As businesses, one of the last things we want is for our customers to feel pained working with us. If they’re left feeling frustrated afterwards, they’re likely to take their business elsewhere in the future. Plus, you can forget about those great reviews and word-of-mouth advertising that can bring in more customers. In fact, if they’re really unhappy, it will probably result in negative reviews and them telling their friends and family about their bad experience, too.

We want to help you avoid this by addressing five common pain points that customers face.

We’ll break it down:

1. They don’t get immediate help and need to wait for a response.

Customers that can’t get answers quickly are likely to get frustrated. It needs to be easy for customers to reach out to someone and get a response. Businesses can offer this by ensuring they have enough people to handle the outreach, several channels for support and 24/7 availability.

2. The customer can’t reach out to a contact center through the avenue they prefer.

The younger generations have been trending away from using the phone to actually make phone calls. In most cases, they prefer to send a text or use a chat window to communicate. However, many of the older generations still prefer to make a phone call. Although you can’t just assume if someone is in a certain generation that they’ll prefer that method of contact. Even if you have a good idea of your target audience, it’s safest to just offer multiple options such as text, chat, email and phone.

3. Customer service agents don’t know much about the product the customer has questions about.

Any agent working directly with customers should be familiar with the business and products they’re representing. It’s important to make sure that anyone that is representing the brand is knowledgeable. If this isn’t done in-house, make sure that the outsourcing company does training and knowledge development (we make this a priority at XACT).

4. The shopping experience was more difficult that it needed to be.

It’s important that the buying experience be as smooth as possible. You can do this by ensuring that your website is modern, updated regularly and mobile-friendly. It should also be easy for the customer to find answers to any questions they have during the buying process (offering a FAQ page and a chat window on the site is helpful).

5. They can’t seem to get a hold of the right person.

The customer needs to be able to get a hold of the right person to handle their concerns. If they do need to be transferred to another person or department, then it’s essential the agent ensure they’re sending them to the right place so they don’t end up getting transferred more than once.

These are just a few pain points customers can come across before, during and after the buying experience. The easier and smoother you can make things for your customer, the greater satisfaction and loyalty they’ll have.