Common customer service issues and how to avoid them

Get an overview of the most common customer service issues that drive customers to your competitors.

Customer service is, in many ways, responsible for customer acquisition, retention, and loyalty of your clients. Making customer service easier and more effective should be a top priority for your company. After all, happy customers are returning customers, right?

Customer support can be a challenging job and frankly, providing excellent support to even the most difficult customers is something most companies aren’t doing. Because of this, navigating difficult conversations with ease can propel your company ahead of your competition.

One way to make sure customers stay happy is to avoid the common problems that customers experience when they contact your support team. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Customers’ frustrations with service may vary according to the industry and the business itself, but there are some basic principles and common customer service issues. We will look at a few of them in this blog.

The most common service issues and how to avoid them.

Not valuing customers’ time.

We’re living in an ever-changing world. In a few decades, we got used to having everyday tasks (like making a payment, checking our balance, ordering groceries, and scheduling an appointment) become easier and effortless. We just grab our phone, or a tablet, and go. Anyone wants to be kept waiting.

Customers demand the same level of convenience and speed for customer service. Easy interactions and quick resolution are today’s drivers of customer loyalty. Having an issue resolved upon first contact is ranked as the most important factor that determines the likelihood to do business with a company again.

An angry customer is only going to get angrier the longer it takes to resolve their issue, so it makes sense that speedy and efficient service is one of the fastest ways for a customer’s heart.

Quick tips to solve this customer service issue: 

• Make sure that ‌every customer gets the sense that their time is important to you. Have your support staff say something like, “I understand how frustrating this is, and I want to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. I know your time is valuable, so let’s get started right away.” Just be careful that, while your agents say things like this, it is personable and doesn’t sound like a script.
• Shorten hold times. Customers don’t like to be put on hold while the agent searches for information. Technology has a big impact on the time customers spend waiting for resolution and on the overall experience. Ease the access information process with knowledge bases and integrated business tools that automatically display comprehensive information. This way, your agents won’t have to dig to find the information they are looking for, and callers will no longer have to wait for them to do so.
• Find the solution without having to transfer. Customers don’t want to be shuffled from one support rep to another. A skills-based routing system ensures the most appropriate agent receives the call, while call barging allows the manager or supervisor to barge into the call to speak with both the agent and the caller. These basic changes can make a huge difference in the eyes of the customer.

Having to call again and again for the same reason.

Everyone knows this is annoying. Mistakes happen, so most customers understand when they need to contact customer support from time to time. However, if the problem persists or is recurring, there is clearly something wrong. Contacting the company for the same issue is a huge customer frustration and a major problem for customer satisfaction.

Quick tips to solve this customer service issue: 

• Identify the problem. Before you can solve it, you need to understand where the issue lies. Conduct customer surveys to understand why customers are reaching out to customer support more than once and their overall perception of the service.
• Help customers serve themselves. While some customers would still want to talk with a human agent, no matter how many self-service channels you provide, others will be more than happy to find a resolution to their queries on their own. Chatbots, virtual agents, and other AI-powered technologies help customers find solutions at their own pace and provide a wider variety of options on how issues can be resolved.
• Offer compensation. As a fellow consumer, we’re sure you can understand just how frustrating it is to contact a company over and over again for the same reason. One thing that can ease the pain is offering something to the customer to make up for it. Whatever seems like a fair solution, offer it. Do not wait for the customer to request it. Instead, once you identify that you have made the same mistake more than once with the same customer, have an action plan in place to help guide that disgruntled customer to customer satisfaction.

Rude customer support representatives.

Imagine being frustrated and having to deal with a rude agent over the phone—you’re likely to turn to a competitor next time, right? That’s because the customer support agent’s job is to serve the customer, and customers have zero tolerance for agents being rude. While it may not be the agent’s fault that an issue came up, it’s not usually the customer’s either. The agents need to remember that they’re getting paid to manage these concerns and complaints, while the customer has likely already paid for a product or service and encountered an issue.

Quick tips to solve this customer service issue: 

• Invest in representatives’ training. Onboarding and training are the cornerstones of good customer service. It’s important to train agents not only to be knowledgeable about the product/service but also to be polite and friendly to even the rudest customers.
• Monitor frequently. You also need to check in from time to time to make sure that things are still running smoothly. Use software that allows for quality management with call monitoring, whisper coaching, and call conferencing so that you can listen in on calls without either party knowing, coach the agent without the caller knowing, or join in on the call when necessary. This will help to make sure your well-trained agents are engaging with your customers in a polite and efficient manner.

Conclusion.

You’ll always have unsatisfied customers—as you’ll always have happy ones, too. To maintain revenue growth and meet business targets, the second should outpace the first by far. While there’s no silver lining to winning at customer support, a well-trained, strong team of agents, with the most appropriate tools and soft skills, it’s the secret to keeping customers satisfied.

By identifying and avoiding these common customer frustrations, companies can improve the quality of customer service ‌they provide.