Typical Responses to Challenging Customer Service Problems
Customer service has become a top priority in our nation's businesses today. Without it, it's unlikely that your company will be able to keep existing customers or attract new ones. Organizations spend a great deal of time and money training service representatives to deal with myriad types of customers and their concerns. Naturally, typical responses to these issues are bound to arise, some positive and some negative.
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Defensiveness
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Defensiveness is a common response to challenging customer service problems, especially among new representatives or those who haven't been properly trained. Faced with belligerent, impatient, and angry customers whose emotions they can't handle, these reps shut down by denying responsibility for the issue or accountability for handling it. One way to prevent defensiveness from resolving customer issues is to give your reps other options. Let them know they can come to a manager or supervisor for assistance, and will not be blamed for the problem.
Burnout
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Burnout of customer service representatives is another frequent response to client problems. This industry has one of the highest turnover rates, according to Robert Bacal, author of "Perfect Phrases for Customer Service: Hundreds of Tools, Techniques, and Scripts for Handling Any Situation." Burnout costs companies enormous amounts of money in terms of replacing and training employees, all of whom will face the issues that prompted their predecessors' burnout. Regularly scheduled breaks, vacation time, and perks can help prevent burnout and keep customer service representatives happily in their jobs.
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Ingenuity
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They say that "necessity is the mother of invention," and that's certainly true in handling customer problems. One response that particularly hardworking or creative reps use is ingenuity, or finding original solutions to handle client issues. Whether it means using clever computer techniques to track down exactly where a package delivery went wrong, or finding alternate billing methods to charge reasonable prices, these reps use their imaginations to do an outstanding job when faced with poor odds.
Patience
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Patience is another appropriate and much-needed response to challenging customer service problems. In this day and age, it's not uncommon for problems to take several hours or even days to unravel and solve. Clearly, in these instances, a great deal of patience is called for, but not all customer service representatives possess it. You can teach your reps to increase the amount of patience they have by having them visualize large, complex problems as smaller, more manageable tasks.
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References
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