Catch up on your prescribed dosage of customer service with this week's latest and greatest content on the Service Blog.
Enjoy,
Flori Needle
HubSpot Service Blog
12 Top Reasons to Get a Customer Support Job, Straight from a Rep
A customer support job is a fantastic career choice for you if you like to solve problems, help others, and directly impact the bottom line at your company. If you're looking for a customer support job but aren't sure whether the career is right for you, I've got you covered. When I first started at HubSpot, I worked on the customer support team, so I have first-hand experience on the field. In this post, you'll learn the skills and expertise you can gain from a job in customer support — and how the experience will benefit you for the rest of your career.
How to Say No to Customers in a Positive Way, According to Reps
It's well known that loyal customers are valuable for your business. So, it's no surprise that we often talk about the importance of generating customer loyalty and doing everything within your power to fulfill your customer's needs. However, when you work in a customer-facing role, you might need to say "no" to your customers and that's difficult. You want to do everything you can to improve their experience with your company. But, sometimes customers expect too much from your business and ask for something you simply cannot provide to them. Saying "no" might be necessary, but how you handle the situation can impact your bottom line. In fact, 14% of customers leave because the business doesn't know how to handle their complaints. In this post, we'll break down what you can do to resolve situations where you can't fulfill the customer's request.
8 Customer Intimacy Strategies for Companies of Any Size
What's cooler than gaining a customer? No, not gaining two customers (though I have to admit, that's still pretty cool). It's getting customers to come back to your business. Why? Because this demonstrates an understanding of customer intimacy. Sure, your core product provides value for customers, which is the driving force behind your business. But, there is so much more value you could proactively provide to increase customer loyalty and reduce customer churn. You have the opportunity to provide your customers with increased value in a way that matters to them by tapping into and addressing their needs. Your ability to do that effectively is what customer intimacy is all about.
As consumers, the last thing we want is to open an instruction manual and not understand how to begin using our new product. As a business, that's the last thing you want as well; you want your new users to quickly and easily be able to set up their new purchase and begin using it. Given this, instruction manuals are one of the most critical elements of a purchase, but creating them can be difficult. For example, will you use images to guide your users through set-up, or rely solely on text? Will you display your brand personality, or be as straightforward and serious as possible? Whichever route you choose, you should create your guides for one common denominator: your customers. If you're feeling confused about how to create your own, looking for inspiration, or simply hoping to see what else is out there, read on to discover examples of high-quality instruction manuals from real-life businesses and what makes them so effective.
Obtaining customer feedback is difficult. You need strong survey questions that effectively derive customer insights. Not to mention a distribution system that shares the survey with the right customers at the right time. However, survey data doesn't just sort and analyze itself. You need a team dedicated to sifting through survey results and highlighting key trends and behaviors for your marketing, sales, and customer service teams. In this post, we'll discuss not only how to analyze survey results, but also how to present your findings to the rest of your organization.
Every week, we ask HubSpot's support team to answer questions about customer service. Have something you want to ask? Submit it below!
What are de-escalation techniques?
"De-escalation is a process by which you calm the situation before it gets worse. This can be done through a variety of techniques involving breathing, active listening, asking questions, being compassionate, and the use of body language."