Customer Care Planning and Implementation Guide

The Customer Support o customer support (pronounced ) is the implementation of customer service strategies in a company. Customer service is responsible for providing help, support and advice to consumers to improve the shopping experience.

Currently, customer service has become one of the key pieces for the success of a brand. Consumers already focus only on the product or service when making a purchase. Increasingly, they review reviews or search the internet and social networks to find out the reliability of a brand or the effectiveness of a product.

For this reason, in this content we collect all the information related to customer care and service so that you can identify if there are areas for improvement in the care you provide in your business. Stay until the end!

What is customer service

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Customer service ―also known as customer support― consists of providing information, follow-up and solutions to the consumer to satisfy their needs during the purchase process, but also after it.

The treatment offered by a company’s collaborators is the letter of introduction to the world, so customer service requires dealing with potential and recurring customers in an efficient and effective way.

There are many keys to offering support to your consumers; service and attention strategies are a fundamental part of increasing sales and retaining customers. But it is not the only functionality of customer service, let’s see below.

What is customer service for?

Customer service is used to communicate with consumers before, during and after a purchase. The customer service process has three phases and is a very useful tool to build loyalty, even more effective than the quality of the product or service offered by a company.

The majority of recurring customers of a brand become loyal thanks to the attention and follow-up, just as it is common for people to stop buying a product or hire a service due to a bad experience with a company’s support area.

It is important to identify in which phase of the care process the client is in order to provide the correct help. That is, if the interaction occurs before or during the purchase; The attention will be focused on providing information and solving doubts so that the closing of the sale is successful, regardless of whether it is a physical or digital business. On the other hand, the treatment given after the acquisition of a product or service will focus on solving problems, dislikes, complaints or facilitating the return or cancellation of the purchase.

The customer service process

The customer service process is all the actions involved in guaranteeing the best experience for consumers during their interaction with a brand. As we anticipated in the previous lines, there are three phases in the customer service process:

1. precontact
2. Contact
3. Information Collection

It is important to identify the ideal strategies and channels for each stage of the process. If you want to learn more about it, consult the following content:

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Customer service techniques

Service techniques are all the strategies that a company uses to maintain a successful relationship with its customers through the different contact channels. Managing customer service techniques offers advantages over the competition. There are seven that we list below:

1. fab
2. Eli5
3. HEARD
4. Feel, Felt, Found
5. question mark
6. Use of positive language
7. online service

Delve into the topic:

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How should customer service be?

Customer service must meet at least eight essential characteristics:

Characteristics of good customer service

1. Empathy
2. Respect
3. Speed
4. Convenience
5. Utility
6. Amiability
7. Patience
8. Efficiency

Tips to improve service in your business

• Remember that you are talking to people.
• Be empathic.
• Anticipate problems.
• Take advantage of technology.
• Solve any situation.
• Make easy.
• Communicate at the right time.
• Align messages across all your contact channels.
• Ask for feedback.

What is customer service

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Customer service is situated in the planning and strategy rather than in the implementation of that interaction that satisfies the needs of its users. In other words, customer service seeks to meet customer expectations from prospecting, in the first contact with the brand, while a user is evaluating the product or service, as well as during and after the purchase.

For example; excellent customer service in a digital business will take into account that the information communicated in advertising campaigns is true, that the online store has an updated catalog and stock of its products, as well as that it has various communication channels and friendly payment methods for your customers; finally, that in the event of a complaint or problem, customers can get help easily and quickly.

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Difference between service and customer care

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It is common for the meaning of both terms to be confused, the main difference between service and customer service is that customer service seeks to anticipate the needs of users through different processes, while customer service provides solutions to the needs that it goes through. a client.

Let’s exemplify. In an ecommerce that sells t-shirts, customer service involves the design of the store and how the products are displayed, as well as the information and description of the product (available sizes, colors, size guide, fabric material, etc.) and the estimated shipping time. This in order to streamline the purchase process and avoid calls or emails with questions that could easily be avoided.

On the other hand, customer service could occur in the post-sale phase, when a customer received the wrong model and size or a damaged product. Here the focus will be on listening to the problem, providing a solution, and offering a reward to avoid discontent.

Quality of service

The quality of service, as you can imagine, is of great importance to boost sales. A company must seek to exceed people’s expectations to surprise them and build loyalty almost immediately. There are many business cases that offered excellent products, but because they offer poor service they quickly disappear from the market.

There are different types of quality of service:

• quality of excellence
• Fit quality to spec
• Quality as value
• Quality as satisfaction of the expectations of users or consumers

8 tips to boost the quality of customer service

1. Try to validate the opinion of your customers.
2. Use marketing strategies.
3. Provide sensory experiences.
4. Use friendly language.
5. Be flexible with payments and shipping.
6. Give away coupons.
7. Take advantage of the use of chatbots.
8. Anticipate problems or inconveniences.

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Types of customer service

• By phone
• Via message or DM
• Via email
• self service
• chatbot
• Face-to-face

Importance of customer service

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Now that we know the difference between customer care and customer service, we can dig a little deeper into the . Did you know that 47% of digital business customers in Mexico interrupt their purchases because they cannot find the product they are looking for? And 43% leave the sales page because they feel it doesn’t look trustworthy, according to AMVO’s 2021 online sales study.

This type of inconvenience can be prevented and it is convenient for you, since it is much cheaper to invest in prevention than to lose sales or receive returns and cancellations due to service failures. Do not allow it in your business!

Characteristics of a business with good service quality

• They get higher sales than their competitors.
• They have a high volume of repeat customers.
• They receive positive reviews or ratings.
• They prevent problems.
• They act with speed, empathy and respect
• They constantly improve.

Advantages of having a customer service strategy

• Increase the number of customers.
• Reduces the saturation of the customer service area.
• Help resolve doubts about products or services.
• Allows you to make tailored recommendations.
• Create a bond of trust between brand and client.
• Generates feedback that can be turned into improvements in the sales process.
• Invite customers to speak well of a brand.
• Build loyalty.

Disadvantages of not having a customer service strategy

• less sales
• Bad reputation
• Low ratings and negative comments on social networks
• Support area saturation
• Lawsuits and complaints
• loss of money
• bad work environment
• Lack of consumer feedback

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Strategies to improve customer service

There are many ways to improve customer service, we leave you some strategies to achieve it:

• Leverage technology to improve the customer experience.
• Use social networks as a channel of communication and interaction with customers.
• Design personalized and memorable experiences for each type of client.
• Do to boost other products.
• Perform post-sale follow-up through forms.
• Engage and listen to your employees.
• Use to retain and inform your customers.
• Experiment with promotions, gifts, coupons and discounts.
• Enable different communication channels (phone, chat, email, etc.).
• Take advantage of feedback and implement processes for constant improvement.
• Create clear and respect them.
• Implement different options and help channels.

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How to achieve quality customer service in an ecommerce

Good practices

• Unify the voice and tone of communication to interact with your audience on all channels.
• Prioritize internal communication for problem resolution.
• Define the areas in charge of specific problems.
• Know your company’s products 100%.

Bad habits

• Treat customers like a transaction or a number.
• Leaving open conversations or tickets without a solution.
• Commit to dates you can’t meet.
• Using too colloquial or disrespectful language.

Keys to achieve customer success

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• Focus on the consumer experience.
• Listen to customers.
• Show empathy when a customer has a problem.
• Create processes and manuals for all areas.
• Define KPIs.
• Lean on technology.
• Offer satisfaction surveys.
• Do not forget to add the details of your online store.
• Constantly train the team.
• Get brand ambassadors.
• Identify dissatisfied customers.

Learn…