Posts Tagged ‘socialsmallbiz’
How you respond to customer issues is important… anyone can be reading!
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
While researching a couple of issues from a recent KikScore customer signup, the importance of a quick and informative response to current and would be customers became critically evident. As a small business, you need to educate your customers so they have confidence in the product you are providing, and also share information in layman’s terms to alleviate confusion and not tech-speak your customers into oblivion.
I struggle with this balance while straddling the technical and marketing role at KikScore (and in my day job too). Your customer base doesn’t share the in-depth knowledge that your team has on the inner-workings of your system, and thus you need to take a step back when responding to a customer inquiry/issue and put yourself in the customer’s shoes. This entails not only empathizing with the issue at hand, but also providing deeper context surrounding the potential resolution/fix to the customer’s concern and conveying that back to them in a timely and informative manner.
In the world of social media today, any response you share with customers (and prospects) can (and most likely will) be posted or passed along the internet waves and will have an impact on not only the legitimacy of your business/product but also on its future branding potential.
SocialSmallBiz is doing a series on customer support and social media and the intertwining of each. A fantastic quote to live by, for ANY small business owner “It Takes Months to Find a Customer… seconds to lose one”
How do you handle your customer inquiries and responses? Please share your best practices and lessons learned with us.
