1. Consolidate your customer communications in a central inbox.

Simply put, use a help desk software so you have a central platform that focuses solely on customer service needs.

I know what you’re thinking -- you need to spend money! But before you close this tab on your browser, hear me out first: a) there are lots of help desk solutions out there so you’re guaranteed to find one that fits your budget; and b) it’s worth investing in this platform because you don’t want any customer communication to fall through the cracks, do you?

If you don’t have any central inbox to consolidate your customer communications, there’s a higher chance that a customer’s message will be forgotten, overlooked, or even accidentally ignored.

The #1 reason why customers switch to a new brand is because they feel underappreciated. Not replying to your customer’s message sends them the message that you don’t care about them. And you don’t want this to happen, do you?

It’s also more convenient to onboard other team members to help you with customer service if you have a central customer service platform to train them on. This way, the process is more streamlined, structured and easier to get the hang of.

1. Be owner-involved in customer service.

Your customers are the life of your business. If you don’t have any happy customers, you won’t have any business in the first place!

That’s why it’s important for you to be involved in customer service and interact with your customers as well. This way, you can learn from them, find out what areas of your business you need to improve on, and generally keep your pulse on your business.

Sure, you also need to delegate customer service to your trusted team members, and you also need the time to work on other areas of your business, but whenever you have extra time, you can also do customer service-related tasks accordingly.

1. Build a knowledge base of documentation and canned replies.

Customers prefer knowledge bases over other self-service channels.

You can build your own brand’s knowledge base by taking note of frequently asked questions and the most common customer concerns whenever you respond to your customers’ messages.

Check your customer support inbox. What are your customers’ top ten most common concerns? What do they usually complain about? What needs do your customers want to be taken cared of?

Create a list of articles about these and direct your customers’ attention to these articles as necessary. You can also craft high fidelity, detailed replies that answer their most common concerns. Use these as templates that you can personalize and tweak before sending to specific customers.

Doing this helps you kill three birds with one stone:

You save valuable resources in responding to your customer’s concern;
Your customers receive personalized messages that help resolve their concern; and,
You can quickly onboard your customer service team because there’s already a knowledge base they can refer to and a collection of detailed templates they can use

1. Beware of live chat.

Yes, in today’s world of instant gratification, offering a live chat function makes sense. After all, 42% of customers want to communicate with companies via live chat. If you can respond within 5 minutes of your customer’s message, and you can do this consistently, then offer live chat.

But if you’re not available to respond within 5 minutes, it’s better for you not to offer live chat in the first place. Imagine sending someone a live chat message and not getting any reply after 5-10 minutes -- you’d feel underappreciated, too, wouldn’t you?

Here’s a better solution: direct them to email instead. More customers (62%) prefer email over live chat (42%) anyway. Include a reminder that your customer service team will get back to them in an hour or two. This way, your customer’s expectations are managed better.

Additionally, customers believe that emails should be responded to within 24 hours, so if you respond within 1-2 hours, then your customers will be pleasantly surprised. Another win for the both of you, don’t you think?

Hopefully these tips can help you have better structures and subsequently, better conversations with your customers! That’s it for me today - now, over to you. What tip do you think is the easiest to start working on? Let me know in the comments below. See you next week! Cheers.