The Ultimate Guide to Customer Service

When it comes to customer service, are you crushing the competition? According to Microsoft, 96% of consumers say customer service is an important factor when choosing between brands. In this ultimate guide to customer service, we’ll provide you with the information and inspiration you need to push your customer service offering higher.

What Is Customer Service?

Before we dive deeper into the ins and outs of customer service, we’ll need to define exactly what it means. Lots of people have a tendency to use customer service, customer support, and customer success interchangeably. But that usage isn’t quite right.

Let’s take a look at the definition of those three areas, in order to really see how customer service is entirely unique.

Customer Service

Doesn’t it feel great to go to a restaurant and receive speedy, attentive service? We love to be whisked to our table and given relevant information about the freshest food and best meals on offer. Great customer service involves preempting customer queries and taking the initiative to address issues before they arise.

Great customer service can help companies ameliorate the purchasing process and take care of customers immediately after they’ve made a purchase. Immaculate customer service can boost conversion rates and leave a great impression.

A great example of customer service? Posting timely service updates as they arise. Take a look at this great tweet from Adobe, which kindly alerts its users about a temporary outage:

Hi all, some Adobe services are down due to the AWS outage: https://t.co/U2qtybaT8J Here’s a puppy stampede to take your mind off of it. 😍 pic.twitter.com/Glv6Anavje

— Adobe Customer Care (@AdobeCare) February 28, 2017

Customer Success

Customer success differs from customer service, in that it’s all about working alongside your customer to meet their long-term goals. Your customer-success team will spend their time anticipating the needs of your customers, then reaching out to make suggestions or introduce new product features.

Proactive, informed customer success teams can upsell and cross-sell new products or services that boost your bottom line.

Customer Support

As the name suggests, customer support is all about providing your customers with the assistance they require in times of need.

Whatever the nature of the product or service you offer, you’ll often find that your customers have common questions and issues. In those cases, they must be able to reach out to your customer-support team and get a swift, accurate resolution to their problems.

How to Build Your Customer Service Team and Provide Excellent Customer Service

Now that we have a better idea of what we mean by customer service, let’s take a closer look at the steps you can take to build a team and equip them for success.

1. Define Your Customer Service Philosophy.

Did you know that 33% of shoppers in the United States would consider switching companies after just one poor customer service experience?

That’s an incredible number.

It means that for every customer service failure you suffer, there’s a 33% chance you could lose a customer forever.

You clearly can’t afford to leave anything to chance. If you’re going to delight your potential and existing customers at every turn, your customer service team needs to stay on the same page. 

In other words, you’ll need to develop a strong customer service philosophy.

This company-wide mindset acts as a rallying call for all of your customer service team. It can also have a far-reaching impact on your business as a whole, so you’ll need to make sure you get it right.

There are five key steps you’ll need to follow to build a strong customer service philosophy:

1. Consider your buyer personas.

In other words, you’ll need to think about your buyer personas and existing customers, in order to gauge their expectations and preferences. This research phase ensures that you create the perfect foundation for your philosophy.

2. Identify customer service opportunities.

Next, you’ll want to think about the great customer service opportunities that are available to you. This tactic can help you capitalize on those opportunities and delight your customers.

3. Make a bold statement.

Now that you have a good idea of your philosophy, you’ll want to shape it as a bold statement, which should outline everything that makes your approach special and inspire your customers.

1. Share your philosophy.

Now that you have a philosophy, it’s time to share it far and wide. You should leverage this philosophy in your messaging and live it in every interaction you have.

1. Evolve your customer service philosophy.

Once you’ve created your philosophy, it’s important to keep a close eye on it and remain flexible. For instance, you might find it needs to be updated in light of new customers and internal changes.

Looking to dig deeper? We have an excellent piece for you that outlines ways to build your customer service philosophy, provides you with inspiring examples, and offers up a free template for a customer service philosophy statement.

2. Define Customer Service Goals and KPIs 

Once you have a great customer service philosophy, it’s important that you measure its efficacy. In other words, you’ll need to establish the right goals and track the appropriate KPIs, in order to gauge whether it’s effective.

Let’s dive into those two distinct areas now.

Goals

While crafting your customer service philosophy, you’ll naturally be hoping to fulfill certain goals. They might include qualitative statements, such as:

• We will always put the customer first.
• We will preempt customer needs, in order to deliver a seamless checkout experience.

These goals could also be more quantitative statements, such as:

• We will reduce the number of incoming customer queries by XX%.
• We will reduce cart abandonment by XX%.

