When you first launched your business, it’s all about identifying how you will do things and getting them done. But as your business matures over time, you tend to settle into the way you do things. This is simply because it’s easier to run day-to-day operations when everyone knows the correct way of doing things. However, things may become overwhelming as the size of your business operations increase. This is the reason why you need to always make sure that your customers know you got their inquiry and acting on it.

There is no denying the fact that the way your customer service team talks to customers has a significant impact on your brand. This is simply because there’s nothing that delivers customer satisfaction like consistently delightful communication.

When you’re thoughtful about the way you initiate a conversation with a customer on receiving their inquiry yields better results than a splashy 20 percent off coupon. Now comes the big question – what’s the strategy behind successful conversations?

Across the globe, 96% of customers say that exceptional customer service is essential for them to decide their brand loyalty. In fact, 67% of customer churn is preventable in the first place itself if your organization can proactively resolve issues the first time they occur. 

Develop a Proper Organizational Chart

The first step to handle customer inquiries is to set up a proper organizational chart. You employees must be well aware of who is responsible for what, how customer service inquiries would be assigned, and what are the available tools and resources at their disposal. The point is simple. Whether you’re handling a small or a large team, it is important to have a clear-cut written documentation describing the roles, responsibilities, and authority of everyone in your team.

You may start by finding answers to the following few questions:

• Who will handle customer inquiries and what is the expected timeframe for a response?
• Who is assigned to what channel, category, and task?
• Is there a special team to handle high volume or ‘VIP’ customer service inquiries?
• What tools are available and how and when should they be used?

Prioritize Support for Inquiries

71% of customers expect help within 5 minutes, and 51% will give up after just one attempt or immediately to seek help. Answering support tickets on a first-come, first-serve basis may work out the best in some cases for small teams. However, it’s always a good idea to prioritize your support based on customer, channel, task, and requirement.

Categorize Inquiries

Ideally, you should prioritize all customer inquiries and then segment them based on the type of request. This will ensure that you don’t miss out on even a single inquiry and customers are notified on time. It will help you avoid losing sales and gain more customers.

It is also important that you define inquiry categories such as marketing, development, sales, online store, IT department, individual assignment, and unassigned for effective ticket handling. 

You can also set up tiers such as:

Tier#1: Common inquiries that primary support agents can answer.

Tier#2: Inquiries that require experience to answer.

Tier#3: Inquiries that can interrupt your service workflow and require a specialist.

Every business is unique and it’s entirely up to you and your team to decide what works best for you based on the type, frequency, and occurrence of customer inquiries. Need help with how to better streamline the operations of your business to get more customer inquiries and sales? Connect with us now.