Situations every customer service agent will recognise

As a customer service agent you want to satisfy your customers. Whether you work for a large telecoms provider or answer the questions of a retailer's customers; you want to help people.

Customer service staff often get a considerable load of misery thrown at them. “Imagine working for that company”, I often think when a company comes into the news negatively. And that is often how it is. Those hard-working and well-meaning men and women get an enormous amount of negativity thrown at them. It is sometimes not easy to work in a customer service department.

A perfectly normal working day ...

Every day there they are again. The men and women who staff the customer services. Cup of coffee or tea on the table and ready for all the questions. Via email, Skype or by telephone, communication goes on all day. An example from practice: when the clock strikes 08:00 the first conversations start immediately. A sweet woman is followed by a man raging with anger. The man is right, and you listen sympathetically. Unfortunately the man does not want to listen and keeps venting his spleen.

The example above illustrates a classic example of what a customer service agent goes through in a working day. At that moment you are the company's contact person, you are the sounding board to throw all the questions, uncertainties and anger at.

What information has already been discussed?

Besides the fact that not every conversation goes equally positively, customer service staff go through many other things. One of the biggest irritations is often the missing information about earlier conversations with the customer. If you do not know what was discussed earlier, then you cannot respond to it either.

In practice it often goes like this: around midday a call comes in from a friendly man. That friendliness unfortunately vanishes like snow in the sun as soon as he has explained his whole story and I cannot talk along with him about it. “We have discussed this before, haven't we?”, the man says. Unfortunately the customer service agent knows nothing about this conversation. “My colleague has not made any notes about this. Could you explain it again?”

Missing notes are not only a big irritation for customer service staff; the customer is irritated by it too. The story has to be explained again.

Is there a solution for your customer service?

It starts with the right software that makes optimal customer contact possible. You want insight into contacts and earlier conversations with your contact persons. Getting a clear view of all your contact person's possible contact channels is essential in this too. You do not only want to know what was discussed on Twitter, after all, but also the contact via Facebook, WhatsApp, email and any other channels. This way you make sure that errors and misunderstandings are ruled out as much and as often as possible.

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