10 Ways to Build Customer Trust

The main factor that distinguishes a company that customers feel loyalty towards and those they just do business with is trust. The first step to gaining that trust is to consistently provide quality goods and services, but the factor that really seals it for most customers is the quality of the customer service. If customers feel confident that their questions and issues will be resolved quickly and satisfactorily by someone competent, it goes a long way towards encouraging repeat business. For any company looking to build customer trust, these 10 suggestions are good guidelines to follow.

1. Be Easy to Reach. Every customer should know how to get in touch with customer service. Don’t bury phone numbers and email addresses on a hard to find page on the website. Make sure all inquiries get directly to a human being, as it can be very frustrating to receive an automated response when facing a problem.
2. Keep it Personal. Each customer should be assigned to one representative. Contacting a company about a problem can be more daunting than contacting the individual who was helpful and knowledgeable last time that the customer now feels comfortable with. Mojo Helpdesk makes it easy to make sure customers are consistently assigned to the same representative.
3. Be Honest.  If there’s a problem, address it. Don’t try to dodge it or cover it up. When unsure of what’s causing the problem or how to fix it, it’s better to be honest and show a willingness to learn more than to risk offering inaccurate information.
4. Be Human. It’s easier to trust a human being than an entity.  Make sure customers know the name of the representative they work with and avoid keeping the language used overly formal and stiff.
5. Stay in Touch. Keep customers in the loop with emails about company and product updates and specials. Strive to keep the company top of mind though be careful not to overload inboxes.
6. Don’t be Afraid to Apologize. Dodging blame when the company or representative is at fault is a surefire way to lose trust. People appreciate when someone can admit an error.
7. Be Quick to Make Amends. Respond to any bad customer experience or company mistake with something to make up for it. Make returns easy and offer a future discount, a free item or something comparable that will show customers that concern for their satisfaction isn’t just talk.
8. Be informed. No one’s prepared for every possible issue, but customer service representatives should be trained well enough in the company’s products and services to ensure their responses are always well informed.
9. Be proactive. If there’s a problem with a product or a mistake that’s been made, contact customers before they have the chance to learn about it themselves the hard way.
10. Maintain positivity. Throughout every customer service correspondence, be reassuring and optimistic that a resolution will be realized.

By simply treating customers with respect and honesty, a company can rise above many competitors. By incorporating the rest of these tips, a company will benefit from a reputation of good customer service to the level of customer trust that inspires long-term loyalty. Between repeat business and word of mouth, loyal customers are the best resource a business can hope for.

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Why Social Media Can’t Replace a Help Desk

With the endless proclamations of how crucial social media is to business, a discussion of its difficulties and limitations often gets lost in the hype. Use of socialmedia in customer service certainly has value and shouldn’t be neglected, but there’s a clear limit to what can be accomplished with it. Communication through social media is no substitute for the features and functionality available through a good help desk. To get the most out of both a social media presence and a help desk, it’s important to have a sense of the best uses for each and how to most effectively integrate them.

The way different people use their social media accounts varies considerably. Some spend large amounts of time each day checking in on Twitter and Facebook feeds to contribute their thoughts and ideas, while others let days or more pass in between visits. If the primary form of communication a business has with a customer is through social media, there’s the risk of long lags between each reply. This can extend the time it takes to resolve an issue that could have been handled quickly through a help desk. While it is possible to miss important feedback and questions through social media due to timing, all issues can be tracked with a Help desk to ensure nothing slips through the cracks.

Even for users who are likely to check their social media accounts frequently, using social media for extended communication has the clear downside of restrictive character limits. Most problems a customer’s likely to experience will require more explanation than can be expressed on Twitter in 140 characters or less. Understanding the particulars of a customer problem and its desired solution requires a back and forth likely to be slow and drawn out over social media, to the frustration of all involved. In contrast, a Help Desk makes it easy for customers and customer service representatives to provide as much information as needed at each step in the process and enables faster response times.

While the public nature of social media can certainly be a benefit, sometimes providing customer service requires the exchange of sensitive information. In most cases, a customer will be less likely to offer up personal details over social media and a customer service representative should never ask for anything sensitive over a public forum. Further, often the nitty gritty details of a customer service complaint aren’t something a company wants broadcast to a wide audience. It’s good to be able to publicly show a quick response to any complaints a customer makes, but there’s a point where the discussion about a customer issue on social media becomes more of a liability than an opportunity to publicly demonstrate great customer service.

A company should make a point to be aware of and quickly respond to any complaints that appear on social media, but a presence on social media doesn’t mean a full customer service correspondence should play out within that space. When a customer with a complaint is identified, respond quickly and with a suggestion to move the correspondence off the social media channel, including an e- mail address, phone number or link to fill out a ticket request on your help desk. A quick response shows you’re attentive and proactive about solving the problem, without restricting both parties to an awkward, drawn out conversation over a medium not designed to host one. View social media as just one aspect of customer service, it can be the first step in a longer conversation that occurs primarily through tools better designed for that purpose.

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