5 rules for giving better customer service from... Twitter?

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By Kirk Averett

A person is pretty happy or pretty unhappy if they're tweeting about customer service. Look past the self-promoting #customerservice tweets and you can find some interesting and powerful patterns. I believe they apply whether your customer is inside or outside your business. This list was distilled from more than 1,000 tweets about customer service and it really resonated with my own experiences.

1. DO: FIX THE PROBLEM! (yelling is intentional)

2. DO: Listen and remember

3. DON'T: Make things complicated

4. DO: Make and keep commitments

4.1 DO: Set and keep time commitments

5. DON'T: Show annoyance

There are twists and complexities worth understanding.

DO: FIX THE PROBLEM!

There were no points for politeness or punctuality if the problem wasn't resolved. This should be obvious to everyone. And yet even earnest employees still slipped.

Partial fixes generated a mix of customer responses. A decent partial fix with a sincere apology for the shortfall was often hailed as good service. But a weak fix and a weak apology was always identified as bad service.

Surprisingly often, customers complained that only one problem was resolved out of their list of issues. Innocent forgetfulness looks exactly the same as intentional disregard to the customer.

How to do better: Make a list of the problems and verify it with the customer. Then address each one head on.

DO: Listen and remember

Even if a problem was eventually addressed, customers felt frustrated at repeating themselves. That was true whether they spoke to the same person at the place of business or someone new. This makes sense because the customer sees the whole business like a single person. Every repetition reduces trust.

How to do better: Single-task and take good notes. Ask good questions to prove you were listening. If the customer must be passed to someone else, do a warm handoff where the customer can hear their situation summarized.

DON'T: Make things complicated

The customer wanted to briefly know when and how things would be better, not every detail. There was too much talk about internal processes and problems.

The other common complaint was using jargon. A customer might pretend to understand, which is no good. Or they have to ask for understandable explanations, which makes them feel dumb.

How to do better: Practice & review as much as possible. A teammate or a manager can provide feedback.

DO: Make and keep commitments

Customers were understandably upset when a commitment was broken. Here we're not speaking about the initial problem that led to needing customer service. This is about commitments made while trying to solve that problem. A broken commitment at this point is now the second (or third, or fourth) failure.

This is a minefield because customers often treated IMPLIED commitments with great weight. Is the replacement *exactly* the same or is it a slightly different shade of green? Over-communication is key.

The other thing that upset customers was someone refusing to make a commitment. Will you or won't you? Why or why not? Refusing to commit leaves a sour taste with the customer.

How to do better: Be bold and as specific as possible about commitments. Consider mentioning what you cannot commit to and why. Do whatever it takes to keep the commitments you have made.

DO: Talk about timelines and be on time (a special kind of commitment)

There was a huge variety of acceptable timelines depending on the situation. But talking about and committing to a timeline was always seen as helpful. Hitting the committed timeline was a major factor in winning back trust.

What can you do if you can't commit to a time for the problem to be fixed? Customers were almost always satisfied by an honored commitment to regular progress updates.

How to do better: Set an alarm or the calendar time required to guarantee that you will follow up. Do whatever it takes.

DON'T: Act annoyed at "having to" help the customer

Why does this still happen? Every business benefits from word of mouth or repeat customers. Nothing kills a reputation like this tragically common attitude.

How to do better: Frequently communicate to all staff about prioritizing customer's needs. Employees can practice handling difficult situations and avoid this perception in edge cases.

Conclusion

This list focuses on hitting the minimums, not hitting it out of the park. Doing the job is expected. Going above and beyond is something else entirely.

Thanks, Twitter, for letting us learn from your users and make our customer service better