He Customer service department He has to solve complex procedures, while giving direct, clear and decisive attention to solve each case. In addition, the person you contact may be impatient to resolve your issue, adding more stress to the situation.
Yes, besides, that issue affects your pocket, As has happened in the case of banks with the change in the conditions in the services that the citizen had already contracted, the calls are multiplying: up to 366 claims occurred in the first half of 2022 in the banking customer service, which meant two complaints per day as registered in the Bank of Spain. And it is that the main reason for the calls has been the request for debt restructuring (99.56%), especially in a year marked by inflation, which in November 2022 was registered at 6.8%.
In another sector such as energy, inflation has also played a leading role and the rise in the price of electricity on customer bills has also caused an increase in claims. For example, in the province of La Coruña, up to 3 times more complaints have been registered for this reason.
In this sense, the OCU (Organization of Consumers and Users) recently denounced that the electricity bill for the month of August was the second most expensive in history, costing an average of €130.99. The same is the case with telecommunications companies, since most of them have been forced to increase the price of their rates to align with the current economic outlook, a fact that has angered their customers.
Tips to improve customer service
With this increase in complaints due to the rise in prices caused by inflation, Enreach, the leading European provider of convergent communications solutions, has collected four pieces of advice to improve customer service after the increase in claims due to inflation and to prepare agents for this situation.
- Take care of the first contact with the client: given the exorbitant increase in claims in sectors such as those mentioned above, the agents of the customer service department must be trained to provide an efficient, informative and professional service. That is why each company must have a contact center that has agents informed of the legal terms of the sector in which they work and who are up to date with everything that happens in society. Thus, through the speech that they generate in the first contact with the client, it is possible to boost trust between the user and the company. In addition, the agent must be prepared at all times to face a complicated conversation, as the client may call impatient, and the contact person will have to know how to calm them down and redirect their case with delicacy, empathy and resolution.
- Keep users informed at all times: We live in the era of immediacy, users do not like to be left with uncertainty or have incidents resolved late. That is why maintaining open and consistent communication between a representative of the company and the customers is one of the keys for the resolution of the incident to be successful, since when users file a complaint they need to feel the guarantee that they will be oriented and that their problems will be solved. This follow-up is possible through automated mobile messages, telephone calls so that the user feels that they are being attended to in a personalized way or through email.
- Pay attention to the details of each incident with the power of technology: Thanks to the inclusion of technologies such as CRM, a means that helps to centralize systems, databases and information flows, agents collect at a single glance the incidents that customers are presenting, so that in each interaction they can review in detail the history of the complaints presented and, in this way, they will create the most effective solution with less effort because they will not waste time searching for information. Therefore, what CRM allows is to pay more attention to details and to the different steps that must be taken during the process and that is how a complete customer relationship is developed. In short, a great CRM improves communication between users and companies.
- Appoint the right person: In order to ensure that the customer is served by the most appropriate agent, the inclusion of intelligent routing is one of the best options, since it consists of designating users to the agent that is most qualified, through artificial intelligence, to resolve the incidents in the most efficient way the incidents that are presenting. Likewise, having a unified service desk to access all the information in a single interface is also crucial so that agents can find the solution in a more optimal way, so that they can analyze the extracted data and, thus, generate strategies to make the best follow-up.
