What makes field service customer support good or bad? We could say the quality depends largely on the eye of the beholder – that is, the experience each individual has with a particular company. But that’s only one side of the story.
If we break something like field service customer support into core elements, we find a list of features we all like or dislike, no matter what kind of experience we’ve had with any given company.
The importance each person gives to these elements in order to rank them now depends entirely on their personal tastes, but having them listed will allow your field service company to improve customer support, making sure you focus on what’s really important.
So, in order to have a really good field service customer support, you have to be:
Fast
The speed of field service customer support has a massive impact on its quality. Speed and responsiveness are always the key element in any survey about customer service satisfaction.
Having the proper software tool can be really helpful when trying to deliver the fastest response possible to your customers. Also, make sure your employees use the optimal channel (phone, chat, email…), and that they have the necessary training for the kind of questions they’ll receive.
Accurate
Together with speed, accuracy is at the base of a good quality customer support. Though an accurate response may no increase customer satisfaction by itself, the lack of accuracy in your interactions with a customer will definitely decrease it.
In order to make sure you’re up for this core element and ready to deliver excellent customer service, your team must be properly trained. Also, having a system in place to ease delegating issues can be very helpful – so that any question that a technician can’t solve at a given time can be forwarded to the right person.
Transparent
Your customers don’t worry only about the result; they want to know also about the process. Being left in the dark without knowing what’s going on is usually not a good experience, and certainly not a synonym of good customer support.
Try to understand your customer’s mind and anticipate their questions. Explain any necessary processes to them, and also let them know about any possible delays in your job. Even is the work takes longer than expected, being informed about it makes it less of a pain.
Clear
Working in the field service business, sometimes explanations can get really technical and customers may end up lost in geeky jargon. So if you don’t want your customers to lose track, focus on clarity and simplicity when delivering field service customer support.
Use fewer, simpler words; avoid lengthy explanations, and stick to short sentences. Focus on the big picture and divide your explanation into simple parts. A trick that can be helpful here is using the classic questions what, where, when, who, why.
Accesible
How easy is it for your customers to get in touch with you? The more difficult, the lower your field service customer support will be valued. In fact, reducing customer effort has proven to be a key element in the overall evaluation of customer support.
If you haven’t done so yet, act as any customer and try to get in touch with your own company. How many steps do you have to follow? How long does it take? Any reduction in both steps and time will increase customer satisfaction.
Friendly
This is of course a key element in field service customer support, though also the most difficult one to master. Friendliness depends largely on the use of language, so your team will need to receive the appropriate training in order to achieve the right level of friendliness without sounding too casual.
Efficient
In the end, what matters most in your field service customer support is being efficient. Because efficiency means you’re providing a fast, accurate, positive and clear service, that helps resolve your customer’s issues.
Nowadays technology has made it easier to increase efficieny without an important impact on your budget – and also without losing any quality on the way. Just make sure your field service software includes the necessary tools to deliver efficient customer service!
Download Synchroteam’s demo now and give your customers top-quality service.
