How Do You Do Customer Service Online?

Customer Service Online: How you can get it right

In case you haven't noticed, customer service online is more important now than ever it was before. Your customers obviously aren’t able to see you so your tone of voice, demeanour and attitude needs to be fine tuned so you project the right image for your company online. You might even need to alter your tone depending on what platform you are using. For example, customer service on Facebook may be a little less formal than if you received a formal customer complaint submitted via your website. The way in which you respond to your customers online can provide prospective customers with a real insight into the type of business you are. How you handle it could make or break your reputation!

Customer service can be defined loosely as the service received from customers before, during and after a purchase. The level of customer service provided by you and your team will translate to the level of satisfaction felt by your customer. In the ideal world every business would exceed customer expectations but of course it’s very hard to please everyone...

The internet has changed the way and pace at which we all interact. These days consumers effectively own your brand online and can determine how your business is perceived. This is could spell danger for some companies, but if you’re clever you can potentially leverage your customers’ voice as a competitive advantage. If you provide excellent service they’ll be more inclined to share their great experience with a review website or on their Facebook or Twitter profile giving you access to an extended audience and a positive image aside from the one you’re trying to promote. How you leverage this without making it look contrived will be the key to your online customer service success!

How do you win the battle with an awkward customer and walk away holding hands? 

First things first, you need to plan your response in advance and think about each and every scenario you could face online. You should also prepare your staff for these scenarios and provide them with some suggestions on how to approach these tricky situations. Depending on the scale of your business you could role play each of these scenarios to ensure everyone is ‘on message’. To get started we have highlighted some hypothetical situations below and a few ideas on how to approach them.

Here goes:

James ordered a product from your site and the wrong item was delivered? 

But your system says they ordered the ‘wrong item’? Well - so what! The customer 'thought' they purchased another item off your website. You should ask them to return your product and you’ll send the right one out the very same day and reimburse the customer with the postage and packaging costs. You want the customer to return to purchase more items and let their friends and family know about the excellent customer service they received, so treat the customer the way you’d like to be treated. You may lose the odd time but the majority of online retailers we speak to feel the positive customer experience outweighs the downside.

Mary has asked a question through your live chat facility - you don’t know the answer and there’s no one around to help.

The dreaded silence on a web based chat facility is so disheartening, especially when you just want a simple question answered! Instead of this dreaded silence, you should be honest and let the customer know that you’re unsure, you'll look in to it ASAP and you’ll get someone to email or phone them with an answer. Of course if they say email them, then email them and don’t call them! If you can’t follow a simple instruction to get in touch with the customer via their preferred medium, you could just be adding fuel to the fire.

The customer should appreciate your honesty and if you’re able to get them a response ASAP they should be happy enough. Make sure you don’t forget to give yourself a time limit to get a response - say 30 minutes or an hour.

Sarah orders a new pair of trainers for her son’s birthday. The order has gone through but they aren’t available any longer?

OK, you’re system has taken the money from the customer but unfortunately the item can no longer be dispatched because it’s out of stock. Oh dear, you’re definitely going to be letting the customer down here, especially since it’s needed for a specific date, so it’s important to approach the situation empathetically. Offering the customer an alternative item is definitely the way to go here, give them a personal call or email and let them know what has happened. Take responsibility for this error and hopefully by offering an alternative you’re not leaving them in the lurch. If you action this quickly then you’re less likely to annoy the customer as it will give them more time to find a solution before their son's birthday. They may even write you a rave review or testimonial that you can use to your benefit!

You could also help soften the blow by including a discount voucher for their next purchase - another subtle way to entice them back to your website!

Dave purchases the latest business software but the software doesn’t do what Dave wants and he takes to Twitter to let the world know?

