Overcoming Customer Service Challenges

From Challenging Customers to Email Overwhelm: Customer Service Best

Practices for Craft Businesses

with Stacey Trock

When a customer walks into a brick-and-mortar, a shop owner smiles, says hi and gently inquires if the customer needs any help. But in today's digitally-driven world, the perfect welcome-procedure isn't so obvious. Between checking facebook messages, replying to tweets and battling your email inbox, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by customers service demands with no time left for doing what you love... working on your product!

Our goal is to give every online customer that “hi, how can I help you?” feeling, while:

• Still having time to run our business

• NOT encouraging excessive neediness or customer service dependencies

In this webinar, we’ll cover:

• The number 1 rule that should guide your customer service strategy

• Minimize customer service questions – Guiding the customer’s path – Disabling contact mechanisms – Creating FAQs & Product listings to minimize

questions

• Systems for managing influx of customer service • How to manage difficult customers • When to fire a customer… it’s rare!

Why customer service?

• Customers can’t touch product or talk to a real person for an online business. Need to build trust to close the transaction.

• Social media/review component. People are talking about your shop as if on a megaphone. Make it good!

• YOU have an advantage because you are small! (really!)

The #1 Rule: reply to customers (nicely)

• Even if the customer doesn’t email you directly

• Without direction, a customer doesn’t know the best way to contact you and so they’ll pick their fave way.

• If you miss a message, you may lose a sale or worse, generate bad vibes

• It is imperative to have a system to reply to messages everywhere you can receive messages

Not replying is a missed opportunity.

Customers ask questions in (unrelated) comments!

How do you monitor all of these places that customers might be talking to you? And reply?

• Minimize customer service questions

– Guiding the customer’s path

– Disabling contact mechanisms

– Creating FAQs & Product listings to minimize questions

A snapshot of the overwhelm

Can the customer… Post? Comment? Message privately?

Managing these is on top of your obligation to post/add new content!

http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Email-Statistics-Report-2015-2019-Executive-Summary.pdf

Average business 122 emails a day!1

How do you want people to connect with you?

• Do you want to accept customer support over twitter? Consider ramifications. Where are you when you get tweets?

• Every time you reply, you are reinforcing behavior.

My policy

• I can only handle customer service inquiries over email. It’s the only place I have access to shipping information and can guarantee I’m in the headspace to reply.

• Every message I get somewhere else (within reason), I reply “please send an email to…” (it’s that reinforcing!)

• I handle ‘easy’ questions on social media and reply conversationally.

Guide the Customer Path

It is your job to tell the customer how it is best to interact with you.

Disable Interactions

Disable Interactions

Set notifications

If you can’t reliably check a site frequently for messages, set notifications so that items you can’t disable send you a notification you will look at.

Can the customer… Post? Comment? Message privately?

Streamline by eliminating connection methods, and limiting notification mechanisms

Sends an email notification

Stop it before it starts: FAQs/info available

• If your customer can’t find an answer in 10 seconds, they will contact you (okay, I made that

number up, but close)

• Note: a tweet from 3 weeks ago doesn’t count.

Stop it before it starts: Making information available

• FAQs

• Blog Posts/Tutorials

• Product Listings

Once you have these in place, point people to them!

This is a strategy. Once every question becomes public, you can reuse answers. Also helps SEO.

FAQs

Tutorials

Tutorials

Product Listings

Product Listings

Product Listings/FAQs

Once they’re there, use them!

• Email reply, “Please see here for a full list of FAQs. In answer to your question…”

• Attempt to encourage users to look a bit themselves, or at least shorten your responses.

• Include in an autoreply (more on that, later!)

• Now, you should be getting a limited number of notifications (although it takes a ‘training’ period if you have customers used to getting free 1-on-1 help)

Creating systems for customer service

• Schedule replies as a part of your work day

• Create a ‘standard replies’ template

• Consider auto-replies

• Maybe hire help

Creating systems for customer service: Your schedule

• Making it a part of your routine (daily, if possible. Every 2 days if that works for you)

• 1- touch email. Means putting an item into a to-do list or ‘putting it in someone else’s court’ immediately.

• How will you handle social media? I get notifications on my phone and handle multiple x per day (but remember, these are ‘easy’!)