Of course, you should try to make sure that these goals are SMART (sustainable, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely).

You should carefully assess your existing customer-service situation, in order to make sure your goals tick all those boxes.

KPIs

Once you have your goals in place, you’ll need to install the appropriate KPIs, in order to monitor your performance. These KPIs will often logically correspond with your goals, and they might include KPIs such as:

• Positive qualitative feedback
• Customer survey results
• Customer return rate
• Sales volume

Before you launch your customer service philosophy, you should create benchmarks. Then you’ll be better able to track your progress over time.

3. Pick Roles to Hire For.

Congratulations! You have the appropriate groundwork in place. Now that you’ve taken care of that, you’ll need to make sure you put together an appropriate and competent team that can execute your philosophy.

Every business will vary, in terms of its exact needs. You’ll need to carefully consider the philosophy you’ve put in place and exactly what you’re hoping to achieve.

Here’s a closer look at the key roles you’ll most likely want to hire for your customer service team:

Customer Service Representative

Your representatives will be on the frontlines of your customer service initiative. They’ll use their fantastic communication skills to proactively reach out to your customers. 

Customer Service Engineer

Your customer service engineers will use their computer literacy and engineering skills to offer up solutions to potential tech problems in advance. They’ll have an unparalleled amount of product knowledge and understand how your customers interact with your service.

Customer Service Supervisor

These supervisors apply their impressive interpersonal and leadership skills to guide customer service teams. Alongside other supervisors, they collaborate to guide the team to success, and they make sure any conflicts are quickly resolved.

Customer Service Manager

The customer service manager will oversee the entire customer service team. They’ll call on their experience and flawless communication skills, in order to train new team members, handle conflicts, and track the performance of their teams.

4. 10 Interview Questions to Ask

Now that you’ve identified the roles you need, you’ll have to master the recruitment process. You’ll look for a lot of key indicators, such as:

• Experience
• Personality
• Skills
• Technical abilities

You’ll also need to make the most of the interview process, in order to surface the most equipped candidates for your customer service team. Here’s a closer look at ten excellent customer service interview questions you can use.

1. What does customer service mean to you?

While this question may seem obvious, it will give you a good idea of what your candidate believes about customer service. It’s a great opportunity to see whether the candidate is aligned with your own customer service philosophy.

2. What are your personal career goals?

This question is tough, but it should give you a great idea of the way your candidate speaks, as well as their level of authenticity. You should look out for an honest response and assess whether it fits with your company.

3. What was your most difficult customer-service case?

You’ll need to find out what your customer service candidate is made of, and whether he or she can handle stressful situations. His or her answer will also give a good indication as to whether he or she is tactful.

4. Do you think empathy is important for customer service?

Empathy is at the core of great customer service. So you should pay close attention to what your candidate says about empathy and its role within a customer service team.

5. What do you like about this role?

It’s always good to know whether your candidate has studied the role and your company. This question gives you a great way to assess his or her understanding. 

6. Have you ever bent the rules when helping a customer?

Customer service professionals have to regularly make tough calls. They should do whatever they can to retain a customer—within limits. So you should find out whether the candidate’s philosophy matches your own.

7. How would you define poor customer service?

It’s often simple to paint a picture of excellent customer service, but you should also check whether your candidate has an opinion about poor customer service. This definition will give you a good idea of his or her philosophy.

8. Have you ever had to say no to a customer?

While customer service professionals will naturally do everything they can to appease your customers, they’ll need to say no sometimes. This answer should show you whether your candidate knows how to tactfully refuse a request.

9. Do you enjoy working on a team?

Customer service teams must work close together and fluidly share information. You can’t afford to have a lone wolf on your team. You should ask this question and see whether your candidate has the appropriate teamwork mindset.

10. Do you have an example of excellent customer service?

You should ask this question to get a better picture of what your candidate aspires to offer. His or her answer will give you a good idea of what he or she values in customer service and what he or she hopes to deliver to you.

5. Customer Service Skills to Look For

While the answers to those questions will give you a good idea of what your candidate believes, you’ll also need to know what to look out for, in terms of customer service skills.

Here’s a look at some of the key skills you’ll want to watch for.

Attention to detail

Your customer service team members have to make every single interaction count. They should have a strong appreciation for the importance of detail and use that ability to offer detail-oriented service that’s genuinely useful to your customers.

