We’ve all been in this kind of scenario. You’ve got an issue with a product; all you want is a quick fix or an easy refund. Then you’re suddenly 45 minutes into a customer support conversation where you alternate between being on hold and being transferred to the next department over.
It’s a recipe of events that has led to many a bad day.
But no one comes to customer support saying, “I’m going to make this process as tricky as possible for everyone involved.” The purpose of customer support is right there in its name. So why do so many get it so wrong?
In this article, we will look at how to avoid the most common customer support blunders.
1) Simplify the process
We expect a product or service to work from the get-go, and when it doesn’t, patience runs out very quickly. So make sure that support is easy to find, access, and pursue.
For example, in CSC, we have an easy-to-find “contact us” section that requires only one click-through to access.
Then, you’ll get instant access to ways to contact us.
As with anything website-based, the UX (or user experience) is key. If a customer has to spend more than a few seconds looking for what they need, then their patience with the experience (and your product as a whole) will be negatively affected.
The easier it is to find the help they’re looking for, the better.
Another good code of practice is to categorize your contacts. As shown below, we’ve got one email and one person for events, ambassadorship, sponsorships, and so on. Then we’ve got one for general inquiries.
But what if you need answers quickly?
2) Automate your FAQs
As we’ve established, a good customer support system will aim to get things fixed as quickly as possible. If there are fixes that can be handled by the customer themselves in a few short minutes, they don’t want to be on a ten-minute long call or have to wait around for an email to learn that.
Which is where AI and chatbots come in.
To avoid human agents getting overloaded with the same questions over and over again, a chatbot that has answers to the most commonly asked questions is a good fix. That, or an easy-to-navigate FAQ page does wonders to simplify the customer support process.
Now, the real key is to not rely exclusively on this. Some of the worst experiences with customer support are when a customer knows their problem needs more than a simple FAQ answer but still has to sit through a string of automated chatbot questions before they’re given access to a real human being.
AI and chatbots should be a branch of the support system but should never be the foundation upon which your customer support is built. As with a lot of things, it comes down to user experience again.
Customers aren’t idiots; they’ll know when they want to use a chatbot and when they want more hands-on support, so don’t fall into the trap of using AI as a catch-all solution.
This Reddit user put it best:
AI ticket tagging
A fantastic use of AI is to automate the tedious task of manual ticket tagging. When you see an increase in the same issue coming up repeatedly, these should be tagged.
Tagging these does one of two things:
- Offers easily accessible proof when arguing for this pain point to be prioritized by other teams.
- Identifies a new FAQ that can be easily solved.
Programming AI systems to identify these patterns and tag these tickets means you’ll be able to access this information without a lot of lifting on your end.
Getting these AI pings also enables you to make your actions more proactive than reactive when this issue becomes more and more common.
Grace Gupta
3) Offer a variety of formats
As you may have been aware, reading through our last two points, one of the ways to keep your customer support system a smooth and positive experience is to offer support using a variety of avenues.
If you have one chatbot and one email for all of your customer support tickets to go through, you’ll end up with a bottleneck of angry and disgruntled customers who’ve had to wade through long waiting times or meaningless chatbot questions to finally get ahold of someone who can actually help.
But if you have support that uses:
- Social media
- Telephone
- Chatbots
- AI systems
- Forums
Then, you’re spreading out your customers into more manageable chunks. If you’re categorizing the support tickets on top of that, then you’ll have a much easier time of it.
If a customer knows where exactly to get their problem fixed and can get an answer within their own expected time frame, solving these problems will be much more pleasant.
4) Be transparent
Overloaded customer support systems will inevitably happen at one time or another, generally stemming from mistakes or issues occurring during new launches/features/etc.
While these things are out of your control, keeping in contact with your customers isn't.
When these times occur, remaining silent while customer support queue times get longer and longer is a shortcut to alienating and losing customers.
Make sure to:
Inform customers of the issue
If customer queues have a wait time, make sure to inform customers of the estimated wait time and where they are in the queue.
Make sure to put this information in as many places as possible so you can increase the number of customers you’re able to inform.
Check in regularly
If you’re using social media to keep in touch with customers, make sure to update them at regular intervals. The simple act of updating your status every 20 minutes (even if you have no new information) lets customers know you are aware of what is going on - and are actively working to fix it.
Offer alternative points of contact
If you’re phone lines or chatbots overloaded with users, make sure customers have instant access to alternative points of contact. Link to your Twitter (or X) account for instant updates, or connect to your customer support email.