Segment emails

• If emails are giving you a heart attack, consider segmenting them from your ‘real’ email (for example info@yourname.com)

• This allows you to handle customer emails at a certain time separate from ‘thoughtful’ emails

Create a ‘standard replies’ template

This is something you can cut-and-paste from as replies to frequently asked questions.

Mechanisms:

• text expander

• drafts

• templates

Autoreplies

• Depending on your business, you may want to have an autoreply up all the time “Thank you for your email! I spend most of my days sewing, so it usually takes at least 48 hours for me to reply to your email. [insert links to FAQs & popular tutorials]

• I save mine for workdays I’m away more than one day

Know the end of your service

• Especially if you deal in the world of tutorials, you may get endless requests for teaching. Consider what you’re willing to provide.

• Chance to upsell to a class.

• Usually linking to tutorials gives the impression you aren’t providing personalized help.

• Or ‘can you clarify exactly what you’re having trouble with?’ for those who just ‘need help’

Hire help?

• You can hire out email answering, forums management, social media… might be worth it if your business requires it or it’s not worth your energy.

• Help desk software: http://craftindustryalliance.org/customer-support-beyond-email-affordable-help-desk-chat-software-small-business/

Handling difficult customers

• Types of difficult customers

• Strategies for handling them

• When to fire

Types of Difficult Customers

• There are two kinds of difficult customers: ones who have problems and are raging on you for no reason and ones who have identified a real problem/tough spot for your shop and are expressing their dislike inappropriately.

• We want to distinguish between bad customers and challenging customers.

Types of Difficult Customers

• A bad customer ruins their yarn and tries to exchange it, lying about what happened. They are rude or abusive. They make unreasonable demands. A challenging customer wants an angora/mink/merino blend in lime green and needs it in a week. And complains about your shop’s lack of selection.

• Bad customers take up your time and energy for very little return. They prevent you from giving your good customers (the other 99%) your time and attention.

Types of Difficult Customers

• A challenging customer is usually a strong personality, and can often become a very loyal customer if treated with good customer service. And if they are pointing out a legitimate problem with your shop, then the chances are that many more people feel the same way, but haven’t said anything.

Why bother?

From GrooveHQ: https://www.groovehq.com/support/how-to-fire-a-bad-customer

Handling difficult customers: Overall strategy

• Create calm and make difficult customers happy. They may become your most loyal! And they may have identified a real problem.

• Make bad customers content enough and try to minimize your contact

• You catch more flies with honey than vinegar

Handling difficult customers: Overall strategy

• We’re going to give everyone the ‘maybe they’re having a bad day’ pass the first time.

Handling difficult customers: Overall strategy

Running a customer service company.

Handling difficult customers

http://craftindustryalliance.org/using-non-violent-communication-and-conflict-resolution-strategies-to-talk-to-unhappy-customers/

Handling difficult customers

Step 1: Listen Well Listening to a customer patiently and calmly can go

a long way to diffuse ill feelings. Listening well means:

• listening without interruption • keeping eye contact, sitting up straight. Keeping

arms uncrossed • asking questions to clarify • summarizing the problem when the person is

finished talking

Handling difficult customers

Step 2: Procedure for replying (in person and in email)

Steps for non-violent communication (from Marshall Rosenberg)

• Observe: the yarn wasn’t the color you wanted

• Feelings: that sucks, you want the perfect color of yarn

• Acknowledge their Needs: I know you need this quickly

• Respond to their Request: making the step to fix the problem. I can ship it to you tomorrow.

Handling difficult customers

Remember that what happens in email doesn’t go away!

Handling difficult customers

• Responding effectively often means putting aside your personal feelings. Yes, it hurts that someone is accusing you of something mean. But it’s usually not the time to correct a person’s world view. Or even to fully explain the situation.

• One helpful trick is to pretend you’re your own employee. What would you want me you say? How would the “owner” want their company represented?

Handling difficult customers

• Once the customer has responded, ask, “now that we’re here, what can I do to make it right?”

• Part of replying effectively is deciding (preferably in advance) what compromises/concessions you are willing to make for your customers. Will you make refunds in certain cases? Do you give away freebies? Note that these do not need to be your public store policy.

