How to handle difficult customers training, complaint handling traininng, call center training, customer service training

by Myra Golden

An estimated 11 billion emails are sent everyday worldwide. If your Customer Service Department receives 100 emails a day and each one takes an average of 10 minutes to deal with, that’s more than two full work days involved in simply responding to email coming in on just one day! If this is your situation, your employees are probably overwhelmed and your customers are dissatisfied because they are experiencing unacceptable response delays.

E-Customer Service is supposed to make our lives easier, not harder. When E Customer Service is handled right, it offers many benefits, including increased customer satisfaction and retention, increased productivity, and reduced operations costs.

Moving routine interactions online saves Cisco Systems nearly $270 million annually—with increased customer satisfaction. This week I am sharing with you 4 of the most common costly and time-consuming mistakes companies force their Customer Service Reps to make when handling email consumer response -- and I offer solid solutions for each mistake.

1. Replying to Simple Requests and Routine Questions When You Should Be Using Auto Responders
A lot of us waste a lot of time responding to queries that won't land us new business or even strengthen relationships with current customers when these same queries could be automatically handled. A simple, but often overlooked solution is to use Auto Responders.

Auto responders allow you to send an immediate, pre-written response to anyone sending email to a designated address. For example, anyone sending an email to product44info@company.com could receive an automatic immediate reply with specific product information for Product #44, including a link to a downloadable product manual for Product #44, and no live person would have to read or respond to the message unless the auto responder doesn’t completely answer the customer’s question. To use Auto Responders, you’ll simply need to set up the pre-written messages and attach them to designated email addresses. (Your IT Department can help with this).

2. Typing Routine Messages Over and Over When You Could Save Frequent Reply Messages in Draft Folders
Often, customer service professionals are saying the same thing over and over again to several customers via email. You can type the reply one time and save it as “draft” and then go back and copy the paragraph or phrase and paste in your customer’s email. This draft can be saved on a folder on the company’s network or each customer service representative can have a copy saved in their email manager. Here's how it works. If you often have to type something similar to:

“We appreciate hearing about your experience, but we cannot compensate you in this matter because you failed to follow instructions for the product.”

You would save this exact phrase in a draft folder and then copy and paste it as needed.

3. Shipping Customers Documents or Explaining to Them Where to Go On Your Website to Find Information When You Could Just Put Commonly Requested Documents In Portable Document Format (PDF)
Don't waste time and money shipping documents and booklets or telling your customers where to find your docs on your website. Save commonly requested docs in your draft email folder. This way you can immediately send customers documents, even large documents such as User’s Manuals or Warranty Information without expensive postage and time delays by creating PDF (Portable Document Format) documents. Create Adobe® (www.createpdf.com) lets you convert a variety of documents into PDF files that anyone can view using the free Adobe® Reader®.

4. Not Maximizing Technology By Making Your Website a Self-Service Center
Responding to simple routine, non-revenue generating inquires is almost always a waste of your employees' time. Your people need to be available to handle contacts where they have the opportunity to restore customer confidence, build loyalty, or strengthen relationships with your customers. They don't need to handle "Can you tell me where the nearest XYZ Outlet is to zip code 74012?" questions.

What you need to do is generate a list of commonly asked questions and put the questions and your answers on your website so customers can search your database and find their own answers. This can save an enormous amount of time and money because customers can serve themselves instead of calling your reps or sending emails for help. One of my clients, Vistakon – a division of Johnson & Johnson, has the best example of online customer service I’ve seen. Check out Vistakon’s FAQ page by going to http://www.jnjvision.com/faq.html.Other great examples include Amazon.com and http://www.callcenterwebinars.com/faq.html.

Bottom Line: Automate as much as you possibly can and always look for ways to automate more of your routine responses. Four out of 10 workers don’t find that email makes them more productive and that’s probably because they haven’t learned to automate common functions. Implement the ideas I presented here and you’ll find that email not only makes you more productive, but it increases customer satisfaction and frees staff up for more tasks.

Get angry customers to back down and completely regain customer goodwill without giving the store away!

Do you ever find that your employees spend more money to resolve complaints than you know they should? Do they sometimes "pay a customer off" just because it's easier to " get rid of them"? Do you wish your team had more strategies and confidence to deal with demanding, irate, or unreasonable customers?

I promise, after attending my Handle Difficult Customers Like a Diplomat webinar, your employees will be inspired and thrilled with how effective they are at getting angry customers to back down and moving customers out of a hardball mentality. And once they’ve gotten a taste of how easy it truly is to get angry customers to back down and reach win win resolutions, they will be completely STOKED and actually look forward to the challenge of moving customers out of a hardball mentality!

Handle Difficult Customers Like a Diplomat is CLEAR, CONCISE, and geared to give your people QUICK RESULTS that will empower them to defuse anger and reach agreements that balance the interests of both your customers AND your company.

If You Don’t Get Your Employees Training to Handle Difficult Customers Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later

Like all of my seminars and products, Handle Difficult Customers Like a Diplomat is backed by our 100% satisfaction guarantee.

If you don't feel the tips, tactics, and techniques provided in this high impact seminar will help you and your employees deal with difficult customers with more ease and effectiveness, I don't deserve your business and I'll refund every penny.

If my field-tested strategies don't work for you, just call our offices at 866-873-8419 within four weeks of your purchase to receive a full refund.

What I'm saying is don't decide now if Handle Difficult Customers Like a Diplomat is right for you. Try it out for one full month-risk free.

If Handle Difficult Customers Like a Diplomat doesn't help you overcome any stumbling blocks to effectively dealing with difficult customers, if it doesn't guide you step by step through laying a foundation for win win problem resolution, how to set limits and stick to them, and if it doesn't take you by the hand and teach you how to move customers out of a hardball mentality, and how to reach agreements that don't require that you give way the farm, and if it doesn't make dealing with difficult customers easier than you ever dreamed possible, then I don't want your money and I'll gladly give it all back.

This live web seminar is intelligently priced at $299. You can download, save, and share this webinar (and MP3 download) throughout your organization at no additional cost! Click Here to Register for this webinar.

One tiny idea could save you thousands of dollars in slashed settlement costs.

Can you afford to make major blunders and spend more money than you should when common mistakes could be avoided with a low $299. investment in this professional development event? Click Here to Register for this webinar $299

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This online video seminar is $299. You use this training throughout your organization for 12 full months.

This live web seminar is intelligently priced at $299. You can download, save, and share this webinar (and MP3 download) throughout your organization at no additional cost!