Customer challenges are inevitable. They will happen to you and your team, but there are ways to best handle them and help prevent them from occurring again in the future. Here are some ideas for how to approach customer issues with customer success.
Talk to the customer
Talk to the customer, ask questions and understand their needs, and be empathetic, patient, respectful, and a good listener. You need to be a good communicator as well as a problem solver/team player if you want to solve the challenge that they are having with your product or service.
Create a roadmap for customer success
The customer success manager should create a plan for the customer, the team, and the company. The plans for each of these should be documented in detail. This will ensure that there is no confusion as to what each member of your team should do.
Be honest when you don’t have an answer
If you’re unable to help a customer with their problem, be honest about it. If you don’t know the answer, say so. If you do know the answer but need some more time to get back to them, say that too. The best way to handle a customer situation is by being straightforward and honest. Customers appreciate honesty much more than they do excuses or an attempt at “making things right.
See it through the customer’s eyes
When you’re faced with a challenge, you need to be able to see things from the customer’s point of view. The worst thing you can do is get defensive or condescending. Don’t think too hard about your answer and don’t over-explain it either. Just listen to what they have to say, ask questions if necessary, and try to understand their perspective as best as possible before making any decisions or doing anything else.
This isn’t an excuse for rudeness or being dismissive—you still have a job to do—but it will help you keep a cool head when dealing with difficult customers because you’ll know that there’s more going on than just “the customer is always right. It also helps show empathy which makes customers feel safe in their interactions with companies; something that is especially important for smaller businesses that don’t have much brand recognition yet.
Create a plan to help others solve the problem in the future
Once you have solved the problem, don’t let the customer leave without a plan to help them solve it in the future. This is an easy way to make your customers feel like they’ve been listened to and respected.
You should also be able to offer them additional services or products that will solve their problem once and for all. If they are willing, you can set up an appointment with them at a later date when you will review how things went after they implemented your solution. By following up with customers regularly as part of your process, you can ensure that everyone remains happy with their experience at every step along the way.
Conclusion
As you can see, it’s easy to get caught up in the moment when you encounter a customer with an issue. You must remember that these people are real people with real problems, and sometimes they just need someone to listen. A good way to prevent this from happening again is by creating a plan for handling challenges as they come up.
