover and  increase customer satisfaction.

Post #5 in the Top Ten Customer Service and Support Trends for 2012 series.

Social media as a service and support channel is on the rise. There is a buzz about what effect social media will have on customer service.

Peter Shankman showed us what one tweet can do. After jokingly asking Morton’s steakhouse to meet him at an airport with a porterhouse in one of his tweets, they showed up!  The power of that tweet is extraordinary! After five months, the story is still being retold.

How do you properly begin a social media support plan?

The following three tips will help you develop your own plan.

Develop a Plan of Action

When getting started in using social media for service and support, the first step is to develop a plan of action. Your plan of action needs to contain a map for how to handle certain situations that may arise. Some issues may be routine or you may see repeat problems, so having a map for what to do when those issues occur will save time and frustration for both your customer and your staff. Think frequently asked questions for example. Do some questions get asked over and over again? Create a “cheat sheet” just as you would for a call center.

Prepare escalation plans for unexpected issues as well. While you may not be able to anticipate certain issues, you need to have your marching orders in place so your customer is confident you will take care of the issue. The more situations you are prepared for, the smoother your interactions will be.

Empower Employees

Companies are coming up with creative ways to empower their employees to offer support and solve problems through social media. HP and Best Buy both created unique twitter handles to offer support to their customers. Check out this blog post to find out how.

Follow Through

If you choose to use social media as a service channel, you need to follow through. If a customer communicates with you over Twitter, whether a complaint, concern, or question, you need to respond in a timely manner. The sooner the response, the more satisfied the customer.

If you respond and truly serve your customers over social media channels, you not only increase your customer’s satisfaction with your company, but increase loyalty as well. Keep the following words from Janet Eden-Harris (chief marketing officer for Market Force Information) in mind: “Happy customers produce the gift that keeps on giving. They buy more. They tell their friends. They return more frequently. But, a few unhappy customers can undo all of your great work.”

According to a Zendesk infographic by Tiffany Maleshefski, “A majority of consumers are already using social media channels for customer support, and many would be open to using social media for support in the future.” The infographic shows that 62% of consumers have used social media for customer service issues and 76% of consumers say they would be more likely to use social media for customer service if they better understood the tools available to them.

Who’s Using Social Media for Service & Support?

Many companies have taken the idea of social support to heart and have equipped their employees with the tools they need to offer assistance to customers through social media channels. According to a study Telus International conducted about the social media support activity of seven fortune 500 companies, the most common social channel used was Twitter.

Take a look at a few examples of companies incorporating social media into their customer support:

@hpsupportforum

HP developed a Twitter handle for customers to discuss their support needs. It acts as an online community where customers can ask questions, ask for support, or answer fellow customer questions if they have encountered the issue themselves.

@twelpforce

Best Buy created a Twitter handle to use as a service tool. All employees have access and they have found employees enjoy tweeting even when they’re not at work. The tweets respond to customers’ concerns and prepare customers for changes that may affect them.

Consumers are posting comments on various social media and call [center] forums and, even more important, they expect to get a response when they do so. Companies lacking a ready method to monitor and respond to all forums face a potential backlash, while those that can quickly identify root causes of a burgeoning problem – on, for example, their Facebook pages or via Twitter – can then track the problems through to resolution and create a competitive advantage. Tracey E. Schelmetic, TMCnet Contributor

So Who Should Respond?

Now that companies have decided to engage in social media support, who does the responsibility fall to?

Some companies believe the call center should monitor and respond to customer inquiries through social media. Other companies, like Dell for example, have started training employees in social media. Dell launched a Social Media Command Center and trained over 5,000 employees. Keeping up with customer’s expectations is crucial. Rachel Miller says, “Technology services organizations will need to be alert and responsive to customer needs with teams of well-trained technicians ready to engage with customers.”

How to Start Social Media Support

If you’re looking to start your own social media support plan, keep the following tips in mind:

• Develop a plan for responding to customer inquiries through social media
• Empower your employees to offer assistance
• Follow Up in a timely manner

Post #9 in the Top Ten Customer Service and Support Trends for 2012 series.

