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How To Improve Customer Service
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Article 9: Answer the Phone!
Not every business has a store location, of course. More and more companies operate online or mail order these days, and that makes customer service even more important.
That’s because the Web site or telephone is the only point of customer contact and the only way you will be judged. Your customers are just a mouse click or phone call from your competitors. You don’t get a second chance to make it right.
You need, therefore, to be particularly accessible and particularly helpful.
Every aspect of your Web site needs to be easy to use and inviting. This writer, for example, recently tried to buy a gift on a national retailer’s Web site. Everything went fine until I tried to complete my order—and there was no submit button on the page. I clicked to a competitor’s Web site, irritated that I’d wasted 20 minutes.
If your business depends on the phone, avoid voice mail hell—the long recorded menu of options, and the even longer wait until someone deigns to answer. You’ll make lots of friends for your business if you invest in a human to answer the phone and direct calls, and employ enough staff to handle the load.
“You’ve got to create customer-friendly systems and service quality standards that are specific and measurable, like answering calls in three rings, responding to e-mails within 24 hours, shipping merchandise within 48 hours,” points out Karen Leland, co-author of “Customer Service for Dummies” (For Dummies, 1999).
Like everything else in customer service, it’s a top-down commitment.
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