Improving your Customer and Service Support
By: Hubert Crowell
A lot if not most companies, have two support operations, a customer support and a service
support operation. Now days most all companies also use an elaborate telephone screening
process for the incoming calls. I would like to suggest an alternative way to improve the quality
of the support offered to your customers.
First of all try to have the call answered as soon as possible by a live person. This would be a
small group, depending upon the size of your company, that would be able to answer most of the
simple questions about products, obtain the name of the person calling and redirect the more in-depth questions to the appropriate person. For example, sales related to the sales department and
service related to the service department. If possible use a system that would display the caller's
name and other information already obtained for the person taking the call.
When the initial call comes in have a system that would forward the calls when the line is busy.
Set up a priority list starting with the group that is set up for the initial calls, then if they are busy
have the calls forwarded to the sales or service groups. When volume is extremely high then the
calls should be forwarded on up to management so that the calls are always answered promptly.
As side benefit to this is that management will become instantly aware of problems with a lack of
support personal or equipment problems that are creating an increase in the number of calls.
When possible I would suggest combining your customer and service support, cross train your
personnel to be able to answer questions relating to both. Then have each individual specialize
on one product or area of support, so that when questions or problems become involved the
person taking the call has someone else to rely on for additional help.
Try to involve all your people in the support procedure, you will have some who will shy away
from talking to the costumer and just prefer to work on the equipment. Try to work carefully
with these individuals to build confidence and break down the barriers that they may have in
talking with the public. I have found that when I stayed away from the phones for an extended
time that I even had trouble getting back into the comfort zone of talking with customers. It may
help to plan short discussion sessions with your support and technical people so that they can
share information on how to handle the different types of calls.
Try to always get to know your customers by name and have everyone refer to their names as
often as possible in their conversations with the customer. Avoid making promises that you may
not be able to fulfill and never make commitments for someone else. Try to always lift up and
praise other employees and departments when talking with customers and reassure them that
their questions will be answered. Follow up on return calls even when the call is passed on to
someone else, it never hurts to call the customer later to make sure that their questions were
taken care of. Try to develop these and other good habits and you will not only have a successful
support department but a successful company.
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