How to Transform Your Customer Service Problems Into Solutions

In Spring of 2008, a musician was shocked when he saw United Airlines’ baggage handlers carelessly throw his guitar around on the tarmac, destroying it completely. After several months and many unsuccessful attempts to convince United to pay for the guitar, Dave Carrol took matters into his own hands and wrote a song about his experience, “United Breaks Guitars.” Much to United Airlines dismay, the song was catchy and discussed an experience familiar enough to other fliers that the music video went viral.

United Airlines let bad customer service become a public relations disaster. To help businesses avoid this fate, we’ve put together a list of customer service trends that consumers despise and tips on how to avoid them.

Problem: Phone call menus and unnecessary hold times that cause a simple phone call to take up a large portion of a customer’s day.

Solution: Make sure every phone call gets directly to a representative and hold times (when required at all) are kept short. Mojo Helpdesk can help your employees organize all this information in one place.

Problem: Transferring customers from one department to another, rather than working to resolve the problem right away.

Solution: Make sure all customer service representatives are trained well enough in the company’s products to help with all basic issues. Utilize a helpdesk, such as Mojo Helpdesk, to assign customer service requests quickly and easily to the appropriate party from the start.

Problem: Refusing to acknowledge an error, or trying to shift the blame onto the customer.

Solution: Be willing to apologize when there’s a mistake. Focus on trying to solve the problem, and ensure that the customer is feeling heard and satisfied – especially when there is an honest mistake.

Problem: Customer is denied a refund request.

Solution: In cases like Dave Carrol’s where the company is responsible for the damages (and monetary reimbursement isn’t an option), consider offering customers other services, goods or credit to turn their bad experience into a good one.

Problem: Responding to a complaint slowly or not at all.

Solution: Set the goal that all customer service inquiries should receive a response within 24 hours.

Impersonal and frustrating customer service can drive customers to a level of anger that could inspire an angry tweet, a bad online review, a blog post rant, or even a viral video. Good customer service has always been important, but only recently has bad customer service become such a public liability.

All businesses should strive to provide exceptional customer service, but at the very least, no business should fall prey to failures and catastrophes that can be easily avoided. Treat customers with respect and keep customer service interactions personal. Mistakes happen, but businesses should fix and recognize them before the customer feels driven to public condemnation. A business can save time and effort in damage control by never allowing a customer service problem to reach a critical point to begin with.

Mojo Helpdesk Has a New Look

We are proud to announce the release of our new streamlined Mojo Helpdesk website and logo. Our updated branding reflects our intuitive, efficient and user-friendly design. We have consolidated our pricing plans by removing our Free and Basic plans, and have packed more features into our Enterprise plans. Now customers can choose monthly invoicing as well as secure their subscription with a Purchase Order. Along with our new site, we have updated the Mojo Helpdesk UI by improving accessibility to account information in the Owner/Admin menu. The new Account Information section allows users to easily update their billing information, view or change plans, and view their billing statement. It also provides an easier way for customers to subscribe to a plan when their free trial period ends. 

There are other ways to stay in-touch and informed about Mojo Helpdesk news. Check out our Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

Get More Out of Your Helpdesk with Live Chat

Between e-mail, phone, texting, social media, live chat, video conferencing and in person meetings, the methods we use to communicate with one another just keep growing. There are many benefits to the modern age of technology, including new ways to approach business and maintain relationships. With so many options available, where’s the best place to start?

Mojo Helpdesk is a versatile tool for communicating with customers and keeping all correspondence efficient and organized. In addition to full e-mail integration and text options, Mojo Helpdesk can also be integrated with live chat services. Live chat software, HelpOnClick, has put together a step-by-step guide to Mojo Helpdesk with integrating the service. By bringing the live chat functionality into the Helpdesk space, companies are able to offer customers more options for communication, while still keeping communication and chat records in one centralized location.

A live chat option for customer support offers the benefit of instant help when they experience a problem. For many customers, the assurance that the company will be there for them whenever needed provides an added level of confidence when making purchasing decisions. For the customer support staff, it offers the extra benefit of ensuring that the correspondence can be logged and referred to at a later date, if needed. A win-win for both sides involved.

Live chat is also a more flexible method of communication, as it allows support team members to perform basic research in the midst of the conversation without skipping a beat. It’s also easy to double check information for accuracy or look up past responses to similar questions before sending a response without slowing down the process. This benefit works both ways, as many customers find it more convenient to use live chat to discuss an issue while at work than making a potentially lengthy phone call.

Utilizing live chat support has several other added benefits as well. International customer language barriers are no longer an issue. Customers are able to type and read at their own pace, making this type of communication much easier than talking on the phone. For younger customers who have grown up with the Internet as a regular part of daily life, online chat is a normal, quick and expected option for communication.

Live chat integration is only one of the many customization possibilities available to Mojo Helpdesk users. With the flexibility offered through an open API, Mojo Helpdesk users can incorporate as many new ideas and features into their Helpdesks as their creativity and programming abilities allow. We’ve included the functionality needed to provide consistent, quality customer support, while leaving businesses the room to innovate and take their customer service offerings to the next level.