Empathy

When it comes to customer service, empathy is an essential skill. Your customer service professionals should use their empathy to preempt the needs of your customers and understand their expectations and needs.

Technical aptitude

Your customer service professionals must understand how to make the most of your software stack. They’ll need to have the appropriate technical abilities, in order to make the most of your tools and navigate them with confidence.

If you want to dig deeper into popular customer service skills, be sure to read our piece on the subject. In this piece, we look at the customer service skills big tech companies are looking for. We also provide a number of resources you can share with your team.

6. Train Your Team: 5 Powerful Customer Service Training Resources

Now that you have the right team members, you’ll want to take care of their professional development and challenge them to be the best they can be.

Here’s a look at five excellent customer service training resources you can use to level-up your team members and show them you care about their professional development.

1. Toastmasters International

It’s critical to make sure your customer service professionals are able to communicate clearly and comfortably. If you feel like your team members might appreciate it, you might want to recommend that they join a Toastmasters International club.

When it comes to communication, these clubs are excellent training resources. Your team members will be able to access a number of important resources and harness their own speaking potential.

2. Fundamentals of IT

If your customer service team requires a solid level of IT knowledge, you might want to learn the complete fundamentals of IT course from Google. This course covers the basics of IT, and it can help your team speak with confidence.

This training resource will also help your team members build a foundation for future technical learning.

3. 74 Tips on How to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better

There’s a good chance that your customer service team members will need to constantly improve their knowledge. For instance, they might have to learn about certain technologies or details about your complex product.

If you want to give your team members the edge, you might want to share these 74 tips on how to learn faster, deeper, and better. They can help your team members acquire and retain new knowledge at an excellent pace.

4. The Ultimate Guide to the Best Business Podcasts

It’s important for your customer service professionals to understand their roles in your business and the needs of the profiles they’ll help. Podcasts are more popular than ever, and they’re great resources for your team members to use to elevate their business acumen.

If you want to inspire your customer service professionals to grow their knowledge, you might want to share this ultimate guide to the best business podcasts from Fortune.

Alternatively, you can also consider outsourcing customer support and hiring a company to do so.

5 Great Customer Service Examples (and What to Learn From Them)

Now that you’re ready for customer service success, let’s take a closer look at some standout examples of customer service, including everything you can learn from them.

1. Personalization: Spotify’s 2019 Wrapped

Spotify delighted its users around the world with its amazing “2019 Wrapped” campaign. This exciting campaign collated the listening habits of users and packaged it in an interesting and attractive form.

They sent each user a personalized email, and the whole campaign helped create a sense that Spotify is close to each user. It was also genuinely interesting, and it provided value for each customer—before they even knew they needed it.

While this tactic may seem like a marketing initiative, it’s a great reminder that an interesting overlap exists between marketing and customer service. If you can reach out and provide genuine value to your customer, you should do so.

Lessons learned

This fun and imaginative campaign shows that you should constantly be on the lookout for new ways to leverage relationships and delight your customers via excellent customer service.

If you offer a service, perhaps you could march to the beat of Spotify’s drum and consider sending out similar roundups or updates. These emails also help demonstrate just how useful your product is to your customer.

2. Behavior Analysis: Amazon

Amazon regularly sends out emails to its users, based on their browsing and purchase histories. While these emails could appear to be nothing more than random adverts, they include data-backed recommendations that genuinely drive value to customers.

These emails demonstrate that Amazon cares about its customers and understands their needs. Many Amazon shoppers will appreciate these reminders, and they’ll often make purchases after they receive this type of email.

This initiative is a great example of the way Amazon makes the most of content correlation and data around user habits. It leverages that information to make relevant and genuinely useful recommendations to its customers.

Lessons learned

Are you able to make the most of content correlation and recommendation algorithms, in order to make suggestions to your users?

Let’s imagine that you offer a cloud-based design solution that your users can use within their browser. For instance, could you automatically dispatch an email with a special offer when they reach a certain number of designs?

These initiatives demonstrate that you care for your customer, and that you want them to have the best experience possible with your product or service. And if they arrive at the right time, your customers will be even more impressed.

3. Create Conversation: Voltage

Chatbots have opened up lots of interesting avenues for customer service departments. Now those teams can make good use of those tools, in order to offer round-the-clock service and preempt the needs of customers in a charming way.

Voltage is a creative agency that shows how chatbots can offer genuinely useful interactions. The prompts and text are loaded with character, and users will be able to quickly find out more about the business and access the information they need.

