Contacting a company requires effort. Your customer has to find the company’s contact information, figure out what they want to ask, make the time to email or call. So even customers who are just asking for additional information have already experienced some pain points. Now they’ve reached you. Are you there to help them, or to hinder them?
When I first started in customer care, customer service was often touted as “the first line of defense.” Defense? You’re trying to protect yourself from…customers? That should be the opposite of what you want to do. You want to build relationships with your customers, you want them to join the fold and go forth and spread the word about not only what an amazing product you have but about what an awesome company you are to deal with.
Your customer care department should serve as the bridge that leads your customers in, not the wall that keeps them out.
Your customer care department should serve as the bridge that leads your customers in, not the wall that keeps them out. This doesn’t mean “the customer is always right” (a fallacy I’ll talk about in a separate post). It means that your reps need to make your customers feel as if they have an advocate within the company (and your reps should actually be that advocate).
It is important to remember, too, that bridges work both ways. If there is information your company needs to make sure customers have, your customer care team should know about it so they can keep customers informed. Sometimes, that will be a policy or technological limitation that will make the customer unhappy. That’s okay. If your reps have built that advocacy relationship with the customer, they will still feel like they are part of the company’s team, and know that you are all working together to make your product or service as great as it can be.