Top 5 Customer Service Articles For the Week of June 12, 2016

Each week I read a number of customer service articles from various online resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

How Twitter’s Recent Changes Affect Customer Service by Dan Gingiss

(SocialMediaToday) Recently, Twitter announced several changes to how it calculates the number of characters in a tweet. Marketers rejoiced because they now have additional characters with which to include photos, videos, and polls. Twitter purists rejoiced because the platform kept its 140-character limit and didn’t expand to a once-rumored 10,000 character limit.

My Comment: Twitter has become an important customer service channel. This excellent article is filled with ideas and tips to help any business understand how to use Twitter as a way to interact with customers for complaints, praise and any other customer comments. And, more than just another channel, Twitter has created applications specific for customer service and business.

Difficult Customers 101: The 4 Difficult Customers & How To Tame Them With Customer Support by Jack Plantin

(Support Your App) No matter what industry you’re in, which product you’re selling, how well you’re doing your job… there will always be difficult customers that will unintentionally (or intentionally) make your life a living hell. Here are four common characters and how to tame them.

My Comment: Outstanding article on four types of customers that can make your life miserable. (The author has a more colorful way of saying it!) Jack Plantin uses the words “Expert,” “Aggressor,” “Con Artist” and “Turtle” to describe four styles of difficult customers and then shares how to handle them.

The Top 8 Customer Experience Trends in 2016 (Infographic) by David Younger

(The Service Manager) From leveraging self-service tool for personalisation to embracing an omni-channel customer servicing, here are eight trends in customer experience that are going to be relevant to most businesses in 2016.

My Comment: This is actually an infographic that hits on some of the top trends happening in customer experience, with a few predictions on what to expect in the near future. Perhaps one of the most important trends is the first one, that emphasizes how self-service customer service is a viable channel. Gartner predicts that in 2020 85% of business relationships will be handled without any human interaction.

24 Experts Reveal Their Top Customer Retention Strategies For B2C Brands by Clutch

(Clutch) In today’s competitive marketplace, consumers have an increasing amount of choices- and they aren’t afraid to try them. There always seems to be a new product, service, or experience within reach of a brand’s current customer. And as we all know, replacing an existing customer costs 7 times more than retaining them. So how do you ensure your brand is retaining its precious customer base?

My Comment: Who isn’t interested in customer retention and loyalty! This is a roundup of 24 customer service and experience experts (and I’m honored they included my comment) who “reveal” their favorite tips, ideas and strategies on how to retain customers.

When Upselling Makes for a Bad Customer Service Experience by Conversational

(Converstional) How important is customer service to your business? Is it more important than sales? That’s a tough question to answer. Because your company relies on sales to stay in business, you might be tempted to say that sales are more important than customer service.

My Comment: Don’t you just hate when you call for support and the customer service rep tries to upsell you to spend more with them? This is a trick question. Yes, there are companies that abuse the privilege to upsell, and this article shares three of them. But, in the right situation, an upsell is important – so important that to not upsell is bad customer service. For example, if you go to the hardware store and buy a can of paint and the salesperson doesn’t ask if you if you need a brush, he/she is failing you with bad service. In the right situation, upselling is a great service. Done wrong, it builds distrust and kills the relationship.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken