A few years ago I managed a group of CS reps for one of the major cell phone companies. My team consistently won our in house competitions for customer satisfaction. Yes, we had surveys that customers could fill out about their experience with our reps. My team were winners because more of my reps had higher scores on their surveys.
There were two simple things I implemented to achieve this.
1. Handle the call where it falls. I was often ridiculed on this one by my colleagues because I actually trained my reps to handle other tasks. In cases where they couldn't do it themselves I had a system in place where the transition of action to another department was transparent. After it was completed my rep would call the customer back to confirm it had been taken care of.
2. Listen to the customer with empathy and know the person beyond your headset - thank them for bringing the issue to your attention and assure them you can resolve it together. Let the customer play a role in the resolution. In other words, split the ownership of the problem while maintaining control. With ownership comes empowerment and 98% of the time if the customer feels empowered as opposed to belittled they will be satisfied. In some situations this can be achieved with a simple, "Is that ok with you?" In this case, if they answer, "yes" they have just been given a
sense of ownership by simply granting you approval.
That was my method and it worked. Eventually the Director and General Manager took notice and it was implemented across the department. It worked for most groups but not all. Those it didn't work for were just poorly managed. We did, however, receive a J.D. Power and Associates award for outstanding customer satisfaction after one year of the department changes. I don't take credit for that because a lot of things changed. What I did was only a small part. Most importantly it was teamwork.
You can also create a
sense of teamwork between a supplier and a customer. Get input, listen to needs, take suggestions seriously. And most of all handle complaints properly, professionally and promptly. If there are delays be honest and forthright. Most customer are more understanding than given credit for. It's lack of communication, ignorance (knowledge) and pure nonprofessional attitude that result in most irate situations or worsens it.
My call center experience is certainly different than selling ecigs from a small online
shop. Yet this simple but effective methodology can work in almost any business. It doesn't matter how big or small a company is. Its customers are people who all have emotions that are activated by prior and current happenings. As a small business owner you are also your own customer service representative giving you a huge role in how your customer's emotions play out.
Btw, if any of our reps were caught writing something in the notes section of an account that didn't jive with a monitored call, i.e. saying the customer said something other than what was actually said. That rep would face some serious repercussions. That doesn't really have any correlation with suppliers editing posts on their sub forums with the exception of a little thing called integrity.
