4 Common Customer Service Support Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

One of the best things about the digital age is the added accessibility. Anyone can make their dream come true online these days.

With the right skills, network connection, and digital platforms, you can be an owner of a profitable business that you can be passionate about with minimal investment一and global reach!

Regardless, it means that competition is more ferocious than ever. You need to step up your game if you really want to succeed.

One of the most effective ways to do that is by improving your customer service game. In this article, we are going to talk about the most common customer service support mistakes done by businesses along with steps on how to avoid them.

Mistake #1: Not Listening to Your Customers Properly

Videos of customers behaving rudely are popular on social media, so we now know that the golden rule, “the customer is always right” is, in fact, not always true.

This doesn’t mean that you should stop listening to them, though. After all, the existence of your business still relies on customer patronage.

The challenge lies in doing it properly. Listening to your customers doesn’t just mean receiving their messages. Keep in mind that most of the time, your customers will only reach out to you when they need certain issues addressed.

This means that listening to your customer actually involves a complex process of determining their specific issue, its cause, and the best solution.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of times when customers are made to frequently repeat themselves, be patronized, and worse, completely misunderstood.

How to Avoid It: Improve Your Customer Data Management

Digital tools such as customer relationship software (CRM) can help not just in recording customer information but also share them between departments seamlessly. In this way, our customer support teams will have a clearer picture, there won’t be a need for customers to constantly repeat themselves, and their issues will get resolved faster and more efficiently.

Mistake #2: Failing to Gather All the Necessary Information

Even the most powerful data management tools will be for nothing without any helpful information stored on them. Thus, just as important as learning how to listen, it is imperative for your customer support representatives to master the art of asking the right questions.

No one knows our products and services better than us. Hence, when something goes wrong, it should be logical for us to assume that most of our customers will have critical blind spots.

It is then up to our customer service team to check whether there are any underlying and related issues that the consumer itself might not even be aware of. This is essential to prevent repetitive complaints, unresolved problems, and of course, negative feedback.

How to Avoid It: Better Training and Customer Service Practices

Since this error heavily relies on the skill of our customer support agents, there are two possible solutions. The first one is to provide them with adequate training. It is not enough for a customer support agent to learn how to use your tools and memorize a script. Instead, it is more important for you to develop their troubleshooting and problem-solving skills. Teach them how to ask the right questions to gather the necessary information to resolve issues, regardless of what they are.

Second, even something as simple as asking a customer “Is there anything else?” before finishing the conversation is a significant step in making sure that you have acquired all of the information you needed from that call.

Mistake #3: Guessing at an Answer

The problem with customer service mistakes is that they can create a domino effect of errors. For instance, a customer service agent who has failed to listen to the consumer and ask the necessary questions will be more likely to guess an answer and just tell the customer what he wants to hear rather than resolve the issue.

Unfortunately, committing the first two mistakes can hinder the agent from resolving the issue even if he sincerely wants to resolve it.

To make matters worse, this can lead to frustration, misinformation, and confusion, especially if the issue (inevitably) persists and the customer calls again to hear a completely different answer from the first one they received.

Forget about how to improve your company’s sales by increasing your productivity. Customer service failures can create a huge impact regardless of how much work you put into boosting your sales.

The numbers say it all. 65% of consumers said they’ve switched to a different brand after a poor customer experience.

How to Avoid It: Increase Transparency

If an issue can’t be resolved during the call, then encourage your agents to just own up to it and provide an accurate timeline to the customer. This will keep customer expectations in place.

Equip your agents with a better understanding of why various issues happen. Give them the knowledge and confidence to provide the right answers一even the ones that might prove difficult to accept.

Mistake #4: Focusing on the Customers Too Much

Excellent customer service involves two parties: a contented customer and a happy support agent.

Customer service representative is a very responsible and tough job. It requires you to absorb all the negativity headed for the company’s way. It needs a lot of patience and understanding, that the customer’s ire isn’t personally intended for them. It’s just an expression of disappointment due to an unfortunate event.

Suppose that your customer agent has a low level of job satisfaction, what happens then? It will become more challenging for them to show empathy for the consumer’s plight. Instead, they will resort to ways that will make their job as easy as possible, regardless of its consequences.

They won’t concern themselves with the repercussions because they believe that the company doesn’t care for them as well.

How to Avoid It: Treat Your Employees Better

Adequate compensation is a given. Provide them with better benefits, if possible. Recognize their hard work and reward them for it. There are a lot of ways to increase your employees’ productivity and job satisfaction levels. And when they feel that their company cares for them like a member of the family, then they’ll have more love for it and its consumers as well.

Customer empathy will then come out naturally. And that’s where stellar customer service comes from. Not from scripted statements like “I’m so sorry you’ve gone through that. I understand how you feel.”

The best part is, that your customers will feel the sincerity. They won’t feel that they’re being dumbed down or patronized一a factor that a lot of customers complain about.

That is a level of customer service that simply can’t be bought.

Sum-Up

Customer support is a crucial part of any business. It can impact customer experience and can even turn bad events into positive ones. On the other hand, poor customer support can negatively impact your online reputation and affect your bottom line.

Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to improve your customer service support. Minimizing common errors is a good start.

We hope that pointing out what these mistakes are as well as the ways how to avoid them helps you in boosting the quality of your customer service.