So you’ve sold some product. Well, you’ve sold a lot of product. Now people have questions. Where’s my order? How do I make it work? It’s broken – how do I replace it? Now, you see the value in a good customer experience – in fact you feel it’s going to be a big reason you’re going to bring it to the competition. You know it’s time to hire some people to help you handle this volume. Here’s how to start.
Open email as a channel first
Here’s a nasty fact about call centers. You always have either too many people for how much volume is coming in or too much volume for how many people you have staffed. You will be able to handle more contacts with fewer people at less cost (a savings you can pass along to your customer or invest in growth) if you are able to spread customer contacts out throughout the day. If one fully time CS person can handle 50 contacts per day, they will not be able to handle 50 phone calls, as those calls will come in randomly and inevitably stack up so you get 3, 4, or more at a time. These people will wait on hold and will view this as you going back on your promise to support them by phone (the one you make when you list a customer service phone number). You can still engage customers through phone without publishing a line – it’s as easy as responding to an email with a request for their number. The best customer service comes from having the right people in the right place at the right time with the right tools. When you are small, this is going to mean not being caught off-guard by a rush of calls mid-day. Set up an email address and a ticketing system first, which we’ll cover next.
Set up a CRM tool
Thank your lucky stars it’s 2014, this part is going to be pretty easy. There are a lot of low-cost options out there, including FreshDesk, ZenDesk, and Desk.com, which are all customizable ticketing solutions with a pay-per-seat pricing model. These will allow you to manage customer tickets, recognize trends, and will lay the foundation for what your CS desk may grow into. Oh, here’s the other benefit of not launching phone right away – no expensive telephony solutions. All you have to do is talk to a few companies with 20 or so customer support folks to realize that finding a quality vendor at a reasonable price can be a total time-suck.
Build a knowledge base and training NOW
One of the biggest challenges I see with growing companies is when they grow to the point that they need a formalized training program and haven’t even started to think about building one. At the very least, build out that searchable wiki (a function of most CRM tools) and keep a robust list of FAQs and common procedures that you can use to get someone new up to speed in a short time, if needed. Also, determine what gets escalated to whom. Maybe on day 1 you can have your customer-facing team call out escalations verbally, but as volume grows, this can result in unnecessary work disruptions. Know where credit card questions, usage feedback, and order questions need to go and write it down.
Don’t overreach
I’ve already written a post about not lying to your customers. This falls right in line with that concept. If you promise 24/7 support you will be answering your cell phone in the middle of the night. You can (theoretically) cover 5 8-hour days with one CS rep. You can (theoretically) cover 5 12-hour days with 2. To simply cover 24/7 you need at least 5 and that’s a stretch. Make promises you can deliver on. Kickstarter campaigns get away with murder by communicating clearly to their backers why they are behind on their targets. This is a similar concept. If you say you will respond to emails in 24 hours and can manage 4, that is great! Don’t get cocky and shorten your timelines until you have the funds to back it with personnel or a strong track record of meeting that SLA.
Actually deliver quality customer service
Customer service is not measured by average handle time (AHT) average speed of answer (ASA) or number of tickets answered per day. Short handle times might increase how quickly you get to new tickets/calls, but might result in customers reaching out again because their issue wasn’t completely solved. If you’re just increasing your total volume, maybe you should be focusing on first call resolution (FCR), instead. There are a few great ways to measure the impact of your customer service team. My favorite is NPS (Net Promoter Score), which is a popular model rigth now that measures not just whether or not your customers had a good experience, but if they will recommend you, creating a cheap stream of new customers.
taylorworth 