Common customer service pain points and how to resolve them

The last thing you want to do as a business is to create pain points for your customers. Making things more difficult for customers will only make it harder to acquire and retain them. So, what do you do? Well, the first step is knowing what needs to change and that starts by knowing what common pain points plague consumers when it comes to customer service.

1. Dealing with unfriendly and unknowledgeable agents

This is one pain point that customers often see. Agents need to be trained in soft skills so they’re better able to assist customers with a friendly and empathetic tone. Agents also need to be thoroughly trained on the business and all of its products/services so that they know exactly how to assist customers when they reach out.

2. Being put on hold for long periods of time

No one wants to waste their time sitting on hold. The first step is to make sure to ask the customer if they have time to wait before putting them on hold. It’s also important to explain to them why they need to be placed on hold in the first place. Also, if the call is being transferred, it’s important to make sure it’s to the right person or department so that the customer doesn’t end up having to be on hold even longer.

Another way to reduce hold times is to have access to several agents and to offer various ways for customers to reach out so that they’re not all using the phone line. In addition, you can consider offering a call-back function, where customers can punch their number in for the agent to call them back.

3. Difficulty finding answers

Customers should easily be able to get answers and solutions. Creating a FAQ page on your website (that’s easy to find) can be a big help. This allows customers to get answers to common questions. Also, offering a web portal on your page can be equally smart. Customers can ask questions on the spot. As an added bonus, this can reduce cart abandonment.

4. Not being able to reach customer service through an avenue that’s convenient for them

Some customers will find it more convenient to call, while others will want to reach out via email, text or chat for support. Offering more than one avenue for customer service will increase the convenience and satisfaction factor among your customers. Also, this is another way to make it easier than ever for customers to find answers to their questions (addressing the pain point listed above).

These are four of the common pain points. As you can see, there are ways to address these and improve customer acquisition and retention. And, we’d love to help at XACT. Please reach out to us today.