Customer service communication can affect customers’ impression of your brand. 

Here are two ways of alerting a customer that a product is unavailable for instance:

“You can get the dress in two weeks and if you want, I can order for you now, so you get it as soon as they have it”.

This means the same thing but in the second one it’s more like you’re going out of your way for the customer when you are making a sale. All it comes down to is a transmission strategy.

Communication is, of course, the essence of customer service as any communication between your business and your client is one step closer to an improved customer relationship.

What is customer service communication?

This is the information between customer and company for solving customer queries. Email replies, social media, and even phone calls: there are many different ways to connect with your customers and provide help.

A great customer service voice and text must be articulate, efficient, efficient and friendly. You have to practice compassionate listening while talking to clients. And don’t forget, it’s a two-way street.

What is communication and customer service skills?

You never know when your customer might say something bad about your brand. Quite the opposite actually; one in three customers would recommend switching to a new provider after experiencing only one bad customer service experience. Good customer service means good communication.

Listening, patience, empathic and a grasp of the issue/problem are the communication skills to have while working with the customer that you need to have when working as a customer support professional.

Why Customer service messaging plays a role?

Good telephony and good customer service isn’t separate. There are many aspects to customer communication and customer service. 

(1) Convenience

Leaving your customers to the option to communicate on the medium they like is one of the elements of a good customer experience. Find yourself on the most popular platforms of your customers so customer questions can get answered in a short time.

For instance, if your customer base is younger, then perhaps you will extend your customer service through your social media and mobile-first messaging platforms like WhatsApp and LINE. Microsoft survey reveals that 54% of customers around the world prefer brands who are responsive to customer service inquiries or complaints on social media.

(2) Personalization

Your customer service team gets general direction from scripts but great customer service is personalization. You will have people on your team who can relate to the customers right from the outset. Customer support will have to know what the problem is and find a quick solution.

Now let’s say your company does luxury goods, and you want your reps to make people feel like VIPs. It is done by showing previous channels customer service interaction and viewing order history to know customer’s problem.

Context gathering before the customer talks can help them feel that you know exactly what they’re going to talk about. This will allow you to provide instant, contextualized, bespoke assistance that’s nothing short of a first-class service and ultimately, deliver more satisfied customers. 

(3) Consistency

Excellent customer service is channel- and customer-centric. That’s so the service experience doesn’t vary by support provider. If, for instance, customer support employees are handling your customers, you want them to speak the same language and use the same customer records so there is no friction during their journey.  

Your brand voice should always be in play in all interactions. Brands also must have the same vocabulary on all channels and reps must be able to use it exactly when engaging. 

(4) Feedback responses

Each and every customer engagement has a chance to garner valuable data about your customers’ opinions of your brand. 85% of customers think that brands behave positively if they openly and openly solicit feedback [2] as stated by Microsoft.

You can use the data to understand what your customers like and don’t like, how you can improve your product, and design better communication. What’s more, collecting customer feedback shows your customers that you’re listening, which makes relationships even more lasting.

10 customer service communication hacks you can implement immediately!

To Improve and Learn Customer Service Communication You Should Include Customer Service Strategy in Your Customer Service. The following are 10 things to work on in your customer communication.

1. Practice patience and empathy

Show that you care for your customers even if they share their frustration. Some customers need that extra word of assurance or a higher level of engagement to feel satisfied with the outcome. Also, being patient allows you the time to figure out the root cause of the problem and how to provide an effective solution instead of closing the loop in a hurry.

2. Communicate clearly and concisely

Be a friend to your customers even if they are frustrated with you. Some customers require that little bit more assurance, or a little more involvement, to be happy with the result. What’s more, being patient also gives you the chance to explore the problem and how to deliver an effective answer rather than closing the loop too quickly. 

Improve your fluency in your language and product knowledge so that your customers believe you. Decipherment means converting complexity to digestible ideas for your customers. For instance, they don’t need to know the inside story of how a bug occurred, but you may have to make it more accessible.

Clarity keeps customers from getting frustrated because it doesn’t happen if there’s miscommunication. And the best customer support agents can show you exactly what’s happening so customers don’t wonder and get stumped.

For great examples of how this is done on Reddit, visit the thread “Explain Like I’m Five”.
Make sure you are using positive language in speaking to customers. Positive language translates to “What you can do for your customer,” not what you cannot.