What’s Your App?

Customers are getting very familiar with using mobile applications as a customer service channel. For the consumer there are next to no downsides. A “brand-in-hand” application offers immediate access to account information, customer support and product and service options.

Mobility computing is where the access to IT capabilities no longer occurs through traditional desktop machines that are loaded with processing power, memory, storage, and are tethered to the corporate network. Instead, users expect to access IT capabilities from any location and from a myriad of devices, large and small. TSIA partner PWC has observed that companies need to migrate from “email cultures” to “app cultures.”  If you stop to think about that simple concept, the ramifications are immense.  The explosion of smart mobile devices and “apps” is forcing technology solution providers to rethink everything from solution design to security to price points for solutions. Tom Lah, Technology Services Industry Association

Industry experts are predicting a dramatic increase in mobile application use in 2012 for customer service and support. To increase and maintain customer satisfaction levels companies will need to be proactive in assisting customers via their chosen mode of communication.

“Resolving customer complaints and concerns is critical to customer retention and engagement,” said Janet Eden-Harris, chief marketing officer for Market Force Information. “Happy customers produce the gift that keeps on giving. They buy more. They tell their friends. They return more frequently. But, a few unhappy customers can undo all of your great work.”  Marketforce.com

In many aspects, providing world-class customer service is the only differentiator a company may have from its competitors. The use of mobile devices and smart phones will only continue to increase and will advance the speed at which companies need to adopt new processes and procedures.

The challenge is to prepare front-line staff for these changes. Arm them with product and service knowledge and technical and soft skills training. Mobile communication will lower the cost per interaction and will enable agents to deliver more timely and more personalized service to customers.

Smart phones, tablets, and call center applications will all improve. With the introduction of the iPhone, Apple changed the way business happens by creating software development kits and useful Web browsers for smart phones and tablets. This allows businesses to create mobile applications for call centers. These applications can be cloud-based applications so agents can access and update their CRM solutions or customer records from any computer with Internet access. Angie Reed, Product Marketing Manager, Digium

Get App Happy

Which option sounds better to you? Waiting in a lengthy IVR queue or pressing a button on your smart phone to send a quick message? I know which option I’m choosing. Customer service and support is evolving – make sure you and your company are not left in the dark ages.

Post #7 in the Top Ten Customer Service and Support Trends for 2012 series.

What is proactive service?

When customer service and support reps offer proactive service, they anticipate and preempt additional contact. Here’s an example:

Mrs. Pedowitz calls her insurance company to get a copy of the contract that explains her health insurance benefits. Knowing that members often call back for help understanding the complex contract, the CSR, Jesse, offers to answer questions about services Mrs. Pedowitz frequently uses. At the end of the call, Jesse offers to e-mail her a link to a summary booklet that is written in easy-to-understand language.

Should you follow the proactive service trend?

According to Enkata, a leader in cloud-based customer experience analytics, proactive customer service has been shown to reduce call volumes by 20–30% in 12 months, cut operating costs by up to 25%, and improve customer retention by 3–5%.

Sound good? Of course! So what’s involved?

 How to get started with proactive service:

1. Create a map of issues showing their relationship—for example, ordering a contract and answering questions on the phone or sending a follow-up link.
2. Determine how often customers call back. If they only call back 1–2% of the time, it’s probably not worth addressing. If customers call back 20–25% of the time, there will be cost-savings that are definitely worth pursuing.
3. Train your staff. Provide issues maps as job aids to help your staff determine what to do when a customer has a particular issue. Be sure to include role plays so employees get lots of practice introducing the proactive service measure into the call.

Is it really that easy?

It would be except for the fact that contact centers are often focused on short-term profitability metrics like average handle time (AHT). And first contact resolution or next issue avoidance are diametrically opposed to lower AHT. While customers want calls to be short, imagine how much time they would save (and you too) if they didn’t have to call back for something that could have been proactively handled on the first call.

