Once your business has customers it’s important to have a customer services department that can handle them – their enquiries, queries and complaints. But there’s a lot to do to ensure it works effectively, helps retain your customers, and allows your business to improve.
So how do you set up a customer services department for your business? We show you the key things to think about.
Defining your customer service
When setting up a customer services department, the first thing you should do is define what it will mean for your business. For instance, what does it aim to do and provide your customers? Will it focus on speed, or will it be more concerned with integrity and quality, when handling enquires and queries? And what standards does it aim to achieve? These can be standards that you can use as a benchmark to measure the department’s performance.
You should also consider how you will handle customers. For instance, what will be your response time, what tone will you use, how will you resolve complaints, and how will you aim to continuously improve your customers experience? It’s also important to think about what ethical guidelines you’ll stick to, and what legal requirements you should follow, depending on your industry.
Deciding on what support channels you’ll use
You should also think about what channels you will use to support and communicate with customers, such as email, phone and LiveChat. Different channels can be better for some services and audiences than others. LiveChat, for instance, which is like a mixture email and phone, can be good for handling queries about retail products. Whereas, taking calls over the phone tends to be better for older audiences, who might be less comfortable with communicating online.
There are other channels to also consider for your customer services department, such as social media and forums, with each having their pros and cons. For instance, social media can be good for facilitating conversation around your product, but people can expect an immediate response on such a public platform. Whereas, forums can allow your community of customers to help each other out, but they require continuous monitoring to prevent issues like trolling.
Building your customer services team
Employing an individual or a small team to manage and run your customer service department is crucial to ensure it’s fully effective. As your customer base grows, the more people there are to ask questions, make queries or have a complaint. Handling such customers can take a lot of work and time and is difficult to do on your own, especially if you have little experience. So it’s better to hire the right people to take this work off your hands.
When hiring someone, you should think about people who have the right customer service skills. This includes a level of patience, alongside skills in clear communication, the ability to persuade people and the ability to adapt to different situations. You should also think about those with good time management and problem solving skills.
Selecting the right tools
It’s also important to have the right tools and technology when setting up your customer services department. This can make life easier for both your employees and your customers. It can have a big impact on your productivity, while guaranteeing those things that you might be striving for, like quality and speed.
Tools could include a customer relationship management (CRM) system allowing you to manage and analyse your customer interactions. Or it could involve a call back service, allowing to keep on top of enquiries and meet your response times. You should also have software to help measure the performance of your department, looking at things like call rates and call lengths, as well as customer and employee feedback. Doing this can help you to keep your department running successfully, while making changes to continue to improve it.
Providing your business with effective customer service
Having an effective customer services department that can handle and resolve customer enquiries, while retaining and acquiring customers, is a crucial part of keeping your business running smoothly. But setting one up can take time and effort and a lot of work to train up staff to a suitable standard. This where Bamboo can help.
We provide a support service that means we can help take care of your customers for you. Our exceptional customer service team do the hard work so you don’t have to, ensuring your customers keep coming back. To learn more about this service, please see our customer support page or contact us to talk to a member of our team. Alternatively, you can request a free 30-day trial to experience our customer support services for yourself and see how it can help your business.
SOURCES (not for publication)
https://www.helpscout.net/helpu/customer-support-department/
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/create-customer-service-department-scratch-39542.html
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/set-up-customer-service-department-2053.html