Making the Most of Customer Helplines

2008-04-11 14:47:35

( Financial )



A Common Source of Bad Experiences

Many dissatisfied customers say that customer helplines are inefficient, ignorant or unsympathetic to their needs. Some customers say that they needed to contact customer helplines at least a few times before getting the needed assistance.

But contacting customer helplines need not be traumatic for you, if you follow some simple strategies.

Do You Really Need to Make That Phone Call?

Many companies have websites where you can find helpful information to address your particular concern. Companies such as National Debt Helpline offer helpful articles that you can read. Then if you feel that you need to get more answers, you can e-mail them anytime.

Be Prepared and Know What You are Asking For

If your call to the customer helpline concerns a complaint, be ready to provide them with specific information. As standard operating procedure, customer helplines have to ask for your name, account number, product code and other crucial information to help them track the nature of your problem. While giving just your name is sufficient, it will take them longer just to locate your records in their database.

Be specific in describing your problem, and always include dates of occurrence as well as details of previous transactions or conversations you have had with other representatives of the company.

Seek to Understand

Remember that customer relations personnel are often entry-level employees who have to follow a very stringent set of policies and procedures. If your request will bend some existing company rules, chances are strong that your request may not be granted, or it will be elevated to higher authorities within the company for decisions.

Most customer relations personnel are actually determined to help you as far as they can, but their powers are limited. If they inform you that your request may be impossible to fulfill, ask to speak to a higher ranking person.

For a major problem, expect them to ask you to write a letter of complaint. In such cases, be very detailed in describing the circumstances and include all incidents of dealing with the company's customer helpline.

Control Your Temper and Emotions

Most customers forget that the people they are contacting on the customer helpline are also human. While customer reps are trained to deal with difficult customers, they are also entitled to common courtesy. Yelling and showing emotions while talking to them will only strain the conversation and stress you more.

Putting you on hold for a few minutes may make you irritable and impatient, but it's a standard procedure which gives them time to look up information for you. You can stretch your patience longer by multitasking as you speak to them, like doing some calculations or working on your computer.

Observing the golden rule will help you tremendously in dealing with customer helplines. The nicer you are to them, the more they will be determined to help you find a satisfactory solution to your problem.


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