Helping Service Reps Prevent Bad Experiences or Quickly Recover Should One Occur
Call centers face various challenges, from many calls coming at once to the need to stay on top of all products and services to address all questions customers might have quickly and accurately.
Adding to the challenge is the hectic work environment, which makes it only more difficult to keep ongoing processes smooth and address every customer complaint while using their feedback to make changes to improve the service in the future.
In this article, we’ll look at how service sales reps can prevent bad experiences and quickly recover from ones that will inevitably occur using the latest technology, such as data analytics and artificial intelligence.
Maintaining Attitude in the Face of Hardships
Customer service reps are expected always to maintain a positive attitude, including when dealing with unpleasant customers. While it’s inevitable, failing to limit such situations can cause a significant strain on the reps’ mental health, ultimately leading to an even worse experience on the customer’s end.
Such employees can then leave the job and spread negative word of mouth about the employer who, in their eyes, failed to save them from the wrath of unhappy customers, which negatively impacted their lives.
The Utopia of No Negative Experiences
The truth is that all companies will always face negative customer experiences. There are simply too many factors that fall out of the company’s control to expect all customers to be satisfied with the support they’ve received.
Whether it’s customers getting shipped the wrong product or never receiving the refund they were promised, too many elements can go wrong in a big company. This means that, no matter how good the service rep is, there will always be inconveniences they will have to explain.
Empowering Service Reps to Act Quickly
With so many things that can potentially go wrong, it’s paramount for companies to give their service reps the tools to resolve any issues that might arise quickly and independently. This speeds up the entire process and increases customer satisfaction, as customers get their problems solved faster and feel the company listened to them.
But fixing a problem isn’t enough. Companies should proactively try to improve the customer’s experience by offering more benefits instead of fixing what should have been right in the first place. Some of the most effective strategies that work in most industries include:
1. Discount
A discount is the most obvious way to mitigate a negative experience in any industry, and at this point, most customers will expect it if the incident is particularly bad. However, a discount doesn’t necessarily mean lost revenue for a business, and there are ways to turn it into an opportunity for customer loyalty.
Instead of offering a discount for the product or service that has caused the inconvenience, reps can offer one for their future purchase. This way, you’ll mitigate a negative experience and ensure a purchase later down the road, where you’ll have a chance to make a second, much better impression.
2. Full Refund
Another method for mitigating negative experiences companies often implement is a full refund for the product or service that caused problems. While this won’t always be possible, it’s the solution customers appreciate the most, as it makes them feel the company puts their interests first, even if it means sacrificing their profits.
Of course, this solution won’t be possible with products or services of significant value, in which case companies must resort to one of the other two solutions discussed in this section.
3. Free Gift
A gift is an excellent solution to a bad customer experience, especially if a full refund isn’t possible for some reason, such as the product's or service's value. However, the key thing to keep in mind with free gifts is to provide more value to the customer and not confuse them even further.
Ideally, the gift should be in some way related to the product or service that has caused the complaint. It can either allow them for an upgrade or complement their base order in some other way. However, make sure the gift won’t force them to make extra purchases they never signed up for (for example, a printer will require ink cartridges, which might irritate the customer further).
Making Sure Negative Experiences Don’t Occur in the First Place
While mitigating negative experiences is essential in every industry, there’s one thing companies can do to save time and money on this process, and that is to make sure such situations never occur in the first place.
Even though it might be difficult for call centers, as many elements of the service fall out of the company’s control, businesses can still utilize the latest technology to track their customers’ journeys in real-time to identify any bottlenecks and issues that might contribute to negative experiences.
Data analytics and artificial intelligence will be helpful here. Collecting various points of customer data and analyzing them against each other allows for spot patterns that might go unnoticed by the human eye, allowing for unique insights and informed decision-making.
3 Benefits of Data Analytics for Call Centers
While call centers decide to implement data analytics and AI solutions for a variety of different reasons, depending on their business goals, these are 3 of the essential areas in which utilizing the latest technology can support business operations:
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Employee Well-Being: Happy customers mean happy employees, and it’s especially true in call centers. Since negative customer encounters can put a lot of mental strain on employees, improving customer satisfaction will also improve employee happiness and loyalty.
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More Repeat Business: Once an issue is resolved swiftly, customers will be more likely to use the business’s services again, as they realize that mishaps can always happen, and it’s more about resolving them quickly rather than removing them from the equation entirely.
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Improved Opportunities: If a call center works with different service and product providers, having them see the dedication and the measures in place for improving customer experience means that more businesses will likely work with such a business.
How Managed Services Work with Customer Feedback
One problem with utilizing data analytics for customer feedback Is how long it takes to derive insights correctly. Luckily, managed services make it easier.
First, feedback is collected on the business’s side with the latest tools, such as feedback terminals or web solutions. The feedback is then put in a database and sent to a third-party company for analysis.
The company then engages its expert data analysts to provide actionable business tips based on the data. This saves time analyzing and interpreting the data to create an action plan to reach business goals.
Conclusion
While negative experiences will always prompt customers to reach out to service reps, there are ways to mitigate their impact once they have happened or - a much more efficient solution - decrease the number of negative experiences in the first place.
Data analytics and artificial intelligence are the most commonly used technologies to do that. For businesses that don’t have the resources and work power to take care of this process in-house, managed services offer access to a well-trained team of data analysts who will turn data points into actionable steps to help the business thrive.
About the Author:
Miika Makitalo, CEO of HappyOrNot. Today, HappyOrNot serves 4,000 brands, including Amazon and Google, across 135 countries, and has collected and reported on over 1.5 billion feedback responses. The company provides AI tech that enables companies to identify and optimize customer experiences across all sales and retail touchpoints through relevant, in-moment feedback data. With the ability to track, validate, and compare ongoing performance, companies are empowered to continuously improve service experiences and drive operational success.
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