As a business, we love getting engagement from our readers and customers. However, when this engagement comes in the form of customer service requests flooding our inboxes, then it might be a symptom of a bigger problem.
In addition, if your customers feel like they’ve been left out to dry because you couldn’t get to their request in a timely fashion, then that’s an additional problem on top of another.
Wondering what can be done to reduce the amount of customer service requests? Keep on reading to learn all about the core problem and how to fix it for good.
Customer Service Requests: Educate Your Customers or Die Trying
The whole idea behind customer requests is ensuring that your customers have a way of reaching out for help when something isn’t working for them.
Usually, the majority of customer service requests fall into two categories. The first is that they don’t know how to use their platform, so they’re sort of lost. The other is that they want to change something related to their accounts, and that’ll bring us to self-service.
In order to reduce the staggering amount of questions regarding how to use your platform, you’ll need to be proactive about educating your readers.
Solid Knowledge Base Creation
We’re used to getting answers at the click of a button, and your readers are the same.
If they have to email you for every single question about your platform —or internet-gods forbid, CALL you— they’ll get irritated pretty quickly.
The way to manage this issue would be by having a solid FAQ page, and a simple support form.
The FAQ page will be the first place to look for answers. Therefore, you’ll have to stress that fact to your customers from the very beginning during the onboarding process.
No matter how much we’d like to have flawless platforms, the truth of the matter is that we’re all work-in-progress. Thus, make sure to mention how to deal with problems.
It’ll save you the indignity of having your customers panic because they don’t know what to do about simple issues when they pop-up.
Self-Service: Give Power to the People
Nothing can help your customers better than giving them the tools to help themselves.
This is why 40% of customers prefer self-service over human contact and any other type of customer support tool.
There are two main ways that your self-service can be set up to almost eliminate customer service requests.
The Power to Modify Their Accounts
Your customers want to know their subscription status, and they want to know it now.
Nothing can be more frustrating than not knowing where you stand (and this applies to almost everything). So, if you have a membership program for your readers, giving them access to their accounts removes the stress of the unknown.
Moreover, giving them the power to now only view their accounts, but also modify them will give them the ability to customize their profile however they like. For example, a customer might like to upgrade their subscription plan from monthly to yearly.
A solid self-service platform will enable them to see their renew dates and their current subscription data. Then, it’ll give them the ability to updating their subscription to a different plan however they want.
The Power to Manage Payments
It’s essential to give your customers the tools to not only review their invoices, but also the ability to download receipts and change their payment methods.
Having a user-friendly user experience, especially on the accounting side of things will help reduce the amount of panic-based (and rightfully so) customer service requests.
Bonus: The Power to Contact You the Way They Want
In this day and age, there is no shortage of technologies that can help simplify the customer service process.
You’ll need to ensure that you’re giving your customers every possible way to reach you in a way that’s comfortable for them. You can set up bots and chatboxes to ease the mental strain of reaching for the phone or email.
Proactive Customer Service Is in Your Hands
The best type of customer service is the one where your consumer doesn’t need to contact you in the first place.
Self-service provides customers with the ability to change what they want to change with no interference on your end. No interference needed equals no customer service requests.
Setting up your platform for this level of proactivity can be a bit intimidating for the uninitiated. However, it doesn’t have to be this way.
Make sure to schedule a demo with us! We’ll show you what your subscription platform can look like when it’s created with the customer’s experience and satisfaction as its core function.