3. Active listening

Active listening ensures effective communication. Customer support agents are no longer left to simply listen to what the customer says, they have to listen to what customers say, feel what they are feeling and try to come up with the best solution.

If reps listen, maybe they know what’s going on and if they can’t offer immediate resolution, then at least they make customers feel that they’re heard and noticed. Listen to your customers, with care to fine-grained information, how big their issue is, and look for opportunities inside of.

4. Display emotional intelligence

Get to know your customers and what their problem is by being the customer. -Selling as if you understand your customer’s issue or pain-point, Customers like it when you’re upfront and interested in solving their problem. 

Consider this tip for acting emotionally intelligently in the face of an angry customer:

Customer: “I ordered it a month ago and when I got it, it is the wrong size! I’ve been on hold for a week — you do that to customers?!”

Agent Answer: “Aw, sorry you were stuck. I know either you have to replace with the same size or send it back and they will give you a refund. Do I understand this correctly?”

5. Be proactive in your approach

Being the extra mile for a customer is a great way to please them. Beware of issues that your customers might experience and have an answer that can save them some trouble.

For example, you can let customers know about likely issues beforehand by email or live chat and provide assistance right away if their frustrations are obvious with website widgets. Besides, you can follow-up with a customer after the forward. This way, your clients will stay with your brand.

6. Learn your customer based on data.

Here’s an infographic: You can get 5x as many customers if you acquire new customers as you will keep your existing customers. With that said, there is no doubt that it makes sense to figure out what customers are leaving and stick around. You need to know who your customers are and why they want to buy your product or use your service if you are going to grow your business. Analytics to discover customer groups, troubleshoot and troubleshoot.

7. Add creativity into the mix

Customer service gets very tedious.), so whenever the time is right, be creative to wow your customers. Even when the solution to a complaint is a creative solution especially if it’s done socially it gets a yes. But as long as you’re on brand, customers will love the laughs and the creativity! 

But be safe with humour and imagination. There may be a few situations, problems, or customers who wouldn’t like a light-hearted answer. If you do not want to fall into the wrong trap, then making clear the limits of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable for giving the full hand.

8. Enable employee engagement

Be there for your CS agents, and help them talk to experts who understand their pain. This will facilitate the exchange of information and work across the organization and open new doors to satiate the customers. You can make a weeknight time and ask agents to come together to discuss know how or learnings. 

Your help desk team should be able to easily connect and support each other on a daily basis. That can be achieved by selecting help desk software with a built-in collaboration module. The Freshdesk Omni, for example, allows agents to work together on the internal chat tool that is available in the tool. You can also pair communications software with your helpdesk software, in case you need to collaborate easily.

9. Survey customers and perfect your support.

Customer feedback is one of the best things that you can do to transform your customer experience. You never get the product perfect if a customer calls, emails or messages you on social media. If you are looking to streamline your customer service, customers will tell you. As such, one of your communication tactics needs to include asking customers for feedback.

10. Manage time efficiently

Time is money as the adage goes, tracking your time for different types of issues, committing to Service Level Agreements (SLA), looking at the real-time scenarios that lead to delays, and addressing them are all parts of making your customer service communications better. So, if you can give them a resolution SLA that has response times on when the ticket needs to be closed or resolved for instance, then the customer’s problem gets answered and taken care of in a good way, and not with quick fixes.

You can use workflow automation to eliminate time wasted on manual steps. So for example, instead of manually checking tickets to ensure parameters are current, you can automate an automated rule that scans all your tickets hourly and updates properties.

AI/bots for agents also can save you time. With agent-facing copilots by Freshworks’ Freddy AI, you can execute deep backend workflows in one action, receive automated recommendation for actions, and link assets to your customer conversation. AI flags valuable social media posts, automatically ties in conversations and doesn’t let thank you messages reopen closed tickets, all of which are labour-intensive tasks manually.

Customer service communication that works

The bottom line is all communications must be satisfactory to customers. A call to customer service is a very often the first face-to-face encounter between your customer and your brand. “And for better or worse, that rep is your brand until the call comes out,” says Forbes’ Matt Doyle. Then your customer and your company will communicate with each other and you have to learn as much as you can to be successful with your customer service communication.