6 traits of good customer service department!

1. Availability!

Do you know companies whose customer service is not open at the times you want to contact them? 1 of the characteristics of good customer service is that it is available at the times when your (potential) customers need you. Most people still work during the day and yet there are plenty of companies that are available from 09:00 to 12:00 and from 13:00 to 16:00. No joke! A good customer service company looks at its customers and tailors its opening hours to their lives. So you need to be available at the times your customer wants to call you. Even in the evenings and weekends! Ideally, you tailor your availability to your customer's needs. So you should ask them. Of course, a bit of logical thinking is also possible. I would like to be able to call the dentist at lunchtime, for instance. If I'm filling my basket at an evening shop, I like it if they can be reached at that time in case the payment goes wrong. Not that I will necessarily call right away, it gives me a sense of confidence if they are available. So availability, very important. Not even so much because customers want to get in touch any time. Even more so because being available conveys that you understand your customer. A garden plant shop that is not available on Saturday morning or a bed supplier that closes its customer service at 16:30 obviously don't quite get it. But a GP who is available from 08:00 to 18:00 or a clothing shop that you can call until 21:30 do...

2. Accessibility!

This is slightly different from availability. An available customer service may not always be available while an unavailable customer service may never be available. Thought-provoking but true. Reachability is 2-fold:

1. Reachable via the channels relevant to your customer. Offering a contact form on the website is different from making a phone number, chat, e-mail and a contact form available. In that case, reachability is about actually being able to reach customer service through a channel that is convenient, convenient or possible for you.
2. Reachable in the sense of long queues is the second form of reachability. You can be available (1), reachable (2.a.) but still be unreachable (2.b). For example, if a customer has to wait for 90 minutes. Or if the connection is very bad. Then you are not properly reachable, your customers can contact you, but you are not reachable.

Reachability is 1 of the important features of good customer service!

3. Continuity

A customer service department must have a certain level of thoroughness. Boldness to make sure you understand things quickly and can translate quickly into solutions. For this too, there are actually 2 different forms:

1. External incisiveness. This is understanding customer demand quickly. An incisive customer service team quickly figures out customer queries, making conversations fluid and easy. By asking the right questions, customers are understood and helped faster, as well as more completely.
2. Internal incisiveness. As a customer service representative, you will have to deal with other internal departments. Internal incisiveness is about understanding these departments and understanding their practices, interests and processes. This will make it easier for you to answer internal questions and put the information you get from these departments to good use in customer service. For example, answering questions about invoices is a lot easier if you understand the invoicing process.

4. Responsibility

Sometimes features of good customer service look like very basic success factors. As we have often described, customer service gets a lot of problems that they do not cause themselves. Things go wrong somewhere else in the organisation, which is why customers contact customer service. Good customer service takes responsibility for this. In practice, we often see problems being placed somewhere else in the organisation. That does not help the customer. Just like processes that run across all kinds of departments, the customer doesn't care. Logical. You contact customer service and expect them to take responsibility for your problem.

5. Communication skills.

Attributes of good customer service, then communication skills cannot remain named. Nitty-gritty deadpan, of course, which is why we will make it concrete. We often see good use of language and the ability to express oneself well as communicative skills. Someone who has a good story and can put everything into words well, we classify as having communication skills. ERROR! Communication starts with listening, otherwise we just call it sending. If you are communicatively skilled as a customer service representative, you first listen to your customers. You need to understand who they are and what they are up against. You can only start looking for a solution when the problem is clear. Assume that your customer wants to ask you something and wants something from you. Listen and ask to get the problem completely clear. If the question is completely clear and you can then articulate the answer well and even anticipate any follow-up questions, then yes, you are communicatively proficient.

6. Part of the organisation.

Customer service is still often seen as a necessary evil. A department that is not taken too seriously and is cut back on if possible. Good customer service ensures that they are connected internally. That they are part of the organisation and that other departments value customer service. By demonstrating added value, you ensure that you are appreciated internally and are not seen as that nagging department where nothing ever goes right. The tricky thing is that in general, it is mainly the costs of customer service that are transparent, much less what it brings in. So make sure you can. With revenue, think of things like

1. Customer satisfaction, good customer service ensures higher customer satisfaction.
2. Sales, good customer service drives more sales. Both directly and indirectly.
3. Differentiation, better customer service as the competition is just a competitive advantage
4. Knowledge, customer service knows what is going wrong elsewhere in the organisation. That's gold for any organisation that wants to optimise and wants to constantly improve the customer experience