Lessons learned

Chatbots have changed the nature of customer service, and you should be sure to make good use of them. If you manage to blend character into the mix, too, you’ll be able to instigate interesting conversations with your customers.

So you should carefully consider the way chatbots can help you meet your distinct customer service goals. If you thoroughly ponder research providers and think strategically, you’ll be sure to unlock the full potential of chatbots.

4. Usage Reminders: Apple

If you offer a cloud-based service, you might find that your customers will hit certain usage or storage limits. In those instances, you’ll want to make sure you offer your customers a timely and clear update.

For instance, take a look at Apple. This tech giant uses automation to dispatch those updates when its users reach their iCloud storage limits. This automation is very useful to its users, and it’s a fantastic opportunity for Apple to upsell its higher storage limits.

The above email is a great example of considerate customer service. It’s straight to the point, and each line contains a piece of key information. And it respects the time of its recipients and delivers useful information.

Lessons learned

Looking at Apple’s example, we can clearly see the benefit of proactive customer service. It’s also clear that Apple’s intervention is successful because it’s so direct and clear.

If you offer a system that has usage and storage limits, you might want to take a similar approach and draw some inspiration from Apple. For example, you could adopt their emails as templates and consider reviewing your automated update logic.

5. Membership Expiration: GoDaddy

If you offer a subscription service, you’ll need to make sure you provide your customers with regular updates. For instance, take a look at this update from GoDaddy.

This email is another great example of proactive customer service in action. The email arrives in a timely manner and preempts customer questions about the statuses of their subscriptions. It also provides actionable links, which makes life simple and convenient for customers.

Customers will also appreciate the transparency of their renewal. Rather than the subscription automatically renewing in the background, customers are given the opportunity to make a conscious decision.

Lessons learned

If you offer a subscription service to your customers, you’ll want to develop a strong strategy when the time comes to update them about the status of their subscription. Preemptive updates are great ways to upsell new products and keep your customers informed.

Again, you’ll want to develop a robust strategy that helps you make the most of the power of automation.

Best Customer Service Software

If you’re going to offer the best customer service possible, you’ll need to rely on the right suite of tools. Here’s a quick introduction to some of the most useful and prominent customer service software solutions out there.

Messagely

Messagely is a modern messaging platform that helps online businesses achieve growth and push revenues upward.

Key features

• Get all-in-one live chat, target messaging, and a team inbox solution.
• Build live chat bots in seconds.
• Engage customers via key channels.
• Offer best-in-class customer service.

Pros & Cons

+ Is intuitive and simple to use.

+ Drives productivity and results.

+ Offers comprehensive 24/7 support.

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LiveAgent

LiveAgent is omnichannel communication and help-desk software that helps businesses stay closer to their customers.

Key features

• Keeps all communication channels in one place.
• Improves desk support.
• Offers live chat options.

Pros & Cons

+ Boosts productivity.

+ Allows users to see order history and previous messages.

– Has a cluttered dashboard.

– Has a slightly outdated design.

– Is difficult to set up.

HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot Service Hub is live-chat software that empowers businesses to answer both customer and prospect questions in real-time.

Key features

• Third-party integrations
• Custom branding
• Geo-targeting

Pros & Cons

+ Flexible ticketing

+ Activity tracking

+ Round-the-clock support

– Some difficulty with ordering information

– A lack of visibility into chatbot conversations

Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a cloud-based helpdesk software that helps businesses provide world-class customer service across a number of channels.

Key features

• Interaction tracking
• Knowledge-base management
• Real-time chat

Pros & Cons

+ Simplicity during setup and use

+ A host of features at all levels 

+ A considerate UX

– A poor mobile application

– A somewhat outdated UI

– Slightly shallow field customization 

Jira Service Desk

Jira Service Desk is a modern service-desk solution that helps companies consolidate communication and deliver great service.

Key features

• Document storage
• Interaction tracking
• Self-service portal

Pros & Cons

+ A clean, modern UI

+ Lots of default reports

+ Simplicity with customization

– It requires Jira knowledge.

– Some settings are confusing.

– Its range of support material is limited. 

HelpCrunch

HelpCrunch is a customer-communication platform that provides coverage for support, marketing, and sales.

Key features

• Offline forms
• Proactive chatting
• Visitor tracking

Pros & Cons

+ A strong mobile app

+ A modern and professional UI

+ Simple integration

– No shortcuts or templates

– A lack of widget-customization options

Zendesk

Zendesk is a popular customer service and engagement platform that helps companies lower costs, raise productivity, and increase customer satisfaction.

