By Emma James

No matter, whether it is about answering tickets, receiving phone calls, responding to live chats, demonstrating customers about a new feature, or writing knowledge base articles, communication is the main purpose of the customer services. Many things depend on good communication, and so the stronger they communicate, the better they perform the tasks. 

A huge part of communication in client support is understanding how and when to follow up with your clients. Nailing the follow up is crucial, and such moments can either make or break the experience that a consumer has with your support department. Follow-up that is executed properly has all the potential to make customers satisfied and keeps them coming back to resolve more issues quickly.  

It is true that good follow-up can be difficult. You might not have the appropriate answer or might be saying an answer that the client does not want to hear. Whatever may be the case, follow-ups must be thoughtful, thorough, and on time to maintain a robust relationship with the client. It also seeks to be contextual and receive any details required to move ahead. 

Are You Failing to Follow-up?

The follow-ups are a good opportunity to make your customers happy. Failure to follow-up leaves your clients in the dark, feeling isolated and not impressed with your service. Moreover, it also creates a negative experience with your brand. These are missed opportunities to develop trust, grow a good relationship, and delight your clients. 

Here, we present multiple scenarios when a follow-up comes into play with client support services. 

1. After a Customer Submit Ticket

Relying on the average response time, it might make sense to send automated reply messages to your clients after they submit a request. When you have a short response time, it might not be essential. 

Whereas, if the response time takes longer, you do not want to leave your clients hanging, thus speculating whether you have seen their messages or not even for once. Hence, follow-up with your clients and provide assurance that you have received their request and will be in touch soon. 

Easy and automated follow-ups with clients through online help desk ticketing system provide reassurance that they are in good hands and that their messages have landed in the appropriate place. 

2. When a Bug Gets Fixed

Your clients not only contact the support team about the feature requests. They even contact support about problems and bugs within the product and service. Bug reports are different kind of interaction than feature requests. Clients reporting bugs may become annoyed and confused at the same time. 

Fixing bugs are big wins in the world of customer service. If we had it the way, then we would have engineers working on the bug fixes as soon as they have come in. Depending on how crucial the issue is at times, this is the case. 

But very often, issues sit in the backlog for a moment. Allowing clients to know a bug has been fixed is another great way to make them happy. No matter whether the bug is big or small, such types of follow-ups go a long way, and aids build trust with your clients. 

3. Follow-up with Your Clients through Live Chat Options

Live chat signifies that you should follow-up with your customers at the earliest. The reason behind it is clients expect live chat option to be live instantaneously, every second matter. The longer you take to respond to a live chat, the more likely your clients will leave the live chat altogether, leaving them angry, thus ultimately developing distrust. 

When your team utilizes live chat, be sure that you are staffed to be able to respond rapidly. If the team is limited and small, configure the live chat tool to be “offline” or “unavailable” when a particular threshold of chats enters. 

Lastly, if you told your client that you would look into something for them during the chat conversations and will be back soon- do not abandon them by leaving. Send them an email with the requested detail or information when you promised you would. They may feel super grateful during the chat. But if you fail to fulfill the promises, you can lose your client. 

4. When a Solution Is Taking Long Than the Expected Time

The part of communication in customer service is about setting expectations. You might be helping your customer with a particular request, which comprises of extra time or help from a team member on your side. Complicated issues and questions can take an unknown amount of time. For such types of interactions, you want to keep in daily communication with the client. 

Do not leave any opportunity for them to reach you out and ask about the status of progress. Understand the importance and ensure that you comprehend the issue so you can set appropriate expectations at the correct time. 

Reach out to the customers proactively to let them understand that you are still working on the problem, and it will take a little more time than expected. At times, it is okay to reset expectations with the client when required. But avoid misleading or abandoning them. Keep in touch with your clients and plan to over-communicate instead of not communicating at all. 

Setting internal service-level agreements and processes for the unresolved tickets can aid in recognizing when it is time to follow-up with a particular client. 

The Bottom Line

Great follow-up techniques build trust that can result in enhanced customer retention. Following up with your clients with the appropriate information and at the correct time, makes it simple to work with, which can improve the satisfaction scores ultimately.

Author Bio:

Emma James is a freelance content writer at SutiDesk, who frequently blogs on Business, Marketing, Sales, ERP, HelpDesk and SaaS trends.