The 10 most common customer service mistakes? Read what often goes wrong here.

1. Moderate, poor or even inaccessible:

Long wait times first, of course. A common mistake is not to be easily accessible. Not regularly checking and managing reachability. We still see companies every day that actually have no idea how reachable they actually are,

2. Weird opening hours:

opening hours like for example from 09:30 to 12:30 and from 14:00 to 16:30. This is really out of date. People generally work and cannot always call customer service during their work. Tune your accessibility to your target audience and make sure you are available when they need you and not when you happen to be available.

3. Insufficient flexible capacity:

Every customer service has busy and quieter times. We often see that many organizations are not set up or can't handle that. They have too many people sitting around doing nothing when it is quiet and too few staff available when it is busy. The result is overcapacity and thus too high costs during quieter periods and long waiting times and dissatisfied customers during busy periods.

4. Moderate, poor or untrained staff:

A customer service representative must be well trained. He must be able to work quickly with systems and must know the products/services. Untrained staff creates irritation all the way through more technical or complex products or services.

5. Unfriendly staff:

Maybe not quite customer service specific but definitely counts. Staff who are not customer-friendly do not belong in customer service. Unfriendly staff creates irritation and can completely escalate a difficult conversation. Unfortunately, we often see that customer service does not have the most customer-friendly staff.... This even though it is the department where that is most important.

6. Not the right channels:

Target groups differ. It is important to adapt the channels through which you can be reached by your customers to their needs. One customer group wants to be able to contact you by phone and another wants to be able to chat. The mistake we often see is that needs are not inventoried but filled. Ask your customers what channels they need and set them up (properly).

7. Not listening to the customer:

Not quite customer service specific either. Most people barely listen but in customer service it is more or less your profession. First listen, ask questions and when you fully understand the customer's question seek an answer or solution. Unfortunately this happens too little and customer questions are not understood and half answered.

8. Inadequate or no follow-up:

If you promise to call back tomorrow, do so by tomorrow at the latest. If you make promises then keep them or better yet, exceed them. Create clear expectations and meet them. This prevents irritation and customers from contacting you again.

9. Lack of empathy:

customer service calls are often the result of something gone wrong. That doesn't penetrate many customer service representatives enough. You are there to solve the customer's problem, which requires empathy. You have to put yourself in the customer's shoes and not look at everything from the organization's point of view. That often happens and causes the customer service representative and the customer not to understand each other.

10. Insufficient solution orientation:

Customer satisfaction sometimes takes precedence over following rules etc. Sticking to processes and procedures and thus showing insufficient flexibility in seeking a solution.

Many of the mistakes we encounter in the real world are the result of not or not sufficiently adapting to the wishes and needs of the customer (=customer experience). Always start with the customer's needs and try to shape your customer service based on those needs, not the other way around. Do not design your customer service and expect your customers to adapt to it. We can help you do that!