Regardless of how much time your company puts into service or product development, it’s virtually impossible to please all clients always. Your company will certainly have to address customer complaints and answer their questions at one time or another. You should thus ask yourself whether you will have the right answers for these customers when they call. It’s important to be prepared because they’ll need you to answer to their concerns so that they can make their repairs.
Customer service needs more than just an FAQ section and the posting of phone numbers and email addresses on your site. There is a need for a technical support system that will sufficiently support your services and products by providing comprehensive help to your customers. The system should also enable you to escalate the level of service in accordance to the issue at hand. Such a system should also address security issues such as those relating to confidentiality. It shouldn’t be vulnerable to security threats, which may expose sensitive consumer information.
In 2018, an estimated 72% of service providers in the IT industry offered disaster recovery services and most of these providers can also offer technology solutions for business in escalations management. Here are tips on how your escalations management system should work.
Seek professional help by outsourcing IT elements of escalations management
Most businesses lack a strong enough customer service, which can support their services and products. Even when they have sufficient support staff, they sometimes lack the right infrastructure or the expertise to establish an escalation system. This is where the support of an outsourced third party becomes important.
An IT expert that provides tech support for small business can come in handy by providing suitable solutions including computer networks, hardware, and software as well as ongoing technical support. Your customer support staff will interact with clients, but your outsourced IT partner will assist your company in developing the ideal customer escalation system.
Create a layered support system
In any escalation management case, it’s always ideal for the customer to get help promptly and if possible at the first step of approaching the system. Several opportunities to satisfy the customer’s needs should be available before reaching the executive. This tiered system should start from levels as simple as the FAQ section that addresses common customer questions.
If the FAQ section fails to provide a solution to their problems, clients should be prompted to contact support via live chats, e-mail, or phone. This ensuing communication should then be relayed to the relevant executive department such as the product or quality management team or managers. If the problem can’t be solved at this level, then the customers may be referred to junior executives.
Train your customer service team well
Customer service staff working within your designed escalation system should get the right training. They need to understand the protocols and policies of escalation. They also have to thoroughly understand the services and products that your firm sells as well as the potential weaknesses that they may have.
Manage the expectations of your customers
Consumers may not receive the kind of prompt attention that they seek, and you have to seek solutions to temper their anticipations. For instance, if you can’t provide immediate e-mail responses, at least ensure that you have an IT system to provide automated e-mail responses to let them know when they will get their response.
Manage escalation by using customer success software
To properly deal with escalations management you need a good customer success platform. These kinds of software can be embedded on to your platform and they will send reminders to your customer support system after identifying possible escalation areas. For instance, if you sell products to customers on your subscription list, then a consumer regularly searching for help topics in a certain area is a definite indicator of a possible problem area that you should attend to proactively before an escalation emerges.
Prevent escalation where possible
Having a strong support system to deal with your problems doesn’t mean that you should escalate all problems. You should equip your support staff sufficiently so that they can be empowered to provide most of the solutions sought by your customers.