As long as customers know they have alternatives they can try in an instant, customers will feel like they’ve been able to take action on their end and then leave it to you to resolve the issue.
Keep them informed of wait times
Royalty fee hold music is annoying enough. Customers want to know how long they’ll have to listen to it before they can be heard. The same goes for waiting screens. Make sure customers know how long they’ll be waiting and how many people are in front of them.
This information is invaluable for customers to know whether or not the wait is worth it or if they’d rather look for an alternative solution.
Reflect on the situation
As with all crisis management, reflecting on the situation is necessary. It’s times like these that put your customer support systems to the test and will show you where your system will likely reach its breaking point.
Identify the points of tension and put strategies, features, and processes in place to fix and support these points.
5) Train empathy and conflict resolution
It’s a mistake to think that conflict management and empathy are things we should just know. It takes skill and practice to be able to manage customer support issues, and your team should be supported accordingly.
Empathy statements
Empathy statements are simple changes to chosen wording that can put your customer support agents in the best position to approach a conversation. Empathy statements should use:
- Personal pronouns - Use “I” over the company “we”.
- Active voice - Use “I am going to..” so that the actions you will take are easily identifiable and clear.
- Active listening - Repeat everything the customer says in your own words so both parties are on the same page.
- Follow-up questions - Make sure you understand the customer's position. Know what they have and haven’t tried and how far into the customer support process they are.
- Authenticity - Make sure you’re not being overly formal or by the book. Customers like to know the person they’re speaking to.
Empathy statements may seem like a no-brainer, but these can easily be thrown out the window when tensions rise. While no one can completely avoid the customer from hell (there are plenty of stories out there), there are conflict management techniques to help lower tensions to a more manageable level.
Conflict resolution
Handling angry or upset customers is never easy. For the reasons we’ve spoken about before, customers dealing with things like stress, time limits, and disappointment will likely be emotionally invested in solving the issue.
You might be inundated with “why” questions: Why am I struggling with this issue? Why is this a problem in the first place? Why is it taking so long?
Managing, answering, and solving these questions are not the easiest if you also have to manage customer emotions (and your own!) on top of it. This is where it’s vital to train, practice, and learn how to approach these conversations to make them as successful as possible.
There’s a book, Nonviolent Communication: A language for life by Marshall B Rosenberg, that talks all about managing these kinds of conversations in every single facet of your life.
So, not only is it invaluable for managing customer support conversations, but also conversations with your managers, team members, friends, and family too.
The book goes into a lot of detail and talks about a variety of scenarios, but the approach remains similar:
Observe without evaluating:
Joining a call with an angry customer is undoubtedly going to be overwhelming. So the first step is to observe what is going on without applying your own evaluation to it: The customer is angry, their emotions are high, and they’re not ready to listen.
There may be a number of reasons why they’re acting this way, many of which likely have less to do with the customer experience itself, but it is an experience that triggers other underlying frustrations.
Receive empathetically:
When emotions are high, it’s sometimes difficult to see through to one's actions. So, identifying the emotions the customer is feeling is an important step.
This can be communicated to the customer or just something to acknowledge in your own head, depending on the scenario.
Giving the customer time to vent before engaging in the true conversation of offering solutions may just be what you need to do to get them calm enough to listen.
Take responsibility for your own feelings:
After a long day of customer calls, being patient with an angry customer is not going to be easy. So before you hop onto a call, make sure you are aware of your own feelings first.
Say it out loud, even, so you are aware of the state in which you are approaching the conversation: I am tired, I have half an hour before my day ends, and I am frustrated to be taking this call.
Make sure you understand how your own feelings might sway the way the call goes. This will give you the space to know how you might react to certain behaviours, and enable you to take steps to mitigate this reaction while on the call itself.
Offer clear resolution:
This comes under lots of the things we’ve already talked about, but when on the call itself, make sure every problem, action, and solution is clearly understood by both parties.
Before the call ends, review what has been spoken about - do it in a list if you have to - so everyone knows what actions will be taken, when they’ll be done, and what timeline the solution will likely take.
Express your own anger:
Once a call is over, make sure you have a space of your own to feel that anger and stress stemming from such a conversation.
Talk to friends, go on an anger-fuelled run, rant to a co-worker, or all of the above!
Don’t let your own emotions bottled up. Otherwise, you might just end up letting them out at the wrong time. Support calls can be frustrating for both parties, so let your frustrations out rather than fester so you can come back to these kinds of calls time and again and see a positive resolution occur each time.
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