Key features

• Blended call center
• Escalation management
• Queue management

Pros & Cons

+ Reporting flexibility

+ A clean and satisfying UX

+ Lots of customization options

– UI that takes some getting used to

– Some confusion when closing tickets

Intercom

Intercom is a modern messaging platform that helps businesses build better relationships with scalable messaging. 

Key features

• Appointment management
• Knowledge base
• Live chat

Pros & Cons

+ Great customer success team

+ Lots of customer support automation

+ Lots of integration options

– A somewhat outdated UI/UX

– Confusion when collating messages

– A knowledge base that can be difficult to navigate

Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is a piece of context-aware customer service software that helps businesses exclusively focus on their customers.

Key features

• Customizable branding
• Screen sharing
• Third-party integration

Pros & Cons

+ It’s simple to use.

+ It’s easy to track ticketing.

+ Its customer support is active.

– Tickets can’t be copied.

– It has issues with default email templates

– MessagelyIt has fewer features than its alternatives.

Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Service Cloud is a software solution for global call centers that runs in the cloud, in order to avoid infrastructure hassles and downtime.

Key features

• Blended call center
• Escalation management
• Call scripting and recording

Pros & Cons

+ It’s easy to use.

+ It offers a host of integrations.

+ It’s easy to manage relationships.

– It has limited customer support.

– Its updates and release notes can be confusing.

Most Important Customer Service Channels to Use

Now that we’re equipped with a better understanding of the key tools out there, let’s dig deeper into the key customer service channels you might want to use. We’ll take a look at both key categories: interactive and non-interactive.

Interactive

As the name suggests, interactive customer service channels offer an element of interactivity. Both your team members and customers can use these channels to initiate contact and share information.

Email

There are more than 3.9 billion active email users around the world, so there’s a good chance that this interactive communication channel will factor heavily into your customer service strategy.

You’ll be able to make good use of this channel, and it will help you keep your customers updated and in the loop about their products or subscriptions.

Social Networks

There are around 4 billion active users of social media. In other words, social networks are great places to share information and updates with your customers. A number of tools can help you schedule and share messages. So you can prepare for things like maintenance periods. 

Review Directories

While your customers try to decide whether to purchase your product or service, they’ll use a number of different information sources. For instance, they’ll visit your website, but they’ll also take a look at your profile on a number of review directories.

You can help make the lives of your customers much simpler by making sure that your profiles on those platforms are accurate and complete.

Here are some of the key review directories where you’ll want to appear:

• G2 Crowd
• Capterra
• GetApp
• TrustRadius
• Top Ten Reviews

Your customers can field questions and post their thoughts on those platforms. So it’s important for you to share timely and accurate responses.

Live Chat

Live chat has recently cemented itself as a customer service mainstay. Today, 30% of customers expect some live chat coverage on the websites they visit. If you use a powerful live chat tool, you’ll be able to delight your customers and give them the information they need when they need it.

Live chat is convenient for users, and it’s simple to offer 24-hour service. You can also collect a wealth of insightful data about your visitors.

Phone

Lots of customers still prefer to make the most of telephone communication. It’s a unique customer service channel, and it gives your customers the opportunity to interact with your agents in a smooth, satisfying way.

So you’ll need to adopt a powerful strategy and make sure your customers are able to get the phone support they need. In other words, you should provide your team members with the appropriate tools and training.

Forums

If your customers have a specific question or concern about your product or service, there’s a good chance they’ll turn to forums to find an answer. They might start their own threads, or they might decide to research previous entries.

Your customer service agents should carefully monitor key forums, in order to make sure they provide accurate and timely responses. Here are some of the most popular forums:

• Reddit
• Quora
• Stack Overflow
• Hacker News

You could also consider creating Google Alerts to monitor the web for mentions of your business.

Non-Interactive

It’s also very important for you to think about non-interactive customer service channels. Here’s a look at the key channels.

Knowledge Base

If you offer a somewhat technical product or service, your customers will expect to be able to find information within a well-organized knowledge base. You simply can’t expect your customers to make contact whenever they have a question.

A knowledgebase can delight your customers, and it can take some of the strain away from your customer service team.

Conclusion

We hope you’ve found this piece to be useful. Our wish it that it will become a key resource while you build a wildly successful customer service team. If your customer service initiative is going to succeed, you’ll need a modern messaging platform. So start your free 14-day Messagely trial today.