The secret to effective customer service is a balance between helping a lot of people too little or a few people too much.
If you help a few people too much, the whole system is bound to fall apart. Of course, the recipient of the service will be delighted, but also start expecting the service and in the end will see it as a simple and fair exchange – value for money. On the other hand is your company, working for very little reward.
It is easy to spend lots of time and money to make a problem go away. But the mantra of doing “whatever it takes” is a slippery slope to a situation where you eventually are competed out of the market place. And once your employees and customer know that there is a “whatever it takes” option out there, they’ll be making use of it much more often.
Better to be disciplined. Accept that there always a few special cases that will fall through the cracks. You can’t be everything to everyone – instead, you must understand your priorities and stick close to your guns.
Your company will thrive if you can serve a lot of people to a level that works well for them. You get to grow, because your client base grows. Your clients benefit because they get what they need.
And those few clients that don’t quite fit in the business model? Refund and refer them on if possible. But don’t run down your resources. You deserve better and so do your clients.
Tags: Customer Service
so you are saying that giving too much information to a few people will create a risk of tearing your business apart? so by balancing it you should give a little information to fewer people? isn’t it important to give customers great support/information when they need? well i think your point is, if you spill too much information to few people there will be a tendency that they will use it?
(Report comment)
I think you misunderstood the purpose of this post. 90% of your clients will be served fine by your support. Then there is the 10% that wants their hand held through every small step.
Our firm actually caters to this 10%, since you can buy support by the hour.
But some firms don’t have this facility. I take the example of Matthew, who asked for advice on how to run his video-tutorial store. He always tries to answer the emails from people who didn’t understand the instructions. But there are a handful of clients who literally started to take up his entire day. They purchased a course for $30, and were expecting Matthew to clarify every single step. For some mysterious reason, when following the steps in the video tutorial, a few clients could not achieve the same result. When communicating with them, Matthew was sure they omitted steps and failed to convince them to pay close attention and follow every step.
These type of customers are a drain on Matthew’s business. For the simply reason that they don’t take advice. That they can’t be helped. That every time you present them with a solution, they don’t act on it, instead find another problem.
So Matthew has two choices: either charge for support, in order to make a profit when he works with these clients or turn the client down.
Well, since Matthew works on his own, he can’t really choose the option of charging for support. Support doesn’t scale. His time should be spent creating new tutorials and bringing them to market, then see his profits rise because he sells x number of copies at $30 per copy.
So my advice to Matthew and to many other business owners in a similar position is quite simple: refund the customer that takes up 90% of your time and move on. The customer isn’t getting any value out of the product (obviously) and you can spend your time on what really matters to your business…
(Report comment)
i’ve been into several customer service providing firm and yet one thing i always think of when i am taking down customer problems from time to time. the only way i can minimize discussions running in circles is to have better understanding with the situation that the customer is encountering. you deal with people in all walks of life without knowing how they would interact your way of catering your service. it is important that you understand them well and that you know how to evolve in the situation without spending too much time. it is ok to minimize the time you spend dealing with the problem but remember to always maximize your service to meet the customer’s expectation.
(Report comment)
i have an online store for game cd keys, time cards, etc. and since i only started this business 3 months now, i have an online live chat for my customers who are having trouble with the products they bought. my only problem is that i am doing the customer live support myself and i felt like this one’s so time-consuming because i have to deal with customers 24/7. i am thinking of getting someone who will do it for me so i could only do the night shifts instead and the other one will do the morning shifts. if you don’t mind, can you give me points on how to choose a qualified person to do it or will i have to list down qualifications that he or she should have to suit best as a customer service provider?
(Report comment)
We also learn from tough experiences in business. This will help us grow. It is right that we should observe discipline, this way people will trust you.
(Report comment)
I would like to hear someone say ” TREAT COSTUMERS FAIRLY”.
(Report comment)
It could be effective. Business should have right balancing to keep it growing and it comes along with good business strategies to make it work.
(Report comment)
I am balancing, but I don’t know.. I still got the same outcome. Low sales, less costumers and I don’t know why. Anyway, maybe because I’m just a newbie.
(Report comment)