Like it or not, customer support can be quite challenging, if not chaotic, regardless of the industry niche.

In spite of its being somewhat the first line of interaction with their clients, many businesses are still failing to overcome the gaps in organizing their customer service, which takes a toll on their company reputation.

According to the recent studies, for example, over 60% of customers tend to change their choice of a brand, product or service, in case of the poor customer support, which consequently leads to the substantial company revenue loss (up to 20% in the most competitive niches, to be exact).

An Eternal Fight Against Customer Frustration

Sounds terrifying, right? Fortunately, it’s possible to minimize your customer dissatisfaction and/or frustration with the product or service. 

Namely, among other ways that can help bulletproof a brand, checklists happen to be one of the simplest ways to ensure your customer support team is working correctly, and consistently. 

In this respect, there are two ways how checklists can help automate and improve the quality of your customer support. 

How to Compile/Use Operational Management Checklists

According to the latest surveys, some of the common operational problems with customer support include the following:

  • Excessive number of customer inquiries
  • Loss of customer tickets across the shared inboxes
  • Lack of/no access to customer’s inquiry history in the database
  • Lack of customer support evaluation mechanisms, and more. 

It’s even harder if you run a company that can’t directly control all operational errors. This was the case for that employs hundreds of writers and editors who write all types of content, including checklists. Each contractor works with their client individually, and it’s hard to control their responsiveness via HR software.  For this, and many other businesses, the checklist of operational issues can be specified further.

The trick is, the more segmented and detailed checklist you manage to compile, the better understanding of your major customer service pitfalls you will get.

For example, the excessive number of customer inquiries can indicate one or more of the following:

  • Understaffing in the customer support team 
  • Recent changes in the product/service pricing packages
  • Increased number of bugs in the latest product release
  • Email spam attacks, etc.  – and this is just the top of the iceberg. 

Having come up with the precise checklist of operational issues, you can proceed with compiling a checklist of solutions to each of those separately, then use it to develop and implement a unified, long-lasting customer support strategy. 

Quite predictably, even though the strategy for each and every company will usually vary, there are several common practices, potentially beneficial for every market niche.

“Implementing a customer support solution that streamlines inquiries from various communication channels into one unified Inbox is another thing, worth thinking about”, he further adds.

How to Compile/Use Customer Experience Checklists

As the vast majority of customer surveys proves, even the prompt response to a client’s inquiry can’t guarantee the positive outcome for the company’s reputation. 

How can you ensure the highest quality of customer support, then? 

1) Well, again, begin with compiling a general checklist of possible issues, related to your customer experience, e.g.:

  • Large number of repetitive inquiries
  • Negative feedback in customer comment cards
  • Low or decreasing customer retention rate, etc.

2) Proceed with analysing and segmenting the checklist, e.g.:

A large number of repetitive inquiries may indicate either/all of the following:

  • Inability to tag a customer inquiry with the right customer support specialist
  • Inability to communicate the solution in a comprehensive way
  • Inability to preemptively inform customers of solutions, if the received inquiry implies a follow-up, and more. 

3) Compile a checklist that can ensure each interaction with the support team delivers value and helps sustain and develop customer loyalty, increase their retention and improve your business results.

Final Thoughts, Tips & Tricks

As the industry experts admit, the idea behind customer experience checklists doesn’t really imply revolutionizing the process, rather aims to segment it into consistent parts to enable a better understanding of your customers’ needs and provide them with efficient solutions fast.

If you’re looking for somewhat the common customer experience checklist, this will definitely include the following:

  1. Understanding the essence of the problem/question.
  2. Clarifying the missing details, if any. 
  3. Providing a comprehensive response (using the ELI5, i.e.“Explain It Like I’m Five” technique, if needed). 
  4. Making a customer smile. 

The latter aspect, however often overlooked, is what can actually distinguish the superior quality of customer support from the mediocre one. No chatbot can substitute a human customer support specialist, regardless of how sophisticated it is, especially when it comes to complex inquiries, not the mundane “I’m afraid I forgot my password. How can I reset it?” user request.

Alexia Barlier
A WP Life



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