Yikes! A negative social media post in real time is never what you want - as the world is now watching your customer complain. Pull up a seat folks! EMERGENCY - you need to respond quickly and all that advanced planning is about to save your bacon and hopefully your reputation. If the product hasn’t worked as planned you need to empathise, accept responsibility and (most importantly with social media) try to take the conversation offline as quickly as possible. This will enable you to follow up with the customer ‘off air’ and if you’re successful they will hopefully come back to your wall and say how wonderful your customer service has been resolving a situation. Bonus! Whatever you do don't get defensive and take it personally. This will only make you look bad and could be very damaging to your brand!

To take the customer offline you could provide them with a specific phone number or email address for them to contact you, but ideally you should get in touch with them. You may need to establish whether or not they ‘follow’ you, so you can DM each other, but if not you’ll need to provide them with details. You need to ask them for a preferred phone number, email address and a time which suits them for contact. This shows your audience (who are definitely watching) how well you deal with customer complaints and your intended actions if the proverbial hits the fan.

You could come back to all complaints on your social media with a generic response but it helps to make it a bit personalised. Something like:

You will need to adapt your message for each social media platform, for example on Twitter,  where you only have so many characters:

Using their name and knowing what product they’ve purchased will show that you’ve researched their issue. Answering like this will show that you’re flexible, responsive and leaves the customer (and everyone else) knowing you want to fix it. It should also leave them with no real reason to be annoyed about your level or service.  Everyone else will also see that you’re being reasonable and nice. If the customer comments further the pendulum may swing and they’ll risk ruining their own reputation!

How do you find out if people have complained about you online?

The trouble with being online is that customers could be complaining about you without you even knowing! You should, as a rule of thumb, assign predetermined times during the day to have a browse across all your social media profiles to see if you have any notifications of posts on your walls. You should also check all your mail boxes to see if any customer emails have come into your inbox or gone astray into your junk.

And finally as a matter of course, if you are doing business online you should know were your audience ‘hangs out’. You should already be keeping an eye on these forums as this could be the first place they could go for a whinge. As an aside, if you want to know what people think about your business you should keep an eye on relevant forums. It could be quite sobering but insightful at the same time! Why not have a read of our blog on using social media to listen to your audience for some inspiration?

You can see what your customers are saying about you by signing up to analytics websites such as Google Adwords, setting your search criteria and adding your email address. This will return a daily, weekly or monthly email with statistics from your chosen browser about the ‘mood’ or  general opinion of your company out on the internet. These emails will also supply you with a link to the website with the reviews so you can respond to the positive or negative comment which has been posted about your business. This will allow customers to find out the details about your company and see that you’re actually concerned about what your customers have to say about you and your business.

To summarise, here are a few useful tips or steps for you when you’re dealing with awkward customers online:

• Plan your response to issues that you could face across all platforms - even the most radical!
• Circulate your plan of action to your team and ensure you’re all singing from the same sheet. If possible organise a customer service training session.
• Act immediately as soon as the complaint comes in. The sooner the better.
• Manage the complaints like all your stakeholders are watching! This way you’ll avoid doing or saying something that could land you in hot water.
• Don’t get dragged in. It’s all too easy to get sucked in and respond to insulting remarks! Rise above it and remain professional at all times.
• Treat customers as you’d like to be treated! If you think you could do more for the customer, do more. This can only bode well for you and your company.
• Don’t overcommit to the customer in your response in writing but you can and should over exceed their expectations. If you’ve sold a faulty item replace it and send a little extra along with the new item. Everyone likes a freebie.
• Take responsibility but don’t over apologise. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with apologising if you’ve done something wrong there’s nothing worse that being a suck up. Admit you’re wrong, now what are you going to do to fix it?

In a nutshell, treat your customers as you would like to be treated. Mistakes can and do happen and whether the customer has made a mistake with the order or you have messed up you need to empathise and get it fixed. They’re the lifeline of your business and without them, you're nothing! PERIOD.

We'd love to hear how you deal with your customers online? Let us know in the box below.

photo credit: Scott Ableman via photopin cc