Customers now not only pay for a product or service, but also for the customer service that comes with it. With only one or a few delighted customers, your business can not grow and scale quickly. You should satisfy every customer regardless of how they contact you or which agent they talk to. All you need is a customer service policy to maintain consistent excellent customer service.
With the customer service policy, you can ensure your support agents treat customers well and professionally. It both increases the level of customer satisfaction and the support team’s efficiency. Now, let’s take a look at what customer service policy is, why it is important and how you can create your own one.
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What is customer service policy?
Customer service policy is the standard code of conduct that guides the way support agents handle different service cases in a defined manner.
Having a well-defined customer service policy enables agents to adhere to a common set of rules and deal with situations in a similar way. As a result, businesses can ensure that the customer experience is consistent and that each customer is treated in the same fashion.
For example, you might have a policy in place for dealing with refunds in a particular manner, ensuring that any customers who face this situation receive the same good service.
Why is customer service policy important?
Customer service policies are essential for continuously improving customer service and keeping operations as efficient and organized as possible. In particular, having a standard routine practice in customer service provides plenty of advantages for your business, as shown below.
1. Make your goals clear and feasible
With standard guidance, you can easily define a proper, effective, and achievable target for your customer service operations. It may involve KPIs in average response time, first call resolution, churn rate, net promoter score, etc.
In essence, the customer service policy ties these goals to particular tasks that your agents should execute. Thereby, agents can satisfy customers easier by following a set of specified rules and regulations. You can also evaluate the performance of every agent and the support team based on the policy’s standards of good service.
2. Uniform customer service quality
Customer service policy guarantees that every agent is on the same page. When a situation happens, they know what to do without being distracted by their own subjective views.
It ensures that each customer is treated equally and that the quality of customer service remains unchanged. Your customers will get consistent support no matter what channel they use or who they talk to.
3. Deliver better customer service
Support agents are less likely to cut corners when they know exactly what they are expected to perform. As customer service policy is crafted depending on a company’s ability to perform.
It puts an end to any debate about what effective customer service entails. Your support agents will thrive to improve their support quality to keep pace with the requirements in policy.
How do you create a customer service policy?
1. Show customer service mission
At the very first step, you should define what your customer service brings to your customer’s overall experience. It is, in other words, your customer service mission.
Your customer service mission statement serves as a reminder and compass. It’s a goal that expresses how your business wants to engage with customers, and it’s a wonderful approach to keep your staff motivated and on the same page.
This document instructs your agents on how to connect with customers and build long-term relationships with them. Agents can use it as a daily reminder and objective to improve support efficiency.
Here is an example of Customer Service Mission & Value statement:
“The Gymnastics Center strives for excellence and professionalism in providing customer service, both inside and outside the organization, within the limits of available, well-managed resources.
To accomplish this mission, we have abided to the following values:
- Forecast customers’ needs and plan accordingly
- Greet our customers promptly, cheerfully, and respectfully by their names
- Listen carefully and support all requests and concerns of our customers
- Respond honestly, courteously, and knowledgeably
- Respect the individual and encourage participation”
2. Set up your customer service goals
Set customer service goals that are consistent with your vision and based on your research into customer demands. These goals should establish quantifiable targets for addressing the most essential customer service areas you highlighted. As an example:
- Response time limitation
- The percentage of products returned
- The proportion of customers who are happy with how their issue was handled.
- The percentage of customers who complain and then return to buy your service or products.
3. Create your customer service policy
The customer service policy provides guidelines for how your support agents should act in specific situations. There is no one for all customer service policy but there are some common sections you can include:
- Product or service overview: Create policies that will assist customers in better understanding the services or products you offer.
- Speed: Estimate the time customers can expect to receive support. Setting a limited wait time for phone and in-store services is a good idea. More people will buy your products and services if you provide prompt customer service.
- Communication: You can improve customer relationships by the way you inform them of everything they need to know about your firm. Don’t forget to inform customers about changes in customer policies, new items, and delivery policies.
- Follow up: After purchase, you should give customers the name, phone number, and email of a person they may contact if they need assistance. Show them a timeframe for when the service or product will be delivered. Provide information on how to obtain technical assistance or other support. Make it simple for them to file a complaint if they need to.
- Complaints: Provide some examples of how to handle complaints. Give tips on how to cope with various customer types and how to keep professionalism at all times.
- Retention: Acquiring a new customer might cost anything from 5 to 25 times more than keeping an existing one. It’s critical that you explain the value of customer retention to your agents, as well as provide guidelines and examples of how to keep consumers pleased.
- Monitoring performance: Let employees know how their performance will be evaluated and what kinds of goals you want them to meet. Each business has its own set of metrics for evaluating customer service agents.
4. Make the customer service policy accessible
Another important component of the documentation process is to make sure that your customer service policy is easily accessible, shared, and edited by the limited staff members.
Customer service managers may quickly write and share policies that your customer care team members can check when needed by creating a knowledge base. This allows your customer support team to easily obtain accurate information when they need it, ensuring that your end-users receive the best possible support.
You can also specify user permissions in a knowledge base, allowing you to develop customer service policies that are only accessible by staff as well as ones that are open to the public.
5. Enable policy adoption
It is necessary to conduct a meeting to inform the changes whenever a new policy or update is implemented (or when a new member joins your team). This ensures that everyone is aware and on the same page.
You should host periodic meetings and customer service training to review and reinforce the policies. Roleplaying various client scenarios is one of the most effective strategies to keep your team prepared for anything.
6. Feedback
Evaluate your consumer feedback to see which policies have caused the major challenges. Get rid of them if possible. Make sure to solicit feedback from your employees on any suggested policies. They frequently have a better understanding of how the customer interacts with the customer service policy. From customer feedback, you will find out valuable insights and come up with a plan for continuous improvement.
Customer policies that are set in default and are not updated can stunt your customer service efforts. As you may have a bigger team than before or use new innovative tools for customer support, it is necessary to update your customer service policies according to what you are capable of now.
Customer service policy ensures customer satisfaction
Customer service has an impact on both overall customer satisfaction and the long-term success of your business. Enforcing policies and processes and constantly searching for new ways to improve them will allow your customer service team to consistently give exceptional customer service and improve customer retention.
Along with the customer service policy, you can increase support quality and efficiency by using customer service software. With NestDesk, you can easily manage messages from multiple channels in one place, drive conversions and boost your support team’s efficiency with various useful features.
