Ways to Address Customer Care

Multichannel marketing is a vital part of business, but so is multichannel customer care. While retailers expect to engage with their audiences across numerous platforms, some forget that those same platforms can be used to address customer queries and complaints with ease.

The biggest issue with multichannel customer care occurs when a customer makes a comment on a platform such as a Facebook page and is told to call a number. If a customer engages your organization on Facebook, that customer expects to have the issue resolved on Facebook; otherwise you have a dissatisfied customer. The same goes for engagement on Twitter and the myriad other social networking platforms.

This means that multichannel customer care needs to be agile. Those tasked with maintaining a Twitter presence and a Facebook page must be able to respond to issues quickly and efficiently. Even a message saying that the complaint has been recorded and that the relevant department will get back to the customer within a certain time frame is better than simply ignoring it or asking the customer to call or email a specific number or address.

In addition, multichannel customer care can involve having a troubleshooting webpage that deals with common issues. This means the customer can solve many of common issues without ever having to call in or contact a customer service representative. This is known as self-service assistance. It saves thousands in call center fees, as the price of a call center employee runs between $6 to $12 per call, whereas the cost of a self-help troubleshooter can be as little as a few cents per customer.

Other examples of multichannel customer care include online community help pages where other customers can offer advice, although that advice has to be overseen by dedicated staff members. It has to be carefully monitored because of the possibility of people acting in bad faith. However, a carefully managed online community help page can produce significantly faster responses than a conventional forum, resulting in increased customer satisfaction.

One of the most popular multichannel customer care options is simply going into a shop and asking for help. While this isn't practical to deal with for some businesses, it's a vital part of others. Training your staff in how to handle customer queries is therefore essential, and it should include training in how to calm angry customers down and in knowing what the business can offer to placate annoyed customers.

Multichannel customer care is now an essential part of any business, ranging from small mom-and-pop stores to multinational corporations. The more personalized you can make your customer care and the better the overall customer interaction, the greater the likelihood that your business can score repeat business even if there was an issue with the customer.

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