A customer has just had a disastrous experience with one of your products. Perhaps, they didn’t even receive it. While this is by no means an ideal situation, businesses should look at moments like this as an opportunity to land a positive review.
That may sound crazy, but here’s why and how you can do it.
Customers Are Understanding
Generally, shoppers are quite forgiving when an issue arises. The huge majority of them will provide businesses with an opportunity to make amends before sharing their negative experience.
In fact, according to our research, a massive 90% of shoppers in both the UK and the US say they’ll always contact customer service before leaving a bad review. Those surveyed as part of our in-depth Cross Country Report for Online Reviews also said there was always some way support agents could turn a negative experience into a positive one.
So, instead of looking at complaints as a burden, think of them as an opportunity. As long as businesses address issues quickly and professionally, most shoppers are content. It may even result in a more memorable experience.
If shoppers know they’ll be looked after when something goes wrong, it can increase trust and positive reviews.
Exceptional Customer Service Will Turn Things Around
Transforming complaints into glowing reviews is wholly achievable if you upgrade your customer service with these three steps.
1. Consolidate Your Channels
Shoppers listed the three qualities that were most important to them when contacting customer service: problem resolution, politeness and speed. While hiring and training can impact these things, so can customer service software.
Today, businesses sell their products across multiple channels. Many also have a marketing presence across social media. To ensure a customer issue is never overlooked, sellers need to bring all their incoming messages together in a single platform. This is exactly what eDesk does.
By working with a help desk built exclusively for eCommerce, customer service representatives gain oversight of every platform. They see each issue as it comes in and order information is right at their fingertips too.
Rather than spending their time scanning different platforms for messages, this empowers them to focus on the three things customers care about most.
2. Automate Your Messages
Of the 2,000 online shoppers surveyed on behalf of eDesk, most of them said they want a response to their messages within a day.
While consolidating your channels will save time, you can also send automated messages to let them know a member of the team is on the case and will be in touch soon. You can also send automatic responses to common queries in just a couple of seconds.
Internally, message templates can also help agents answer messages faster. eDesk customers like Suzuki GB have reduced their average customer response time by 84% as a result.
With eDesk Feedback, you can also send automatic requests for reviews. According to our survey, both serial and seldom reviewers are much more likely to write one if they receive an email after purchase.
3. Educate Your Staff
With the help of eDesk’s centralized system, support agents can see and answer messages much faster. But it is still essential to teach them about your products, your policies and your help desk software.
The more they know, the more they can help your customers. But if a problem is beyond their scope, they can always add some notes in eDesk and assign the inquiry to the most relevant person.
A big bonus for customer service managers is that you can use your consolidated eDesk software to keep an eye on the performance and progress of new team members too.
Final Thoughts
As part of our survey, shoppers shared hundreds of their positive customer experiences. Often they began when something went wrong, but when they received great customer service, it changed everything.
Many were simply treated fairly, while others were wowed with free gifts and coupons. Speed, politeness and proactive help will turn a complaint into a positive experience. With eDesk Feedback, you can even turn it into a positive review, check out our webinar on ‘The Why, How, and Value of Great Customer Feedback’ below to learn more.
