What Is the Value of Live Customer Support to My Business Venture?

This article is part of an on-going series of blog posts under the Guide to Providing Excellent Customer Experience to E-commerce Customers, to help you with your business, brought to you by My Business Venture.

Over time, every e-commerce business is bound to receive a complaint from a dissatisfied customer. As such, it is important for e-commerce business owners to have a great customer support program in place. In particular, you’ll want to have a live customer service representative manning the customer complaint hotline.

Many of the most common customer complaints e-commerce businesses receive are related to customer service. One such complaint has to do with how automated customer support services make customers feel as if they’re stuck in a phone maze or jumping through a lot of hoops. To avoid this, why not have a live representative take their calls immediately?

The Psychology of a Complaining Customer

Simply put, a customer who has called to complain is in an irritable mood and only wants one thing: a solution to their problem. They’re not interested in hearing your “excuses”. They don’t want to hear about how your supplier has had issues. They want you to resolve their issue. Anything less than that will only serve to frustrate your customer even more.

Why is it important to understand the psychology of a complaint? It’s easier to resolve issues when you understand how a person is feeling and what they’re thinking. You and your representatives are able to react better, anticipate any problems that may stem from the complaint, and offer better solutions for the issue at-hand.

Empathizing Representative vs. Unfeeling Bot

Despite the advances in technology over the years, automated systems aren’t able to communicate at the same level as two people having a conversation. A live representative is able to empathize with your customers, as well as offer sincere apologies and proper solutions.

Think about how a customer who has a complaint would feel if he or she had to go through a long phone maze, only to be greeted by the automated, monotonous voice of a machine. What would they think? They probably think you’re hiding from them, or that customer complaints aren’t worth your valuable time, hence the automated responses!

Don’t forget that your customer service representatives are your frontline against customer complaints. They have the power to make a situation better or worse. When you have to make the choice between automation or live customer support, ask yourself this: “When my business venture gets complaints, would I rather be represented by an unfeeling robot or someone who is capable of empathizing with my customers?”

Striking a Balance

Naturally, this is not to say that automated systems should be ignored. You should, however, find the perfect balance between automated systems and live customer support. Redesign phone technology to make it more direct to the point, so that customers are able to talk your representative within two minutes of the call.

Many successful companies have understood all of this and applied it to their customer service program. Amazon’s customer service is a great example of a balance between technology and live support.

Similarly, local businesses, such as My Business Venture, make it a point to have live customer support—regardless of whether the customer has a complaint or not. Such measures have allowed them to grow exponentially over the last 23 years from a business run from inside an apartment to one of the most successful online turnkey solutions providers in New York.