“Our idea was to make it so our customers receive meaningful feedback and feel appreciated, so no one feels like a ‘little fish in the sea’,” says Cobus Wiese, Executive Head of Service Delivery at ICTGlobe.com
ICTGlobe.com is always examining new methods to assist and provide support to its reseller channel. The company’s mission is to work with its channel partners quickly and efficiently to add value to their bottom line.
“You may have a fantastic product, but if your customer service isn’t helpful or reliable, or your customer service team is just plain hard to reach, folks are going to hear about it, and you will lose customers,” says Cobus Wiese, Executive Head of Service Delivery at ICTGlobe.com. “This is a big reason why investing in customer service is key to long-term business success, and it’s the driving force behind ICTGlobe.com’s HPT structure.”
Common service delivery failures occur when staff members don’t understand or rate the importance of a request; great customer service means following best practices like valuing customers’ time, having a pleasant attitude and providing knowledgeable and resources. The best customer service, however, is when you take things a step further and exceed – rather than just meet – expectations.
Expansive knowledge of your product is an essential customer service skill: “Ideally, you should believe in your product, be equipped to discuss its features and use cases in an insightful way and show your customers how the product can benefit them – and you have to be prepared to immediately troubleshoot anything that’s not working right,” says Wiese. Over 80 percent of customers have churned because they received bad customer service. “Your team must thrive on solving your customers’ solutions – this must be a central component of your support role.”
And there will always be problems to solve, regardless of the quality of your products and services. 66 percent of people believe the value agents demonstrate for a customer’s time is the most important aspect of any online customer experience. Resolving customer queries as quickly as possible is a cornerstone of good customer service, and speed should be of the essence — especially for smaller issues that don’t take much time to solve.
Wiese also believes great customer service beats speed every time. “Going the extra mile is one of the most important things you can do to deliver great customer service,” he says. “This is when you have ticked all the boxes, yet you still want to do more.”
Sometimes this means anticipating your customers’ needs before they even articulate them. “There may be times when your customers ask for one thing without realizing they also need another,” Wiese says. “Your team needs to anticipate their needs – this requires an active relationship with your customers and should create sales opportunities.”
40 percent of customers say they want better human service: they want to feel like more than just a ticket number, and they get upset when they’re not being treated like an individual. “No one wants to be given boilerplate responses, nor does anyone appreciate being tossed like a rugby ball from one agent or department to another.”
Keep in mind customers don’t always want to talk to someone to get their problems solved — they often want to quickly resolve their issue themselves. Among consumers, 81 percent attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative. Further research shows 71 percent want the ability to resolve most customer service issues on their own.
“ICTGlobe.com High-Performance Teams (HPT) were initiated in the fourth quarter of 2020 to address and implement best customer service practices as outlined above, thereby creating an environment wherein we educate our clients about our products and our efficient, personalised support,” says Wiese. “Our idea was to make it so our customers receive meaningful feedback and feel appreciated, so no one feels like a ‘little fish in the sea’. This personalized service is key to succeeding in our industry, as it often disappears when dealing with call centres.”
Each ICTGlobe.com HPT works with a set number of customers to ensure these customers receive truly personalized service – this includes dealing with all of a customer’s issues and queries (accounts, tech support) at once, one-to-one, rather than sending them to numerous departments.
“In today’s marketplace the SME lifeline is invisible, so to address this we revolutionised the way we do business by creating and deploying our HPT system,” says Wiese. “These teams comprise experts from each of our departments, goal-oriented and hyper-focused individuals determined to achieve clear, outstanding customer service results: they collaborate and innovate to meet the highest-possible standards of customer satisfaction in every one of our departments. Our HPT system also includes an active training requirement comprising training portals and monthly reseller education sessions.”
The quality of any customer service endeavour depends on an impeccable CRM, one that’s been customised to provide detailed, optimal information about customers quickly and efficiently.
“We have an array of CRM software in our product suite for any and all operational needs your SME may have. We want to empower your business model with the high-performance team approach by providing you with the best possible customer service while we do it.”
Find out more, info@ictglobe.com or complete our contact form.
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