It is no secret that customer service is one of the most important aspects of running any business. While product-based companies have to cater to people’s complaints about their products and have to process any refunds or exchanges that are due, service-based companies need to fix any issues customers are facing with their services. For example, AT&T has a dedicated customer service team to cater to the complaints of any AT&T internet deals subscribers. And all these investments in customer service that corporations make bring their own advantages with them.
First of all, customer service gives customers an outlet to express their frustration with the product or service outside of unsubscribing to that offering. This is why consumer care is often referred to as a primary tool for customer retention. Another advantage of customer service is that it lets the company have valuable feedback about the quality of its service offerings. Ask anyone and they will tell you about the same thing: there is nobody more honest than a customer on a call with consumer care. Alongside all this, customer service also has the potential to amp up the sales numbers of companies. This happens when the customer’s complaint is resolved well and they tell their family and friends about the positive experience they had.
In case, you are a business owner who had not yet taken a big leap into the world of customer service, by this point in the article, there is a high chance that you will be convinced to invest deeper into customer service. If that is indeed the case, you should definitely read what is written below. From here on, we will be discussing the different ways in which customer service may be performed.
Online Chat
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Customer support is often performed via online chat because it is a cheap yet effective way for customers to reach their service providers. Basically speaking, a lot of costs is saved when you can reduce the amount of manpower in play. After all, you will not have to spend as much money on giving hourly wages to customer service representatives! Instead, a lot of work is done through artificial intelligence which allows chatbots to answer basic queries of customers themselves. In case there is no query to be answered and just a complaint needs to be lodged, the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot will be able to decipher which department to forward the complaint to. Online chat works very well for people who do not like talking on the phone.
Phone Customer Service
We would be remiss in the case that we wrote on modes of customer service but did not mention customer service over the telephone. Phone customer is usually preferred by many over chatbots for one simple reason: knowing that a human is on the other end trying to help them with their issue makes the customer feel that someone is making an effort to help them. Also, a lot of people are not very good at typing; instead, they are much faster while speaking. These kinds of people prefer phone customer service as compared to online chat. For all of the advantages of phone customer service, this mode has one obvious disadvantage: it is more expensive than chatbots as you have to pay the service agents hourly wages.
Walk-In Customer Service
Walk-in customer service is one in which companies have set up various consumer care centers for customers to visit and bring up their issues. Face-to-face interactions are widely regarded as both more meaningful and productive as compared to phone calls. After all, half of the communication is merely body language!
Email Customer Service
Customer service over email is one of the most common modes of delivering customer service. Emails are popular because they help customers keep written records of the complaints they made with timestamps. Alongside, they give customers the ability to leave their professional signatures on their complaints to demonstrate that they are busy individuals who expect professionalism when it comes to handling complaints.
Wrapping Up
For now, this is it. Although there are definitely more modes of customer service out there, we believe that mastery of these three will give your business a boost like nothing else!
