Surprisingly, even though customer support is often one of the first interactions that a customer will have with a company, some businesses treat it as a necessary evil. However, when customers can’t get the help they need, they’ll quickly form a negative impression of your business.
Here are several effective ways to give your customers the help they need when they need it, which will go a long way in creating a positive impression:
1. Make customer support available 24/7. If you have the capacity and resources available to do so, you can differentiate yourself from the pack by offering customer support 24/7. Save your customers the headache of calling back during business hours and instead provide them with the assistance that they need when they need it.
2. Appeal to millennials with text-enabled customer support. As far as millennials are concerned, the traditional 1-800 customer service line is out of date. Instead, this demographic prefers to text. Therefore, offering customer support via text messages will better appeal to millennials and increase customer satisfaction.
3. Offer a live chat option. While some people don’t want to go through the hassle of calling a customer service line or tracking down a contact email, they’re very willing to interact with customer service via live chat. Incorporating a live chat option into your website or including a link to a live chat page in your email signature can make it extremely easy for customers to get the help they need.
4. Take advantage of social media. Considering that most people have a social media account today, expanding your customer support offering to social media can make it very convenient for customers to get the help they need. Some businesses are even creating social media accounts that are dedicated to providing customer support.
5. Provide a self-service option. Creating an FAQ page on your website with answers to some of the most common questions that customers have or establishing a customer forum are great solutions to help your customers to quickly address issues on their own.
Use these five best practices to strengthen your own customer support strategy.
