Good customer service is always up for interpretation. It is totally normal to come across customers that are difficult to deal with. But there are still things that are universally constituted as a bad customer experience, such as;
- Prolonged wait times
- Long response times
- Support agents lacking experience and knowledge about the brand
- The support agent being unprofessional
Brands who are guilty of such behavior often face negative consequences, which can lead to the company’s failure. Brands need to work on improving their customer service departments. If customers have preferred channels of communication, brands should work on implementing such channels. For instance, Xfinity customer service has dedicated social media platforms on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. So if any Xfinity customer wanted to reach out to the brand on Twitter, they would just tweet at the Xfinity Twitter handle, from where Xfinity support agents would reach out to them. In this article, we will mention some side effects of bad customer service and how you can deal with them.
Table of Contents
Negative Online Reviews
Nowadays it is easier for customers to write a negative review on the internet about the brand when they have a bad experience with them. That is extremely damaging to a brand’s reputation because it is out there for the whole world of internet users to see. In case you think internet users aren’t reading reviews, there is a study that found that 88% of the respondents have stated that they have been influenced by an online review about a product or service they wanted to buy.
- How to Deal With It. Responding to such online reviews publicly, accepting responsibility, and informing customers that you are making an effort to resolve the issue are some of the ways that you can adopt to fix the brand’s shattered reputation.
When Leads Don’t Convert
Put yourself in the new customers’ shoes; if you were reaching out to a brand and you didn’t receive any response from them or you were made to wait on hold for hours, that would definitely make you frustrated. Generally, customer support departments already have such a negative stigma attached to them as a whole. Brands need to change that and leave an awesome first impression for collecting leads.
- How to Deal With It. Having a good CRM will help your sales team to respond to leads quickly and promptly, having all the information at their disposal. It will allow customer support reps to deliver good customer service.
Losing Your Best Employees.
That’s right, one of the side-effects of having bad customer service is losing your best employees. When your company has bad customer service, then your best and hard-working employees are forced to clean up after their mess, meaning that it is added to their workload. This can lead to burnout and dissatisfaction, and ultimately to them resigning from their position.
- How To Deal With It. Don’t keep the bad employees, but do reward your best employees. Having a great company culture can lead to great customer service. When bad customer service provided by your support agents is considered normal, they don’t feel like they need to work on improving themselves. But if the company culture sets expectations of quick, friendly, and professional customer service, then employees will work to meet those standards.
Downward Spiral for Profits.
Having bad customer service can lead to loss of new sales and even loss of loyal customers. if your brand decides to cut costs to make up for little revenue, then you will still have to work on improving your customer service through training. Also, if you choose you outspend on marketing instead of working on poor customer service, then the problem will only get worse.
- How To Deal With It. Respond to customers and resolve their queries promptly. Also regularly ask for customer feedback and monitor KPIs of customer service.
The best way to solve a bad customer service is to prevent it of course, but the second-best day to do that is to get it corrected and fixed before it gets out of hand.
Final Thoughts
It all comes down to this; brands need to invest in their customer support since customer service is the one that can make or break their business. If the reputation of their customer service is bad, they need to focus on improving it to attract new sales and prevent loss of profit.
