How To Improve Your Organization's Customer Service

Increasingly, human resources departments are being tasked with performing customer service functions. The practice has generated some controversy in the business world, but advocates stress that human resources professionals are uniquely positioned to handle customer service issues. Even if they don't do so directly, HR is the department hiring the people who can, and they will always be seen as a form of internal customer service for employees and applicants since the skill set required remains largely the same. Here are a few cornerstones of good customer service that all human resources staff should be aware of.

Embrace Technology

New technology is giving customer service professionals a broad range of options for communicating with consumers. Unfortunately, not everyone in the industry has the knowledge to leverage these cutting-edge digital tools. Many customer service professionals may not even know the answer to the question "What is a chatbot?" These artificial intelligence programs are at the forefront of the contemporary customer service experience, constantly improving in their ability to mimic human conversational patterns and provide answers to complex queries.

It's also necessary for an organization to have an online media presence spread across multiple platforms in order to provide constantly updated information. This allows consumers to interact with your venture on their own terms. Leveraging technology to make the consumer's life easier is the key to gaining a positive reputation in a fast-paced world.

Make Customers Feel Valued

Customers are the primary way a business gets money or a nonprofit gets supporters. However, the needs of customers often get shrugged off by customer service departments. According to a major poll taken just a few years ago, almost three-quarters of consumer complaints revolved around rude, arrogant or condescending call center staff.

It's critical that human resources departments make training new call center or in-store sales employees a priority. Go through scenarios with employees and gauge how well they handle customer issues. For a human resources department dealing with new recruits of an organization, orientation is the time to shine when it comes to making sure that everyone is on the same page in creating a culture of empathy.

Do Your Research

Knowing how people think is the key to communicating with them. Customer service departments are flying blind unless they make it a point to know their market. This research can take many forms, but a popular method is sending an email survey to the customer after the service interaction. Questions can be geared towards either the experience itself or more general feedback regarding impressions about the company culture as a whole.

Another good method is having a "Contact Us" button on the official website. Internal polls and surveys provided to customer service staff themselves can help management to see the situation from their perspective, as well as allowing objective performance comparisons between your own company's staff and others.

Build Communities

Customers will always feel more valued and empowered if they think of themselves as a community. Webinars are an excellent, low-cost method of bringing customers together and are another good opportunity to get meaningful feedback via focus groups. Actual physical conventions are, when available as an option, a great way to bring people together to interact on a truly human level.

Another consideration is the use of internet forums as interaction spaces. Just make sure that the forums are moderated properly to keep the community a safe, vibrant and positive space. Remember to allow communities to develop organically. A lack of authenticity is a deal-breaker for the modern consumer.

As the ways in which people communicate change with the times, customer service must become an evolving field if it is to serve the public effectively. Human resources professionals need to have an awareness of these changes in how people communicate in order to efficiently do what they have always been tasked with doing: the tough but necessary job of being the voice of an organization.