When you work in the customer service field, you’re trained to interact with customers on a daily basis. You and your team serve as your company’s frontline, and being able to communicate effectively is a must. Many companies use customer service tips to develop a strategy for the customer service department to follow. Most of the time, this strategy includes some form of script.
While it’s important to adhere to your company’s policies, for your team to provide exceptional customer service, every customer service agent needs to be confident enough to know when it’s okay to go off script and show the customer a bit of personality.
Following the Script
When you read through some of the most popular customer service tips, you’ll find that there are pros and cons to implementing a scripted customer service strategy.
When you implement a process that uses a script, every person in your customer service department knows exactly what to say and do when different situations arise. This makes it easier to train new employees and keep all your employees focused on the job at hand. However, when you combine customer service tips to create a script for representatives to follow, they normally simply read the script you give them instead of creating a more personal experience for the customer.
Customer Expectations
Customers expect a lot. When a customer calls a company to speak with a customer service agent, that customer doesn’t want to talk to someone who is reading from a list of responses provided by the company. The customer wants to speak to someone who understands the issue and is willing to help.
Your agents can spend hours reading lists filled with customer service tips, but if they don’t sound genuine, the customer is less likely to have a positive experience. Your agents need to ask questions, be authentic, and take whatever action is needed to resolve the issue to be great customer champions.
Your entire customer service strategy should revolve around your customers’ expectations, because you want every customer to have a positive experience with your company. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should throw out the script. Running an unscripted customer service department gives your agents more freedom to interact with your customers on a more personal level. However, your representatives must have some guidelines to adhere to.
By controlling the conversation, you can use customer service tips to train your agents to avoid certain words or phrases. You can teach them to use upselling tactics to introduce customers to additional products, and you can have a clearly defined system in place for corrective action.
The way you manage your customer service department can make or break your company. The last thing any business wants is to have a reputation for bad customer service. Whether you decide to use popular customer service tips to create a script or you decide to run your business unscripted, the most important thing you can do is make sure your customers are your top priority.
About the Author
Nancy Anderson is the communities and article Editor for Beyond.com. Nancy has 10 years’ experience in the online job search business with Beyond. Nancy’s team produces dozens of articles every month for top internet sites. Follow Nancy and the Beyond team on https://twitter.com/BeyondJobs.