Good Customer Service Needs the Right Atmosphere

There’s nothing worse than dealing with a company with poor customer service. Often, this can be the result of the customer service reps not having what they need to get their jobs done. In other words, their atmosphere is not set up correctly.

Sometimes, the atmosphere in question can be a set of procedures or a lack of them. For instance, if you were calling about a technical problem regarding your laptop, you probably expect the customer service person to take care of the problem. That is certainly reasonable. However, the rep may only be qualified to handle the first line of problems. These usually are configuration problems or handling credential management. If the problem is technical, they should be able to escalate it to the technical support staff. If a company doesn’t have this kind of procedure in place, it’s going to make for a very frustrating session for both the rep and the customer.

Customer Service departments are often looked upon as overhead. This means their budgets are small and will not have the most up-to-date technology. In fact, their equipment may be so old that they are unable to respond to customers promptly, or worse; the technology simply won’t be able to do what it needs to help the customer.

Management within a business needs to look at customer service in a whole new light. They are called representatives for a reason. They need to set up the right kind of environment, give them the right kind of tools, and empower them with the appropriate knowledge and training. This will allow them to handle better any problems that customers run into.

There are some companies that are realizing the value of customer service. These companies are training the reps to establish relationships with customers in such a way as to almost ensure future sales for the company.  These forward-thinking companies have finally made it to the 21^st century. They can use the relationship with these customers to improve further the process. It’s a back-and-forth type of proposition.

It remains to be seen if more companies will adopt these customer service measures like the innovative companies. If they stick to the status quo and simply put up a rep for hearing complaints or try to fix problems they are not qualified to handle, the companies may very well find themselves throwing in the white flag and going out of business.