Learn How To Solve the 12 Biggest Customer Service Challenges With These Tips
Customers interact with your business through your customer service team. This team is the voice of your business and customer feedback can help you grow your company and improve your customer journey. According to American Express, 68% of customers believe that a polite customer service agent is the key to providing great service.
How your team members handle customer queries is crucial to your organization’s success. If you want to provide excellent customer service and achieve customer retention, you need to invest in your customer service representatives.
Dissatisfied customers will often bolt to a competitor, slashing revenues. According to the statistics published by Venture Beat, 76% of customers stop doing business with a company after one poor customer service experience.
Dealing with customer issues can be stressful for the customer support team if they don’t know how to handle customer dissatisfaction and lack key skills, such as active listening and empathy. Thankfully, we are here to help by providing customer service solutions that allow flawless customer interaction.
The key to customer service performance is knowing how to respond effectively and on time. Excellent service enhances customer experience, boosts customer loyalty, and increases corporate profitability.
Below are 12 common customer service challenges businesses face daily as well as ideas on how to turn them into relationship-building opportunities:
1. Not having an answer to the customer’s questions
Handling this challenge is more about what you shouldn’t do than what you should do.
The key is to avoid being unclear in your response.
If you do not have the answer, acknowledge the question’s difficulty, ask the customer for time to find a solution, and assure them you’ll contact them.
2. Transferring calls to another department
There will be times when the best way to help a customer is to transfer them to another person within the customer service department. To avoid creating a negative experience for your customers, you first need to let them know you’re transferring them to a different customer service professional.
Avoid the mistake of doing a “blind transfer”, which means transferring the customer to another customer service rep without verifying they are available to take their call.
How do you think they will feel if they are expecting to talk to a live person, but instead gets a reply from a voicemail?
3. Failing to understand what customers want
Customers can have a hard time explaining what they want, even if we’re talking about common issues with your products. This doesn’t mean they’re difficult people. They simply may not know the technical jargon to tell you exactly what the problem is.
In this specific customer situation, ask the customer to take you step-by-step through their issue.
You might find it helpful to take notes while they explain.
Consider sharing the problem with another customer support agent or your manager. A second opinion could help you solve the issue quickly.
4. Dealing with angry customers
Even the best companies get calls from angry customers and this usually impacts customer service workflow. The only method that works here is first to calm them down to find out how you can help them.
One approach is to use the HEARD technique for helping customers: Hear. Empathize. Apologize.
5. Exceeding customers’ expectations
The trick to beating this challenge is setting reasonable customer expectations and meeting and exceeding them. Going the extra mile in this case can generate repeat business.
The key to exceeding customer expectations is for your customer service employees to take a customer-centric approach. You can then generate data that tells you exactly what customers want. Use print, electronic, and social media to produce that kind of data.
6. Serving multiple customers
Customers are okay with being put on hold if it helps resolve their issues. Telling customers that you’re going to put them on hold to solve their problems will not impact the quality of service and will buy you time to talk with another customer.
Above all, avoid telling the first customer you’re talking with a second customer. And don’t leave customers on hold for a long time.
7. An outage or other crisis occurs
Is there anything worse than having a power failure or a crisis? Severe emergencies, like security breaches, can be deadly.
How do you handle them? First, put a crisis communication plan in place. That tells employees precisely what they have to do during a crisis. Then, when customers call, you need to apologize to customers for what they’re going through.
Also, provide constant updates—say once every 30 minutes— to help reassure nervous customers.
Once everything’s over, you can publish a post-mortem.
8. Customers want a discount you can’t give
Discounting can get customers to buy from you. But it also devalues your brand’s perception in the customer’s eyes. So, use this strategy sparingly.
No customer likes to hear “no” from a customer service agent. Explain to them why you can’t give them the discount.
9. Customers want a feature you won’t or can’t add
The biggest challenge when speaking to customers is saying no. But sometimes you must. Here’s a way to do it gracefully:
- Keep your tone positive.
- Be personal. Forget templated responses.
- Offer a workaround if one exists.
10. Flooded with service tickets
This challenge is common during the holiday season, especially if you don’t have an employee working 24/7 or a reputable outsourcing provider like Unicom to provide round-the-clock responses. Many customers expect an answer within six hours. When backed up like this, focus on responding instead of resolving.
You can also have customer service agents write a personal email telling customers, “We’re backlogged, but we’ll be taking care of you soon.” Also, give customers a hard deadline by which you’ll help them.
11. Letting a customer go
Some people are better suited for your product or service than others. But letting a customer go is never easy. So, if you need to do it, do it with grace and respect. Use this four-step approach:
- Be positive and appreciative
- Re-frame the situation as your fault
- Make the customer whole
- Apologize and offer an alternative
Going above and beyond can save this relationship.
12. Reply/resolution times are slow
Customers want answers now. Or better yet, five minutes ago. To start, review the ticket handling process you have in place. If you have tickets bouncing around from one department to another, find out why and eliminate the problem.
Strengthen your communication channels. Try omnichannel support, create a service-level agreement, and set up your internal structure for team success. According to CX Today, 9 out of 10 customers want omnichannel services.
Conclusion
Customer service challenges don’t go away. But if you don’t handle them correctly, they could cost you your existing and potential customers. Not providing outstanding customer service generates negative word-of-mouth advertising. No business can afford that.
Turn service challenges into relationship-building opportunities and improve customer satisfaction. Prepare your team to handle these challenges in advance and ensure the highest level of customer care.
Hiring an answering service can help you increase your customer satisfaction score and achieve the customer support goals you have for your business.
This article was originally published on December 17, 2020. It has been updated in October 2023 to reflect current trends and new information.
I’ve been in the call center industry for over a decade. A big part of my job is educating businesses on the role telecommunications and outsourced task procedures can play for their business. Understanding their customer service processes is critical to verify and implement the right services. When I am not in front of clients I manage the technological infrastructure in the call center.
Post Update: The article was updated on October 1st, 2023, originally published on December 28th, 2021. It has been completely revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
