In the past few months, we’ve discussed various aspects about customer service. Being such a wide field and developing continuously, we wanted to  include the most important news and information.

Now, we’ve put everything together and created a full information guide on everything you need to know about customer service. Brought together in one place, you can find here diverse information from basic elements about customer service to practical tips you can easily apply in your Business.

Introduction to customer service

Let’s start with the beginning. Customer service represents the Support and assistance your company provides to customers who buy and use your offerings. A simple definition, yet one which manages to illustrate the essence of this concept. And although it may be easy to put in words, it’s not that simple to deliver it.

Support representatives require a certain set of skills in order to understand their customers’ requests and know how to deal with angry customers. Learn what the necessary abilities are here.

Having skilled representatives can help you create the support team your customers and your business need. Yet, it’s not enough have great employees. As a business owner, you need to know how to motivate them, how to prepare them for all kind of situations and grow them in a unified team.

You need to Pay Attention to the difficult periods your support team is going through and how you can help them overcome it. Doing this can not only be useful for them, but it can also make you see certain customer service mistakes. From there on, you can start working on how to avoid them and deliver an even better experience for your customers.

What’s also essential in customer service is understanding your customers. Aspects such as their job, hobbies, lifestyle and interests are important in constructing a clear buyer persona. This type of profiles can help you understand better your current and potential customers. Learn how to construct a detailed buyer persona right here.

Understanding your support team and your customers can bring you great benefits. For instance, it can determine people to spend more on your products and services and this is just one of the 5 customer service facts you didn’t know. It can also make your business stand out, which means more customers, more sales and successful endings.

Types of customer service

Customer service from today is totally different from what it was 20 years ago. If then we only talked about support representatives, now we can speak of support chabots (which we will discuss in the next section) and 24-hour services. We can divide them in traditional and new customer service.

And speaking of robots, we now have support offered by humans and by bots. We call the combination between the two hybrid customer service and it can be the solution for customers’ problems.

Depending on who makes the first move, we divide support in other two categories: reactive and proactive customer service. The difference between them is really simple. Check it out here and also see why it’s important to put more emphasis on the second one.

And based on the communication channel, we have multiple categories:

• phone support
• email
• live chat
• text support (learn how to grow your business by integrating texting in your support strategy)

Customer service bots

Nowadays, customer service bots play an important role in support. AI has eliminated barriers and created new possibilities for delivering even better customer service experiences. You can find all you need to know about artificial intelligence right here.

Bots are built using a great technology and it’s essential to know how they work. How they understand what we are asking and how they manage to deliver answers in real time are two interesting aspects you can explore.

Customer service bots can bring you different benefits. They:

• Can help you grow your business
• Can transform social media into a new support communication channel
• Can complement your FAQ page (here are also some practical tips for building an efficient FAQ page)

Because they have so many advantages and with technology advancing at a really fast pace, bots can soon take over the field of customer service. And believe us, it’s a good thing and there’s a solid reason for this statement.

Customer service language

Language is everything in customer service. The words you use, the tone of your voice. You need to pay attention to every little detail to create a pleasant experience for your customers. Make sure you use positive customer support phrases and you remain solution-oriented.

There’s a golden rules in this field. Always avoid the “I don’t know” answer. It can create a negative experience for both your customers and you. Instead, choose from the alternatives we’ve prepared for you.

Excellent customer service and tips to achieve it

There is no fix recipe for excellent customer service. Every company is different and has its unique customers with unique requests and expectations. Yet, there are some pieces of advice you need to know that can help you understand your customers’ problems better, make them happy and help them remember your business.

Another aspect you need to concentrate on is your team. Helping them deliver the best customer service experiences is of major importance and it can make a difference between good and excellent customer support. What you also need to pay attention to is the challenges they go through. Whether we are talking about transferring customers to other support representatives or being asked to do specific favors.

And because we’ve reached this point, it’s essential to understand that it’s OK to say no to your customers. It’s even possible to do this and still keep them happy. For the angry ones, we have a special strategy: reward them! It can do great things for your business.

The time you take to respond and keeping a personal tone are other important metrics for your customers.

Also, always keep yourself updated with the latest customer service trends and how you can offer the best experience to specific categories of people (like millennials).

Poor customer service and what to avoid

Poor customer service is a killer for your business. These facts show exactly what it can do and how each mistake can have a great negative impact.

Unpleasant experiences come from different sources. Habits such as taking customers for granted or offering different treatments for new ones are just two examples that create poor customer service.

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