10 Ways to Build Customer Trust

The main factor that distinguishes a company that customers feel loyalty towards and those they just do business with is trust. The first step to gaining that trust is to consistently provide quality goods and services, but the factor that really seals it for most customers is the quality of the customer service. If customers feel confident that their questions and issues will be resolved quickly and satisfactorily by someone competent, it goes a long way towards encouraging repeat business. For any company looking to build customer trust, these 10 suggestions are good guidelines to follow.

1. Be Easy to Reach. Every customer should know how to get in touch with customer service. Don’t bury phone numbers and email addresses on a hard to find page on the website. Make sure all inquiries get directly to a human being, as it can be very frustrating to receive an automated response when facing a problem.
2. Keep it Personal. Each customer should be assigned to one representative. Contacting a company about a problem can be more daunting than contacting the individual who was helpful and knowledgeable last time that the customer now feels comfortable with. Mojo Helpdesk makes it easy to make sure customers are consistently assigned to the same representative.
3. Be Honest.  If there’s a problem, address it. Don’t try to dodge it or cover it up. When unsure of what’s causing the problem or how to fix it, it’s better to be honest and show a willingness to learn more than to risk offering inaccurate information.
4. Be Human. It’s easier to trust a human being than an entity.  Make sure customers know the name of the representative they work with and avoid keeping the language used overly formal and stiff.
5. Stay in Touch. Keep customers in the loop with emails about company and product updates and specials. Strive to keep the company top of mind though be careful not to overload inboxes.
6. Don’t be Afraid to Apologize. Dodging blame when the company or representative is at fault is a surefire way to lose trust. People appreciate when someone can admit an error.
7. Be Quick to Make Amends. Respond to any bad customer experience or company mistake with something to make up for it. Make returns easy and offer a future discount, a free item or something comparable that will show customers that concern for their satisfaction isn’t just talk.
8. Be informed. No one’s prepared for every possible issue, but customer service representatives should be trained well enough in the company’s products and services to ensure their responses are always well informed.
9. Be proactive. If there’s a problem with a product or a mistake that’s been made, contact customers before they have the chance to learn about it themselves the hard way.
10. Maintain positivity. Throughout every customer service correspondence, be reassuring and optimistic that a resolution will be realized.

By simply treating customers with respect and honesty, a company can rise above many competitors. By incorporating the rest of these tips, a company will benefit from a reputation of good customer service to the level of customer trust that inspires long-term loyalty. Between repeat business and word of mouth, loyal customers are the best resource a business can hope for.

5 Tips for Providing Great Customer Service Via Email

Email has become the most ubiquitous and basic of business tools. Likely to be the first thing someone checks when starting the workday, email is now the primary method for business communication. As such, it’s imperative that a business think through the role email plays in customer service.

There are many benefits to employing email as a customer service tool, but certain risks and weaknesses as well. Most people have experienced the embarrassment of a thoughtless typo or an email whose tone was misconstrued by the recipient. Create a set of rules for email conduct that all customer service representatives are expected to follow to avoid some of the most basic email errors. Include guidelines that may seem like common sense, such as never using profanity, along with less obvious suggestions like avoiding jokes, or anything at all political. Train employees in the company’s preferred tone for use in written correspondence.

Always proofread. No email should be sent without being read over first. Typos are embarrassing, unprofessional and, in especially egregious cases, can obscure meaning. Proofreading ensures each email possesses the clarity and professionalism that shows the company in the right light. If a customer service representative doesn’t take the time for such a basic task, it sends a message to customers that they and their concerns are unimportant to the company.

As people are busy and time is one of the most valuable commodities there is, make the point you need to in the fewest words possible. Needlessly lengthy emails are likely to be only partially read or skimmed, causing important information to be overlooked. If the issue being addressed is especially complicated, determine whether a phone call would be a better approach rather than a long email.  Then follow-up after the call with an email summary of the phone conversation (in case of complex instructions, etc).

While a reply doesn’t need to be immediate, the goal for every customer service email should be to respond within a business day. This shows that the customer service representative is attentive, and helps prevent letting an issue drop off the radar. For problems that take longer to resolve, requesting customers to create a ticket in Mojo Helpdesk is an easy way to ensure that the issue will stay visible to the assigned representative until it’s solved.

To make providing customer service with email easier on representatives, create template responses to the most common customer issues. Chances are, the company encounters certain questions or problems with more frequency than others. By working out the best response to each of these frequently asked questions, and offering them to representatives in an easy to access space, such as the Helpdesk, the company can be sure that representatives provide the preferred proof-read responses and cut down on the time required to respond to many customer service issues.

As with any customer service tool, email can be used effectively or detrimentally. By implementing the proper process to ensure tone and avoid typos, and with encouragement to have your customer service team take the time to mindfully and carefully review correspondences before sending, basic email blunders can be easily avoided.

Would you like to try our free, hosted ticket tracking/helpdesk application? No long-term contracts, signup fees, or termination fees. You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel anytime. We offer a wide variety of plans to fit any budget.

