Customer Service Policy
Customer Service Policy is a live document created for the customer service team to be equally efficient. Provides instructions, tips and examples on how to ensure customer success.
It’s a set of actions that guide the overall approach to customer service and attitude. An example of customer service policy is how to deal with refunds in the organization and what are the criteria for providing refunds.
The customer service policy serves as a reference point for all customer service executives and allows them to handle situations in a similar way. By maintaining this consistency, the company ensures that every customer interaction succeeds and meets each customer’s needs without any bias.
Why are customer service policies important?
Customer service policies are an important document for any customer service team. Helps ensure that customers are treated in a similar way across all customer service representatives regardless of where they live. Having a structure in place guides and helps customer service representatives speed up and ensures customer happiness and success.
How does customer service policy evolve?
The first step in creating a customer service policy is to look at the big picture. What is the mission of your customer service team? How do you know excellent service?
Many customer service policies start with mission statement. This is usually one or two lines that summarize how you want to treat your customers.
How to develop your customer service policy
What do your customers need for a customer service policy to be established?
Your customer service policy should address the real needs and expectations of your customers. Don’t guess, look, start talking to your customer service staff.
They already know a lot about common customer concerns and weaknesses. You can also send customer questionnaires to learn more about what your customers want and what frustrates them.
For example, if they feel dissatisfied with the speed of service or the consistency of their interactions with your company, address these things in politics.
What can you realistically offer your customers in customer service policy?
Making a promise to your customers for everything they want sounds nice, but your customer service policy must be realistic in terms of what you can offer.
The document will be meaningless to your employees and customers if the promises you make are not achievable.
Find out how your team works now. What is the average response time? How many tickets do you solve each month? What channels can customers use to contact you? Put goals at hand.
If you’re not satisfied with what you can offer right now, think about the technology you’re using. The customer service program greatly affects what you can promise.
For example, whatsApp ChatBot, supported by ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, can help provide faster and more efficient service without sacrificing personal touch.
What should be included in the customer service policy?
The bulk of your customer service policy should serve as guidance on how customer service representatives behave in certain circumstances, which will be unique to your business, but there are some common things to consider.
- Your company’s values. This can be part of the customer service mission statement.
- The promised response and solution time. Will you be back with your customers in an hour or six? When will the problem be solved? What are your support hours?
- Professionalism guidelines. When your employees interact with customers, how should they behave? For personal interactions, this can include guidelines for professional clothing. For remote customer service agents, this may include expectations about how they welcome customers and talk to them.
- Industry or business policies. For example, if you run an e-commerce business, you can include shipping, return, exchanges, and invoices rules.
- How you will collect comments. Remember how you’re going to collect it and how many times. If your customer service policy is customer-oriented, tell customers how to contact you and how you will respond to negative comments.
- What to do when customers are unhappy. If the customer is not satisfied, will he recover your money?
- Escalation matrix. Make sure everyone knows what to do when you violate these policies or (service level agreements).
- Guidance for cooperation between the team. What is the common procedure for filing error requests? What are the acceptable waiting times? How do you escalate delays from other sections?
Additional customer service policy tips
Not all customer service policies are equally effective. For the best results, your policy must be clear and effective. Here are some tips that will help you formulate the perfect policy.
Creating politics
Be precise. For example, ensuring an email response within 24 hours is better than saying that you will provide a quick service.
Keep it simple. It’s okay one or two pages. Prioritize goals that will have the greatest impact on the customer experience.
Make it easy to understand. Whether the reader is a new employee or a customer, your policy should be clear and straightforward. This means dispensing with industry and corporate terminology.
Policy implementation
Every employee of the company must have access to your customer service policy.
Place them in your internal knowledge base so team members can quickly verify them. Publish physical copies in your workspaces or stores. You can also post it on your website where customers can read it.
Customer service staff training should include policy. These are the main priorities of your team and you should take the time to make sure that the trainees understand each element.
Once you’ve made your policy, watch your success. You can use your help desk to track service level agreements.
If you don’t reach customer service policy goals, it may mean that your employees are underperforming or need more training. It may also mean that the guidelines are not realistic given your resources and techniques. If this is the last, look at what your team needs to achieve their goals.
Customer service policy is a live document. Update it if anything changes and plan to review the policy annually.
Customer service technology and your policy
Consistent service is only possible if everyone has access to the same information and tools. When evaluating new solutions, do so with customer service policy objectives in mind.
For example, if you say you’ll respond to customers across multiple channels, make it easier for your agents to do so by choosing a multi-channel platform.
You can use your help desk to track service level agreements. These service level agreements must meet the criteria in your customer service policy. Create reports to look into violations and discover the underlying causes and trends.
