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Dear freelancers,

In daily contact with your customers, customer service is one of the keys to success. Whether in the end customer sector (B2C) or in the business customer sector (B2B).

Because only through customer service can you stand out from competitors with a similar product.

This article is about the customer perspective.

How to maintain contact with the customer.

Why contact channels are crucial.

And how both can be significantly improved.

Customer contact – frustration or fans pre-programmed

You’ve probably experienced it yourself – an email is not answered or answered late, you’re put on hold on a hotline or a query to a provider’s technical support is not answered or answered with a long delay.

Frustration is inevitable. If no value is placed on the actual contact, you can lose the customer.

Good customer service, on the other hand, creates fans. Customers who, in the best case, recommend your service to others. So that you no longer have to invest an advertising budget to win new customers.

What is the customer perspective?

The customer chooses their own contact method. Whether they call, email, use a live chat, write by post or send a traditional fax – they choose their own contact channel, depending on their personality structure, their preferences, the perceived urgency of their request and their mood.

What is your perspective?

You are inundated with emails and tickets, in between your smartphone rings and a WhatsApp message beeps. And you can neither offer good customer service nor deliver or improve your service.

What is the solution?

The customer chooses the contact channel themselves.

But two points are crucial:

1. which contact channels you offer

2. your time management when answering customer inquiries (or the time you block)

1. Contact channels

Which contact channel is your favorite? Which one can you use well and effectively?

It is advisable to offer a modern written channel (by email, for example) and a direct telephone channel. Then you have both types of contact covered.

You can also think about bonus channels such as video calls.

All other channels such as chat, WhatsApp etc. are conversations that need to be held continuously and where you will inevitably disappoint the other person’s expectations. If the other person sends you a WhatsApp message, they will expect a prompt reply. If there is no reply or it is delayed for hours, the other person is usually disappointed. After all, your customers can’t see that you might be working on a product or service for them.

2. Time management

Time management can be, for example, three blockers over 10-20 minutes per day. One blocker in the morning to process the requests from the night. At lunchtime to answer the customer’s first response and the inquiries from the first half of the day. In the evening, the requests and responses from the afternoon. And YES, customer service requires an investment of time. It’s like a good partnership. It’s a relationship between you and the customer that only really begins when the contract is signed. The problem is usually that this time is not invested. It is not seen as productive time.

The alternative to blockers is to keep an eye on the email inbox and offer to call back customers who prefer to make phone calls. But set yourself a time limit per callback and help efficiently, because nothing is as valuable as the customer’s time and your time.

With this in mind – thank you for your time and feel free to write in the comments which contact channel you prefer and for what reason!

Yours

Tobias