Worried that this spooky year is scaring away your customers? Here are my top 5 tips for luring them back to your front door and treating them so well that they’ll never run away again.
- Stop catching them by surprise!
Nobody likes an ugly surprise. This year, your customers are probably surprise-weary. You can remove a lot of the fear by communicating clearly and consistently. Tell your customers what you’re about, what you’ll deliver, and how you’ll treat them – and then keep your promises.
- Banish the zombies!
Personally, I have always believed that every customer who calls deserves to be heard with care, answered with speed and accuracy, and leave the call feeling cared about. This year, every customer’s need to experience empathy and feel trust in their brand has skyrocketed. No matter how new, or frazzled, or overwhelmed your customer care agents may be, you and your brand cannot afford to have them speaking to your customers like broken robots or the living dead. If you’re managing to the script without managing to the tone, you’re doing it wrong. Scary wrong. Be the warm, welcoming place to go, not the Last House on the Left.
- Keep the lights on, the energy high, and the conversations flowing!
You may be tempted to whittle down your staff to save money during turbulent times. Don’t do it! Taking an ax to the customer care budget might give you a brief thrill at first. But forcing your customers to wait in the cold for the graveyard shift, while you take forever to answer them is a certain shortcut to viral complaints, lost business, and severe reputational damage at a time when you can least afford it.
- Stop trying to revive Frankenstein’s monster!
If this year has taught consumer brands anything, it’s that when you try to take different parts from different systems and force them to operate together, you end up with a monster that takes on a life of its own. You, personally, as the senior leader of a customer care platform, might have found it quite seamless to simply grab your laptop and start working from home this year. But if your customer care team was working on-site, you’ve probably discovered, first-hand, how unsustainable it is to force your brick-and-mortar systems onto an at-home agents world. It’s a monster. And it’s going to start destroying things and sending your customers running for the hills.
- Make every call a treat.
Remember that every character you serve is hoping for an experience that makes them smile, tell their friends, and remember you in a powerful, positive light. Make sure you know who your callers are, what they need and expect, and how they compare you to others. If you ran a campaign filled with promises but failed to follow through, your customers will feel tricked, not treated. And next time… well, there won’t be a next time. But when your customer care team is hired, trained, and rewarded for keeping your brand promises. When they’re enthusiastic about what they do and eager to take care of your customers, they can make every customer experience a real treat.
At Skybridge Americas, we have been delivering legendary customer care for our clients for more than six decades. If you would like to know how Skybridge Americas can help you achieve your customer experience goals, please reach out. We would love to talk!
-Bobby Matthews
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Skybridge Americas
bmatthews@skybridgeamericas.com
Find out how Skybridge Americas can help you delight your customers and grow your business.
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