Just think! If you could prevent 20% of the calls currently coming into your center, your reps would have more time to spend with customers in order to guarantee their satisfaction with the level of service and support provided by your company. Sound like a winning strategy? We think so.

Post #3 in the Top Ten Customer Service and Support Trends for 2012 series. 

 What is Crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing is using your “crowd” of users as the “source” to help other users. It allows the number of customer issues you can handle to grow without your needing to incur additional labor costs. By letting users participate in the customer service and support process, it puts them center stage, engages them with your company, and increases loyalty. And by monitoring the crowd, you get new ideas.

 Who’s Crowdsourcing Customer Service and Support Today?

Pretty much any company with a user forum. Here are just a few:

• Have a Blackberry? Maybe you use Crackberry. Kevin Michaluk launched this user supported site and according to MyCompete, Blackberry.com traffic increased 49% in 2010 while Crackberry.com increased 107.4%.
• Intacct uses crowdsourcing to encourage customers and partners to create, refine, and vote on ideas for improvements to the Intacct system through their Customer and Partner Portal. Their fall release included 31 new features that were crowdsourced from the 8,000 users who participated.
• Have you bought anything from Best Buy? Then you probably know about the Twelpforce, a user supported community for all things tech purchased at Best Buy. There were over 80 postings the day I checked.

But What If We're Not a Big Company?

You may notice the companies referenced above are larger companies. However the cost of software has come down making crowdsourcing customer service and support more affordable for the SMB market. Check GetSatisfaction, NapkinLabs, or UserVoice for affordable software to help you get started.

How to Use Crowdsourcing for Customer Service and Support

In addition to providing a forum for customer service and support, you can consider some of these ideas from NapkinLabs:

• Brainstorm new opportunities collaboratively with customers, employees, vendors, and partners
• Get focused feedback on your products, services, promotions, etc.
• Run photo contests with user-generated pictures and videos to use in your marketing materials
• Post challenges to get new designs for packaging or feature updates
• Collect “voice-of-the customer” testimonials to help your sales team close business

Check out the Success Stories from GetSatisfaction customers for more ideas. For example, Intuit’s Mint, a leading online personal financial site, used GetSatisfaction for crowdsourcing and within 90 days, saw a 75% reduction in support tickets.

 What to Expect When Crowdsourcing

When you start? Not much. You’ll need to promote your community to your users just like you’d promote your product or service to your prospects. And you’ll need to assign someone to moderate the community and answer questions until you get enough users actively participating. It will take 1,000 or more users to get a community active because according to the 90–9-1 principle, 90% of members will be lurkers logging in now and then to ask a question, 9% will contribute on occasion, and 1% will be power users.

According to John Bernier, a Manager within the Emerging Platforms group at Best Buy and former lead of Best Buy’s Twelpforce initiative, when they started Twelpforce in 2009, they weren’t sure what to expect. However, they found that with some good foundational guideposts and training tools, the crowd began to organize and govern itself. Leaders popped up as coaches or mentors, and pretty soon they had a really good support network in place.

Crowdsourcing can reduce the burden on your staff, save money, and engage your customers. Will you be part of this growing trend?

Post #2 in the Top Ten Customer Service and Support Trends for 2012 series.

According to Bruce Temkin of the Temkin Group, “The contact center has always housed a large percentage of important interactions with customers, but companies learn very little from these key touchpoints. That’s changing. Newer technologies allow companies to extract deep insights from unstructured content like recorded calls, emails, and chat sessions. Leading companies will learn what drives satisfaction and loyalty, and use the information to change the products they sell, how they market their offerings, and how they service customers.”

How to Employ This Customer Service Strategy

Whether you monitor live or recorded calls, whether you use state-of-the-art speech recognition technology like Envision’s SpeechMiner or VIP’s Speech Analytics software, or whether you train a special team of customer service strategy analysts to listen to your customers just like you train quality analysts to listen to your agents, understanding the customer’s point of view is invaluable in knowing in which direction the company needs to move.

