Have you experienced more complaints lately as you have cut back staff and perhaps some of your company’s services?  How is your help desk team handling the customers these days now that you have a smaller staff?  Many companies are now handing these duties off to people in marketing, sales, even accounting….as they continue to reduce overhead yet retain some degree of customer support.  The following 5 suggestions are a result of experience and hands on observation of clients that have adapted to the current economic environment.  Apply what makes sense, and do what you can to improve your customer relationships.  After all, an existing customer is like a home or car, with proper maintenance it will last you a lot longer….

1. First, identify and know who the “go to” people in your organization are for customer support.  Don’t leave it up to whoever feels that they must rescue the poor screaming customer from pain and anguish.  Coordinate your customer support people so that someone is always on the front line of support.  I know companies that set up their telephone system to avoid customer support.  Sales is first…customer support hidden deep within the ACD system.  What kind of message does that send to new or prospective customers?  One time I was at a major national electronic retailer to return a defective gift.  Standing in line I noticed that there were six people working in customer service, and two people checking out new customers.  I asked the customer service rep, “do you always have three times as many people in returns as you do new sales?”  She replied, “unfortunately yes.”  I never bought anything else from the retailer and a year later they were out of business.  Someone at the top of the management chain got the message too late.
 
2. It’s critical to provide training and knowledge to your help desk or customer support team members.  Even if they are in the accounting department, but serving up customer service.  Schedule weekly meetings, do in house lunches and discuss customer service and product or service resolutions during the lunch.  Come to the meeting with a written agenda (not too exhaustive) and you will improve the morale of the team and I promise you that they will begin to buy into the idea of how important a customer can be to your company.  They will also begin to communicate about those problem customers, or product issues that have arose

3. Your team must have the right tools to communicate and organize these issues.  Help Desk Software can go a long way to bring the team together so they can see those issues that stand out, and be able to get customer information quickly and resolve issues fast.  Many SAAS (Software as a Service) or monthly pay as you go software is less than a business lunch.  If you are unwilling to make this kind of investment in your customers or employees, you need to re-check your priorities….

4. Do not allow email to run your customer service department.  I am not saying that email ticketing, or an end user portal is not a good idea.  Giving your customers or employees convenient ways to submit issues is just good business.  And responding to them with email is also a good idea.  But picking up the phone and letting them know that you resolved their issue just reinforces that you care.  Technicians hate to talk to people as a rule.  They would much rather be isolated in a room without any contact other than email etc; thus the hardest thing to do for them is to talk to the customer because they generally don’t want to deal with a potential conflict.  But, dealing with this conflict may save an otherwise disgruntled customer or unhappy employee.  And building a personal relationship with the client will go a long way to mend fences if the client ever has another major issue.  And who knows, this type of personal communication skill improvement can even spill over into the support person’s personal life and make life even better.

5. Formal training can go a long way to improve the issue for both the client and your business.  Set aside a 2-3 hour session each month dedicated to training your staff on how to deal with irate customers or product issues.  Bring in another business friend that you know that can talk to them about customer relationships and customer service.  Obviously a trained consultant is great for this type of training, but not always affordable.  But that is no excuse not to put out some degree of effort and improve your business.  You do it with sales, accounting, product management, thus you should also do it with customer service as well. 

Long term, it pays great dividends….Short term, saves customers and improves cash flow!

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When customers think about your type of product or service, you want them to think of your name first. Research suggests that a potential customer will need to hear about your business, and be exposed to your message, at least seven times before they will even remember the name of your company. iBuzzPro is one of several companies who have mastered broadcasting their business’s name and message effectively. Now they are building a successful business by sharing their expertise with others. At the core, iBuzzPro is a software package of tools that business people can use to turn leads into customers. The company was created by business entrepreneur John Breck specifically to help network marketers get more effective results.
The iBuzzPro phenomenon is changing the way that the Internet community does business, by bringing together several lead-generation tools and techniques in an unusual synthesis with modern marketing and network-building models. In what is rapidly becoming the new standard for an Internet business model, users of John Breck’s service record a sales message and upload it to the autodialer, which broadcasts their message to all their prospective customers at once. Customers answer the phone, review the message, and if they are ready to speak to a salesperson, they leave their contact information. All the business owner needs to do is call back a group of customers who are already prepared to buy. Similar tools and business models are available through several companies, but iBuzzPro has added their own unique twist to this marketing model. Even if a lead is not interested in the specific product or service that your message offers them, there is still an opportunity. Many potential customers also own their own business, and could benefit from adding iBuzzPro to their marketing toolkit. This means that even a lead who is not in need of your business services may still generate revenue as a referral, if they decide to use iBuzzPro’s software for their own business.

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When customers think about your type of product or service, you want them to think of your name first. Research suggests that a potential customer will need to hear about your business, and be exposed to your message, at least seven times before they will even remember the name of your company. iBuzzPro is one of several companies who have mastered broadcasting their business’s name and message effectively. Now they are building a successful business by sharing their expertise with others. At the core, iBuzzPro is a software package of tools that business people can use to turn leads into customers. The company was created by business entrepreneur John Breck specifically to help network marketers get more effective results.

The iBuzzPro phenomenon is changing the way that the Internet community does business, by bringing together several lead-generation tools and techniques in an unusual synthesis with modern marketing and network-building models. In what is rapidly becoming the new standard for an Internet business model, users of John Breck’s service record a sales message and upload it to the autodialer, which broadcasts their message to all their prospective customers at once. Customers answer the phone, review the message, and if they are ready to speak to a salesperson, they leave their contact information. All the business owner needs to do is call back a group of customers who are already prepared to buy. Similar tools and business models are available through several companies, but iBuzzPro has added their own unique twist to this marketing model. Even if a lead is not interested in the specific product or service that your message offers them, there is still an opportunity. Many potential customers also own their own business, and could benefit from adding iBuzzPro to their marketing toolkit. This means that even a lead who is not in need of your business services may still generate revenue as a referral, if they decide to use iBuzzPro’s software for their own business.

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Technorati Tags: Autodialer, Building Models, Business Entrepreneur, Business Models, Business Owner, Generation Tools, Ibuzzpro, Internet Business Model, Internet Community, Lead Generation, Model Users, Modern Marketing, Network Marketers, Own Business, Prospective Customers, Sales Message, Salesperson, Seven Times, Software Package, Successful Business