Customer Support Habits | | Published February 21, 2020

5 Ways Support Teams Can Take Care of Your Customers

Everyone in the business world has had an experience where it didn’t feel like they mattered to a vendor or business. It’s a difficult feeling knowing your voice isn’t being heard, or even worse ignored by someone you’re trusting to meet your business needs.

However, these situations can be avoided with your own customers by hiring support team members who legitimately care about them AND know how to properly display this care in conversations.

Here are 5 ways support teams can show customers they care:

1) Listen before providing a solution – For support agents, it’s vital you don’t give the impression you’re trying to get the customer off the phone as fast as possible. Instead, sit back and listen to a customer problem before interjecting with a solution, even if you’re pretty sure you already know how to fix what’s wrong. Sometimes customers just need to let their frustrations out (which can be on their end), and your solution may not be the right one, so do your best to gather all the information you can before trying to solve the problem.

2) Be empathetic to their situation – When a customer is struggling with something you think is minor, it’s NOT a good time to tell them their problem isn’t the end of the world. Instead, the agent should put themselves in the shoes of the customer. Show empathy for their problem and better understand not only what emotions they are feeling but why they are feeling them. The root of the problem may extend far beyond your company. Customer support agents sometimes have to play the role of psychologist to build trust with customers so the feedback they provide has a higher chance of being well received.

3) Provide a way to reach the agent directly – When a customer has a great experience with a specific agent and leaves a positive review, don’t make it difficult for the customer to work with this agent in the future. By offering a direct line or number for agents, it only strengthens the relationships your company has with your customers. For some B2B companies, if you have agents working the same customers frequently, feel free to provide a mobile number for customers to reach you. They’ll be grateful in knowing you care about their happiness so much that they can reach an agent even when they are away from their desk.

4) Leverage technology to “wow” them – One way to show customers you care is going above and beyond the traditional customer experience. This additional effort compared to normal support interactions makes a statement and sometimes it can even be less work! For example, instead of explaining an answer to a question in a long email, have an agent take a few minutes to do a quick screen share or a video recording of how to fix the problem. This use of technologies stands out in comparison to other companies and it’s something your customers will remember.

ebook-customer-experience-b2b

5) Celebrate wins together – In B2B, customers don’t usually reach out with minor problems, especially if you have a good self-service portal. Instead, they contact support when mission critical issues arise that are important and need to be resolved sooner than later. If you worked through a complex or important issue, don’t hesitate to have agents ask the customer next time they submit a ticket of lower priority to see how resolving the previous issue impacted them. If it helped them complete a major project or improve a business relationship, celebrate with them and even send over a small gift if you can.

 

In short, it’s important for support teams to show customers they care by making an impact with the support experiences they provide. Your B2B support team should be assisting customers in a memorable way, leaving them with positive experiences they tell industry peers and colleagues about over dinner or at a tradeshow. Leverage the power of support to keep customers happy and to hopefully assist in growing your business!