Never Stop Improving Your Customer Support

Companies with vibrant customer support staff continually hone their skills in order to keep customers happy. Firms must, without fail, improve customer service with proper support in place to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction. That's the reason Desk.com's WOW team exists behind the scenes to analyze, predict and improve customer interactions.

Scott Hargroves, customer WOW specialist at Desk.com, writes how sales companies should never stop improving customer support services. He touts, "Good, better, best. Never let it rest," as Desk.com's WOW team motto, which means the company always strives to improve its customers' experiences. This group of individuals implements ideas for enhancing the firm's customer service.

Hargroves notes Desk.com staff undertook some housecleaning steps to improve its customer support. The process began with making extra efforts to log incoming phone calls. Instead of becoming distracted between calls, Desk.com staff took steps to prioritize logging each and every customer phone call. When the same customer calls back later, any operator can pick up where the previous phone call left off. Desk.com found customers appreciated this experience since they did not have to repeat themselves. A little preventive effort before a call saves extra staff time later when a customer service rep cannot ascertain what occurred during a previous customer interaction. Saving staff time limits costs and increases staff efficiency.

A second improvement actually increased the average wait time of phone customers by three minutes. Desk.com gave incoming callers a choice to continue to hold or leave a voice mail, rather than force customers to leave a voice mail and be called back later. Despite the longer hold time, Desk.com's clientele liked the fact that they got to speak to a real person rather than a voice mail inbox greeting. This small change in customer support architecture made plenty of customers happy with improved service that seemed less robotic and more personal.

Desk.com's improvement team came up with a third way to make phone interactions more efficient by revamping menu choices for operators. New "issue categories" were made to better explain the issues customers had when they called. Better menu categories led to improved responses the next time customers called and fewer cases were unresolved.

Hargroves notes customer support staff spend one to two hours per day working on minor, side projects that improve customer relations at Desk.com. This continual drive to increase efficiency and productivity saves the entire company money in the long run since customers' experiences keep getting better. Speed, accuracy and increased customer interaction with social media are all must-have customer service initiatives for firms in the tech-savvy global economy. Desk.com's dedicated team attempts to stay at the forefront of customer relations every day. Firms should take a cue from Desk.com's Principles of WOW to examine how their own customer service and quality assurance departments augment each other.

Just as the global economy never seems to stop, companies must continually improve customer support operations. This department works behind the scenes to ensure customer service staff have the tools they need to deliver the best possible outcome to clients. Put clients' happiness first to create greater revenue and higher profits, just like Desk.com's model, and see what happens.

Photo courtesy of 10ch at Flickr.com