Most people agree that customer service is a cornerstone of any business. When we place ourselves in our customers shoes, it’s easy to see how frustrating it can be when you don’t know if your issues are being handled properly or not. Unfortenately, bad customer experiences does happen every now and then, and sometimes it’s a struggle to evaluate where and why customer service didn’t meet the expectations of your customers.
Here’s three common reasons why internal processes might lead to bad customer experiences and unresolved customer issues.
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Information fails to travel across departments
While your customer-facing teams might excel at delivering a professional and friendly response, delivering an excellent customer service experience often depends on multiple actions and synergies taking place behind the scenes. Consider a scenario where a customer contacts you regarding a malfunctioning machine. Your support department answers the call and register the ticket, but might not be able to to resolve the issue instantly. To resolve the issue they need to create a work order, book a service technician to come out and visit the customer and report back to the customer what will happen next so they know what to expect. And this might be only the first step in a number of different steps needed to resolve the issue the customer is facing.
Now, envision a situation where the issue might need the help of multiple departments to solve, involving a blend of administrative tasks and on-field activities, during a lenghty period of time. How do you make sure that all that information flows correctly between departments? How do you inform the customer what happens along the way? The risk of information being misplaced along the way is high, and if it happens your customer is the one who’ll most likely suffer from it in the end.
What’s the eventual outcome? The ticket for the issue may go through an additional loop in your customer service, since no resolution happened during the initial encounter. This doesn’t only increase the customer’s frustration but also diminishes their experience with your business. Certainly not the outcome you want for a great customer experience!
Everyone has their own procedure
Maintaining a certain degree of autonomy within an organization is undeniably has its benefits. However, as your business grows and the number of customers continues to rise, the importance of having well-defined work procedures becomes even more important. Picture yourself starting at a new workplace where a senior colleague guides you through their preferred method of doing things, remarking, “I know others don’t, but I find this the most efficient way of doing it.”. That kind of scenario isn’t uncommon when official work procedures and tools either fall short or are too complicated to follow. The inherent danger lies in employees and departments struggling to synchronize their work effectively if they don’t have a shared framework for their workflows and procedures.
Consider what could happen: if your workers operate in silos due to the absence of standardized procedures, collaboration between departments can fail, leading to not being able to deliver a seamless experience to your customers. Have you thougth about why some teams seem to navigate effortlessly through tasks while others encounter roadblocks? The answer often lies in having established common grounds; a shared framework that makes sure everyone is on the same page.
As your business expand, the need for clear and streamlined work procedures intensifies. Without them, employees may inadvertently resort to using their own methods, which can create obstacles and hamper the optimal function of your business. In essence, the importance of fostering a collaborative environment through having well-defined work procedures is part of the core needed for sustaining and elevating the customer experience as your business continues to grow.
Confused ownership in complex cases
One of the challenges of collaborating across departments is creating a shared sense of ownership. When a case falls in the hands of a single team, which team is responsible for the case is usually very clear. However, as soon as multiple teams become involved, there’s a risk that ownership of the case can become confusing among the different teams. What if the something needs a spare parts and the service technician puts the case on hold because they need to order the spare part? What if a customer representative puts the case on hold because they decide they need to talk with the customer first before they schedule a service technician? Who’s got the ownership of the case and decide what to do next? The likely outcome is that the customer will call again after a few weeks asking for a status update. The critical question then becomes: who possesses the knowledge to provide a satisfactory answer to the customer among the different involved teams?
We’re all too familiar with the frustrating experience of being shuttled between departments that seem unable to give us an answer. This scenario is typical for departments that don’t have the appropriate tools for seamless information and process management. While ticketing management software may be in place, its efficacy diminishes if employees encounter challenges to enter or access the data, leading to reluctance in utilizing the system. Day-to-day operations and administrative tasks is a constant balance of cost versus benefits. The implementation of a user-friendly Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can significantly streamline day-to-day operations, making the intricate dance of information and processes more manageable.
Invest in fail proof tools
Never underestimate the importance of establishing work procedures that are not only easy to follow but also focused towards creating a seamless experience. The less cumbersome and easy the process is for advancing a case, the higher the likelihood is of your customers getting a positive and gratifying experience. By adopting tools specifically designed to streamline processes, you can overcom these obstacles while allowing your employees to channel their efforts into delivering a world-class service at every part of the customer journey.
With Dynamic Checklist, you can create the necessary structure to ensure high quality and consistency in your workflows. Visual steps that allow you to quickly get an overview of the status of each case. You can even link certain steps to specific departments or people and make sure that a case is forwarded to the right team with minimal effort.
Ready to level up your customer care? We’re experts in customer care and can show you how a CRM system can transform your business!