How to Build a Customer Centric Strategy for Your Help Desk
When it comes to training a new help desk team member the most important thing to impress upon them is that when dealing with a customer, that customer is the most important person in the world at that moment.
Versing customer service staff in the customer centric mentality is important. It should be a mandatory part of your employee on boarding, just as teaching them the help desk software or the ins and outs of the phone system is.
While the interaction between a customer service representative and customer doesn’t usually begin and end with the first interaction, it is the most memorable time for the customer. You can do all sorts of great things for them, but they’re mainly going to recall that initial contact. It makes sense then to make that initial experience the best one possible. Here are three customer centric strategies you should remember when that first customer contact takes place and it’s time to wow your customer.
1. Be Present and Pleasant
You probably remember a job you had in customer service somewhere where a manager told you to “smile, sit up and be excited!” While it may sound like middle management hocus-pocus, body language can actually make a huge difference on how your exchange with a customer goes.
Did you know customers can actually “hear” when you smile? Maybe they can’t physically hear or see the corners of your mouth turn up, but your voice and your tone come across incredibly different when you smile rather than frown or keep a neutral face.
If you are on the phone, sitting up straight also means you have more air in your lungs so your voice will sound clearer. Proper posture can also make you feel more professional. If you are sitting back and slouching you are likely to be more relaxed in both your demeanor and your responses. Sitting up means you’re active in the relationship and want to help. Yes, it’s all mental games – but it works.
2. Collaborate
This is most likely not your customer’s first time contacting customer service. Depending on their previous experience, it might not be the most pleasant conversation in the world. Yet there is no way you would know any of this if you don’t have access to the customer’s history in front of you.
This is where a collaborative helpdesk application and note-taking system can be beneficial for every business. You can’t reasonably expect for your team members to memorize every single detail of every single customer and every single conversation. What if two different departments talk to the same customer back to back? If they have no instant records or shared notes, they are in for a confusing if not repetitious conversation and a frustrated customer.
3. Simplify
It is most likely unintentional, but many companies tend to make things more complicated than necessary for their customers. Perhaps they add way too many steps to fixing a problem or they end up using a ton of jargon, whatever the case; it winds up just leaving the customer befuddled or aggravated. What works best for your customers is simplicity.
When a customer calls the help desk, all they want to hear is “I understand and I will fix it.” While you often can’t make it that simple, that is the ultimate goal for the customer – simply tell me it will be okay and that you will fix my problem, end of story. Your job is to get them to that goal with minimal fuss. If your team keeps this mindset they will avoid creating any bigger issue down the road.
Looking for a better help desk software? TeamSupport provides a number of integrated tools to allow your company to collaborate closely to achieve maximum customer success.