Some things to listen for include:

• What your customers say about your products and your company
• Why they’re buying your products—and why they’re not buying them
• The technical difficulties your customers face when trying to find information or place an order on your website
• Which calls could be handled more quickly and less expensively by a self-service option
• How your customers are reacting to your promotions
• What your customers say about their online shopping experience
• Reasons for low sales conversions that are beyond your sales team’s control
• What customers most frequently complain about

Whether you go high tech or low tech, start listening today. Your customers will thank you for it!

Post #1 in the Top Ten Customer Service and Support Trends for 2012 series.

In reality, there is so much more to consider when answering questions than just having product knowledge. For example, consider how your customers feel after you have answered their questions. You may think you met their needs, when they still have concerns. The way you respond and the style you use when taking care of a customer affects how they perceive you and your company overall. For instance, if a customer asks you for the balance due on his account, you can:

1. Quickly give it to him and be done with the call.
2. Provide the balance along with additional information that the customer could benefit from—maybe a special that’s coming up next month or a way to track balances online.

The second choice would be in your best interest—and would add some style! Even if your customer chooses not to act on the information you provide, at least you are adding value to the relationship by offering it.

Answering With Style

As simple as it may sound, there is an art to answering customers’ questions with style. Below are a few tips for you to keep in mind when you are faced with customers’ questions:

• Use a positive tone of voice – We all know that you can say the exact same thing with two different tones of voice, and the messages will be perceived differently. Whether in person, on the phone, or in writing, the tone of voice you exude can affect how you are perceived in your customers’ eyes. No matter what, when answering your customers’ questions, always project a confident and pleasant tone of voice, even if the customers are not very pleasant with you.

• Be professional – Chose your words carefully, use correct grammar, and avoid using jargon that your customers may not be familiar with. In addition to avoiding jargon, you also want to stay away from using slang terms, such as “yup” or “nope”. Enunciate and speak clearly so your customer can understand your answer.

• Be aware of your rate of speech – You don’t want to talk so fast that customers don’t understand you or feel as if you are rushing them off the phone. Speak at a natural pace that is not too slow and not too fast. Match your customer’s rate if possible.

• Empathize with the customer (if appropriate) – If customers are upset, many times they want you to know what they are experiencing. What they are looking for is some sort of empathy and a solution. In this day and age, empathy seems to be overlooked, and many agents just focus on a solution. Nothing can upset your customers more than not listening to them and not acknowledging their feelings before giving them an answer. I experienced this the other day when I called my internet provider because my bill was incorrect. After I explained my frustration to the agent, she simply tried to sign me up for a different plan. The agent went straight to a solution that would end the conversation quickly instead of acknowledging my frustrations and getting to the root of my problem. Instead of feeling like the agent was providing service, I felt angry about the way she handled the problem. Following the call, I used social media to vent my frustrations and attempt to receive some kind of service. Read my post to find out the result.

• Confirm your understanding – In order to help your customer, you have to fully understand what he or she wants, and make sure that you are both on the same page. In order to confirm your understanding of what the customer needs, you might say something like this; “Just to confirm, you have not been able to print from your printer since you installed the new software. Right?” Confirming your understanding not only ensures that you and your customer are headed in the same direction, but it also shows that you were listening.

• If applicable, offer your customer options – Give your customers all the options available to them, and point out the value that each option offers to each customer. Not only does this make the customer feel empowered with the choice they make, but it also allows them to see the significance of their decision.

In addition to the tips above, the following Impact Learning HEART Model™ is a great tool to keep in mind when answering customers’ questions:

• Hear and Understand
• Expect the Best
• Act with Integrity
• Respect Diversity
• Transcend Yourself

All of these tips are easy to incorporate into your interactions with your customers. You just have to be aware of your customers’ needs and make the extra effort to utilize the tips above. Above all, keep in mind that anyone can answer a customer’s question, but answering with style and professionalism is a different story.