Case study, gone wrong

What should be done: Observe, Feelings, Needs, Respond. What I should have said: You want to cancel your kit subscription and you’re having trouble logging into the website. That’s a very frustrating experience, especially since you’ve already tried multiple times! I understand you would like your subscription cancelled right away. I’ve already gone ahead and canceled it. Thank you so much! Well, that’s not what I did. Here is my reply. In my reply, you can tell I was trying to defend my reputation (because of her claim that I didn’t answer her previous email.) And, instead of just cancelling the membership, I asked her to forward her documentation (which, actually, is usually a fine course of action).

Case study, gone wrong

At this point, it’s abundantly clear that the customer has technological trouble, and I need to bump up my efforts to help out. I did cancel her subscription (the ‘respond’ portion), but I haven’t given up on trying to explain what went wrong.

Case study, gone wrong

Done Correctly

Check the date, I was on Christmas vacation. And she’s asking something that’s explained in the FAQ. I was very tempted to tell her to go read it with no additional help. But, I considered that it took less than a minute to just solve the issue, and since she was leaving, the effort of ‘training’ the customer wasn’t worth it.

Done Correctly

Done Correctly

Canned Replies

• Remind yourself that even if the core issue is about your shop, the anger has nothing to do with you. For example, the fact that your shop doesn’t offer parking is a problem. The fact that someone is yelling at you about the lack of parking is a result of that person’s own issues. It has nothing to do with you.

• Think of a challenging customer as a gift. Thank the person for their insight. Think about whether there is something you can change. Take the issue to your staff meeting (see the employee handbook section). If a change happens, reconnect with the customer.

Firing a customer

• Everyone has a bad day. And although it’s hard to, we should excuse someone who has a one-time flip-out. However, if there is a customer who consistently creates problems, you may need to fire them.

• Only you can weigh the value the customer brings to your shop against the cost in time and energy.

Firing a customer

• Steps:

– Say something positive first.

– Reframe the situation.

– Make it right with the customer.

– Suggest an alternative.

Firing a customer: examples

• “Thank you so much for your feedback. I think we’re just not able to provide you with the service you’re looking for.”

• “Thanks for coming by. Supplying [that yarn/service] is beyond what we can offer. You might want to try looking online.”

• “Thanks so much for trying out a class. Unfortunately, we’re unable to offer the class that’s exactly right for what you need. I’m happy to give you a full refund on the class you took.”

• “We really appreciate you buying your yarn here. I understand that you need a lot of additional help with your knitting, but unfortunately, we’re not able to provide knitting help at the level that you need. We have the names of some great private knitting instructors.”

Firing a customer

• How you state the alternative should give the customer a clear idea on their next course of action. For a chronically bad customer (someone who is overly demanding or abusive), you may need to be very firm. In this case, a blanket, “I’m sorry that it doesn’t seem our shop is a good fit for your needs.” might be called for.

• Pretend everything you say is broadcast on a megaphone, because it very well may be on social media.

Does that all seem manageable? Ready to tackle those customer service inquiries?

In short: • Tell your customer how to contact you • Create content that you can refer to in order to shorten your replies • Make systems for replying and get help if you need it • Give your customers the honey!

How to monitor your shop’s online profile

There may be oodles of customers talking about your shop online… but you won’t know about it (and can’t effectively respond) unless you see it!

• You should regularly monitor social media for mentions of your shop, and respond to the techniques we’ve discussed above.

• Google: google.com/mybusiness Create an account, add to maps, enter info. • You can set up a Google Alert, which will notify you when your business name is mentioned:

https://www.google.com/alerts (be cautious if you have a very common shop name) • Yelp: www.biz.yelp.com. “Claim” your business and create an account. Responding to reviews is

free, you can do ads with a fee. • You can get a Yelp sticker. Even get “People love us on yelp” if you are awesome enough. • Facebook has reviews. You need to be a ‘local business’. Page needs to be verified. go to general

then, there is a category review - edit 'anyone to be able to review my page'. Then go manage tabs, and add the tab called reviews.

• Twitter: search your shop name as well as hashtags. • Instagram: search your shop’s location, name and hashtags • Foursquare: http://business.foursquare.com/ • Ravelry: Search to see if your shop is added: http://www.ravelry.com/shops If not, add it:

http://www.ravelry.com/shop_wizard No review capability is there, yet. • If you see a negative review, address it publicly and in a timely fashion if possible. A less-than-

perfect review is okay! And in fact, seems more authentic.