Your customer service department is central to the success of your business because consumers only want to deal with companies that treat them well. The only problem is, it’s pretty expensive to maintain a well-staffed customer service department. Managing your spending is important if you want to keep your business going so cutting down on the amount that you’re putting into your customer service department is always sensible. If you think that you’re overspending, here are some simple ways to save money on customer service.
Hire the Right People
It’s no secret that efficiency saves money, that’s why hiring the right people in the first place is a good way to cut the cost of customer service. If you’ve got staff that are getting a lot done and the office is running smoothly, you won’t need to hire anywhere near as many people. But if you’ve got a load of staff that are only getting half the amount of work done each day, you’ll need to pay double the salaries. People often make the mistake of thinking that customer service jobs don’t require that much skill but they really do. Employees need to have good communication skills and know how to organise their time properly. They also need to have a certain type of personality because they’re likely to be dealing with rude, difficult customers from time to time. It’s important to know when the time is right to learn more about scaling your team and the services it offers to customers. Growth can be a challenge and it’s the customer that gets neglected if you can’t keep up.
Customer Service Help Desk Software
Like all areas of your business, you can use technology to improve your customer service and streamline things. If you use customer service help desk software, you can get things like live chat services. They’re perfect for saving money because, on the phone, your staff can only deal with one customer at a time. But on live chat, they can handle multiple cases at once, meaning they’re more efficient and you don’t need anywhere near as many staff. Head over to www.bpmonline.com/crm/help-desk for more information on how customer service help desk software could help you save money. By taking good advantage of technology, you make your staff more efficient and reduce the number of people you need to hire.
FAQ Pages
If you asked your customer service staff to give you a rundown of what they do with their day, they’ll usually tell you that a big chunk of that is spent answering the same questions. That’s wasted time and money every single day, but there’s an easy way around it. Create a good frequently asked questions page on your website (visit https://www.socialmediatoday.com for some tips). That way, customers can get online and find the information they need without having to call the customer service line. It’s more convenient for them and it helps your staff to use their time in more useful ways.
Adaptable Roles
The one thing that customers hate more than anything is being passed from department to department before they get a resolution. It also means you’ve got 3 or 4 people doing a job that a single employee could do on their own. If you make the roles adaptable and train staff to deal with a wide range of problems, instead of just passing them on to another person, you improve the customer experience and save money on staff at the same time.
If you can streamline your customer service department and cut down on staff, you can save yourself a lot of money.
Brent
August 18, 2018A hot topic you’ve chosen there, Mark! I couldn’t agree more with everything said on here, but to me, all of this seems common sense, especially if you’re a business selling to customers. Why then, do so many struggle with providing an excellent customer service experience.
Leigh
August 20, 2018I feel you may have opened up a can of worms here Mark!
Esme
August 22, 2018But Brent’s so right. It’s plain decency and common sense to place the best people for the job in this role, and yet I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve received excellent customer service.
Brent
August 22, 2018Unfortunately, Esme, not that many people have any such qualities.
Esme
August 23, 2018No, they don’t Brent, but they still end up being recruited for the role.
Leigh
August 24, 2018This is where managers should be doing a secret shopper test regularly.
Brent
August 24, 2018That is actually a worthwhile point Leigh.
Mark Streshinsky
August 26, 2018I agree, Leigh. How else can customer service reps be tested otherwise?