Emphasize Customer Satisfaction Over Average Handle Time

Efficiency is a common buzz word in business, regarded by many as the most important metric for improving business practices. Unfortunately, what efficiency means and how to best measure the efficiency of your staff aren’t always easy to calculate. In customer service, it’s tempting to measure efficiency through factors that are easiest to quantify, such average handle time, but this approach misses the primary goal of customer service. Achieving customer satisfaction should be the number one focus of every customer service interaction. A faster handle time might look good on paper, but could come at the cost of customer experience.

In a business climate that emphasizes efficiency, a customer service department may be put in the difficult position of determining the best way to balance effective, considerate customer service with the expectations of reduced call times. There are methods to provide convincing data that the department is working towards greater efficiency, without sacrificing the more important goal of customer satisfaction.

If a call can be handled quickly and effectively it should be. Everyone’s time is valuable and the customer most likely is hoping for a fast resolution as well. That said, some issues necessarily take longer to resolve than others. For the sake of reporting, distinguish between simpler, standard customer tickets and the more complex customer inquiries that require more than a quick answer. This will give a more accurate sense of how long different types of issues take to resolve.

If performing an analysis of the customer support team that takes average handle time into consideration, make sure that customer ratings, feedback and the types of customer issues being handled are viewed alongside the handle times. The amount of time to solve a customer's problem is only one small piece of the larger picture and should never be treated as the most important factor in a customer service job.

If there’s still pressure to cut down on handle times after taking these other factors into account, work with the staff to develop methods for doing so that won’t impede the customer service process. Initiate a discussion in the next group meeting about some of the causes of longer call times. Evaluate as a group, which causes are valuable to the customer service experience and which could be handled better. Work together to create a document with the best responses to the most common issues to provide a reference for representatives to consult when needed.

Use the data from Mojo Helpdesk to identify those in the department that are best at resolving customer tickets quickly, while consistently receiving high ratings from customers. Encourage them to work with other team members to offer ideas for improving average handle time. If there’s a team member or two with especially long issue resolution times, have them shadow the top performing team members for a day to develop some ideas for resolving customer issues more quickly.

A blanket discouragement against longer handle times could result in worse customer service, so instead encourage team members to rethink ways to resolve customer issues that emphasize efficiency, while never losing sight of customer satisfaction as the top priority. If there’s pushback from outside the department, point out that good customer service can lead to positive reviews online and repeat business that far outweigh the time saved by pushing for shorter resolution times.

Would you like to try our free, hosted ticket tracking/helpdesk application? No long-term contracts, signup fees, or termination fees. You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel anytime. We offer a wide variety of plans to fit any budget.

Brand Your Helpdesk, Improve Customer Experience

Branding might seem a concept that falls more into the realm of marketing than customer service, but smart business people know that the two are highly interrelated. The main goals of a helpdesk are to bring greater efficiency to the customer support process and improve the quality of each customer service experience, but Mojo Helpdesk offers the added benefit of customization options to help ensure that the exceptional customer service offered is consistently tied into the company’s brand in the minds of customers.

Any business that has invested in the proper resources and training to provide outstanding customer service should be eager to make sure that those positive customer service experiences are associated with the company at every step. By incorporating company branding into the helpdesk, customers are regularly reminded of the company while working with the customer service representative, and will therefore be more likely to recall their positive customer support experiences when it comes time to consider future purchases.

Helpdesk branding also provides regular customers extra confidence that their problem will be resolved, when the company's customer support carries the same branded seal of approval as the products they already know and love. As more and more larger businesses outsource their customer service to companies with little actual connection to the business and products they represent, providing an explicit visual connection between the customer service experience and the company can make a huge difference in ensuring that the customer has a positive experience.

There are several simple options available to more clearly tie a company’s brand to the customer experience in Mojo Helpdesk: 

• All Mojo Helpdesk customers receive a branded URL to direct users to the helpdesk (http://yourbrand.mojohelpdesk.com)
• Include one or more links back to your website in the main customer portal. Providing a link to an FAQ’s page could help customers find the answers they need before submitting a ticket. As an added benefit, this will increase your website’s SEO
•  Add the company logo on the customer portal mainpage
• Customize the copy included in the portal mainpage and the e-mails sent from within the helpdesk to add your company’s unique voice and writing style that your customers are already familiar with 

In addition to these simple branding options, the customer portal mainpage is also fully customizable with HTML.  Any company with an html savvy designer can get creative in finding new ways to incorporate branding and other relevant information into this space.  Use it to keep customers up to date on company and product news, current promotions, marketing materials like videos or whitepapers, and anything else a current customer might find valuable. 

Business owners and managers should always be on the lookout for ways to make the most out of the resources at a company’s disposal. Mojo Helpdesk makes it easy to use a tool designed for improving customer service to also further the company’s brand.

Would you like to try our free, hosted ticket tracking/helpdesk application? No long-term contracts, signup fees, or termination fees. You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel anytime. We offer a wide variety of plans to fit any budget.