Whatever service you offer, consumers and clients drive your business. Without them, your business no longer has a purpose. Customers need you the most when they contact you for support.

In a marketplace that consists of numerous vendors of excellent library management systems, like Softlink Information Centres, how can you stand out? One of the most important ways is to care about and provide outstanding customer service, and that’s what we deliver.

Why the Support Experience Matters

Up to 97% of recently surveyed customers said they would recommend a business to their peers and friends. Positive word of mouth is a great advantage to any company.

How Poor Customer Service Damages Your Business

There are several ways that poor customer support affects your business. Here are just a few of them!

Reputation Damage

The importance of good customer service is highlighted in research done in 2017 that identified up to 59% would try a new company in a search for better customer service.

Poor word-of-mouth reviews or online comments criticizing customer support will spread quickly and damage your reputation. It is challenging to recover from an unimpressive service record.

Poor Retention

Unhappy customers take their business elsewhere. This is especially true if their support experiences with your company have been negative.

It generally takes less energy to retain happy customers than to find new ones. Keeping customers satisfied is the primary key to continuing a great relationship with them.

Lack of New Business

Potential customers will look at a company’s reviews on their websites, or review sites before they contact you. This has been more common for those selling consumables. However, all types of companies, including software vendors, are increasingly subject to review searches.

If your company has been the recipient of numerous negative reviews, they are less likely to consider contacting you. Remember, customers typically pay more attention to negative reviews than positive ones.

Employee Dissatisfaction

Employee dissatisfaction can negatively impact the customer service a business provides. The resulting staff turnover and knowledge loss is a cost to the business.

We at Softlink Information Centres focus on training and positively reinforcing our customer support staff. Their knowledge and skills are valued. It is the reason they have been with us for so long. We understand the need for an excellent customer service team, and we have one!

Shrinking Revenue

Poor customer support experiences can affect a business’s bottom line, for example:

• Fewer customers result in lost revenue.
• High employee turnover leads to recruitment and training costs.
• PR and marketing efforts cost money, resources and time.

It makes sense to provide quality support experiences from the outset.

Our Tips for Improving Support Experiences

Ideally, customers should always have positive support experiences, but negative reviews can occur for a variety of reasons. The good news is that you can take steps to minimize the number of poor support experiences.

Here’s what we focus on:

Engagement

The Softlink IC support team engages with existing customers online and via customer care calls. Solving a customer’s immediate problem is not the only role of customer support staff.

We are proactive in seeking the expertise of our customers and understanding their workflows and pain points. Feedback is regularly sought and acted on where possible.

Analyze the data

We’re in the information business. So, naturally, we use available data to understand and minimize any potential damage to relationships with our customers. Sometimes mistakes and misunderstandings do happen. If they do, ‘fess up and fix up, quickly!

We track and analyze available data, from support tickets to usage of the customer portal and telephone contacts. This ensures we keep abreast of the current situation. Data helps us learn and improve. Like all businesses, we always want to do even better.

Customer service is more important now than ever before. Today, even bloggers have influence. If they write a negative customer service review, it can do enormous damage, especially if there appears to be no attempt by a company to rectify the issue. Mistakes happen. Everyone gets that. How your customer service team responds makes all the difference.

We maintain that delivering excellent customer service is critical to our success. Don’t just take our word for it, read what our customers say!