Any good company’s success relies in part on a good customer service team. This is more important than ever in today’s marketplace, where consumers have so many choices and they want to feel listened to above all else. But how do you know if your customer service team is getting the job done?
Here are three things you can try to test the effectiveness of your customer service team.
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Monitor Customer Service Interactions
The best way to see if your customer service people are getting the job done is by listening to the calls and watching the chats. Questions you should be asking yourself are:
- “Is the agent resolving the customer’s problem?”
- “Is he or she resolving the problem in a timely fashion?”
- “Is he or she being patient with the customer?”
- “Did the agent resolve the customer’s problem in one shot or were multiple interactions needed?”
You should be able to determine these answers from the context of the interaction between customer service representative and customer.
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Email Feedback Surveys
Many companies have a system set up that automatically emails the customer who has initiated the customer service interaction a feedback survey when the call is completed. This gives the customer a chance to rate the interaction and vent about anything they thought could have been done better.
Collect this data for each of your customer service team members’ interactions and review them later to see if any patterns emerge.
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Check Outside Reviews
You should always be scanning sites like Yelp! to see if anyone has reviewed your business and if they are pointing out problems that you can address. A good portion of the time, if someone has something negative to say about you on a review site, some (if not most or all) of their review will involve their interactions with customer service. Hopefully, some reviews will include great interactions with customer service as well.
None of these methods are absolute ways of knowing if your customer service team is doing a good job. Sometimes an agent has a bad day and sometimes there is just no pleasing some people. But combining these methods — along with measuring any other customer response metrics you choose to track — should eventually give you a reasonable picture of what your customer service team is doing and whether it’s working to produce satisfied returning customers — or it’s turning people off and you need to make some changes.
If you do decide to make changes, tread carefully. It’s likely that your customer service people don’t think they are doing anything wrong and may get defensive fast. In most cases, a firm but sympathetic approach with useful suggestions on what they can be doing better is enough to get a committed customer service agent on the right track.
It’s usually better to cultivate an existing relationship with a customer service team than to try to go out and find a whole new one.