Put Down that Phone

3. Create a knowledge base.
Analyze customer queries to identify the most frequently asked questions (FAQs). Create responses to these FAQs, freeing up your agents to focus on more complex and high-value inquiries. Create form articles for the body, header, greeting, signature and footer of the e-mail. Agents then simply have to mix and match available information without creating new content.

If agents are forced to create new content, they should save it to be reused. These form responses should include rich content using HTML and graphics to make the information easy to read.

Format your knowledge base so content is automatically personalized in each e-mail, especially when agents reply to multiple customers with a single response. Incorporate auto-suggest responses from the knowledge base to speed up problem resolution.

4. Preemptive strikes.
Set a goal to limit the number of customer service inquiries to as few as possible. Regularly communicate product and service news to your customers using group e-mails, your Web site, catalogs, retail locations, etc. Publish parts of your knowledge base on your Web site, providing customers a forum to track down the answers to their questions before contacting you. You’ll notice a significant decrease in agent workload and increase in customer satisfaction. Self-service is always the best option.

5. Use customer-service e-mails as a learning (and selling) tool.
Using your system’s reporting and analytics capabilities, track and categorize all issues raised by your customers to gain insight on how to serve them better. Provide this information to company decision-makers, who can then adjust service capabilities or product offerings accordingly. Don’t miss any chance you get to have one-on-one communication with your customers. Integrate marketing and upsell messages into service responses based on the category of the query and the type of customer. Include a hyperlink to a related promotional offer in the footer of the e-mail.