Poor customer service continues to be the main reason customers stop using a company. Although every mistake might be different, each one is easy to make and will essentially lead to the same result; an unhappy customer. 
By understanding common customer service mistakes, it becomes much easier to prevent them – avoid hampering your customer experience.
- Unreliable technology and equipment
“Oh, I’m sorry, our system just crashed” is not what you want to hear from your customer service representative, and it shouldn’t have to be. Be sure to keep your processes kitted out with the latest technology.
- Being stubborn
Customer service representatives need a little bit of room to manoeuvre when dealing with unhappy customers. This doesn’t mean that company policies are useless, but it helps to allow for a bit of flexibility to prevent smaller complaints growing into bigger ones.
- Trying to cover your tracks when you’re wrong
No one can be right all the time. If you’ve made a mistake, then admit it. We are all human. Although it will be hard to say, an apology is much more likely to bring a quicker resolution.
- Lacking company knowledge due to insufficient training
All of your agents need to know everything about your company, your products and your processes. They need to be able to answer questions before they have even been asked, but most importantly they need to know how to effectively and efficiently relay this information back to the customer. This can be achieved through extensive agent training.
- Making follow-up calls a lower priority
There are only a set number of hours in the day to get through a long list of calls, but following-up calls should be given just as much importance as other calls. Checking that a problem was resolved is more likely to increase customer satisfaction, even if you didn’t actually solve the problem first time round. It also saves them calling you again.
- Not being there for your customers
This is the biggest mistake that customer service employees can make. The inability to contact a customer service advisor will irritate your customer more than any other issue. Make sure you are contactable as often and in as many ways as possible. Take advantage of developments in online chat, social media and outsourced call handling.
Call us on 0800 0931 830 with any queries or email [email protected] for any extra information.