What Are the Techniques to Identify Customer Service Problems and Their Causes?

To identify customer service problems and their causes, one must first understand the importance of solving them.

Every business has a different way they choose to solve customer service problems. Some companies may offer an easy or quick solution, while others have no control over the issue.

Here are some techniques that can help you find out what is wrong with your company's customer service process:

1) Ask employees who deal with customers directly about how they feel the processes could be improved. Then, track all the current processes.

Ask them to recall the details of their experience and what they would do differently if it happened again. Again, your staff is the frontline of your company and will identify some of the issues.

Review this information with other employees who do not have a customer service relationship. Ask them if any steps can be added or removed from your processes, which would make it better for all customers?

Take notes on what you hear, and don't argue back-and-forth with your employees.

2) Interview people who have had good experiences with your company to learn from their positive experiences. Ask them what they would do differently if it happened again. Have them recall the details of their experience and what else could be done to make their customer service better?

This takes a lot more time than simply asking your own employees/customers about problems, but you will find that many people are willing to give honest feedback. You may also get some ideas for new things to do. Make sure to track all these interactions in a CRM or somewhere where you can look back.

3) Create a survey for customers so you can get feedback on what needs improvement. A survey is a great way to capture specific details about customer service problems and their causes. For example, ask your loyal customers why they are your loyal customers?

There are many survey tools out there to help you create the right one for your company, but here are a few tips:

- Make sure it is brief (no more than five questions).

- It should be easy to read with clear language that doesn't assume any Identify the top three to five problems.

- Ask for specific details about where and when the problem happened, what was said or done in response.

- Track these interactions in a CRM so you can see how often they happen.

-Your customer service team should execute these.

4) Look at your data and identify recurring customer service problems. A CRM or business analytics tools are great for this. Track customer complaints. The more data you collect, the more pattern you see. With most CRM tools out there, you have the ability to gather as much data as possible and perform business intelligence analysis to see the pattern. Next, focus on the positive and negative feedback. It would help if you focused on what's working and what's not working. Lastly, most of the CRM's out there should have the ability to capture customer interactions (phone calls, emails etc.).

5) Talk to your customers. Talking to your customers can help you identify what they are frustrated about and why. They are the ones that ultimately make or break your business. You can either email them, call them or, or chat with them on your website.

6) Share your findings with sales reps, not just your customer service team. You want to make sure everyone is on the same page. Customer experience starts from the begging to the end. Not just at some part of the funnel. Remember, the customer journey starts from pre-sales to post-sales. 

Common Causes of Bad Customer Service

Here are some of the common causes for bad customer service.

- Lack of communication   Poor training or lack thereof Dealing with rude customers and bad attitudes The company's infrastructure, such as IT systems that cannot handle demand from increased traffic on their website or customers are unable to complete their transaction.

- Time constraints (not enough time for customer service reps) Working under unrealistic expectations of what is possible with a limited amount of resources, such as not having enough staff or funds available to provide the best customer service experience.

- Poor leadership and management from executives who don't understand that providing good customer service is the key to a successful business.

A product or service that doesn't meet customer needs and expectations can create dissatisfaction with how company representatives treat them.

- Poor training of employees (employees don't know enough about products).

- Lack of communication between departments within an organization, such as marketing not communicating the value.

- The company's infrastructure, such as IT systems that cannot handle demand from increased traffic on their website or a malfunctioning phone system).

- Poor website design. Poor user experience can lead to customer frustration.

- Poor customer service due to staffing shortages, lack of training or insufficient guidelines.

- Toxic people in leadership roles.

- Not using CRM to track engagements: CRM can help managers identify customer service problems early on. CRM can be used to track customer engagements or model their behaviours based on data.

How Can CRM Help Me Track Customer Service?

Customer service is an important part of any business. Customer satisfaction can be measured simply by the number of customers who return for repeat purchases, but customer retention also significantly impacts your profits. Understanding what makes one group happy and another unhappy will help you identify which parts of your business are working well and where improvements may need to be made.

The first step in identifying customer service problems is understanding where they come from. The causes of poor customer service can be identified by considering the five stages: contact, conversion, interaction, retention and feedback. At any point during this process, you may encounter a problem with your tools or staff training that could lead to negative results for yourself and your customers. If you would like more detail about how each stage works, please see our blog post below on "What are the techniques to identify customer service problems and their causes?"

How Can CRM Help Me Track Customer Service?

Customer satisfaction levels need regular monitoring so that patterns of happiness or discontentment among groups of people become obvious over time. A good CRM system will allow you to view this information in a way that is easy for you to understand and act on.

A CRM system should ideally be able to tell you how many customers have contacted your company, what type of contact they had with customer service staff (whether by phone or email), the average duration of their interaction (how long it took them) and whether they wanted further assistance after concluding their conversation.

Your CRM tool might also include alerts when new contacts are made, tools for incorporating feedback from reviews sites such as Yelp into conversations, reports detailing common problems experienced by different groups of people to identify trends more easily. These will all give valuable insights into ways that your business can improve its performance over time!

Hopefully, this helps to identify unhappy customers and perform root cause analysis to improve your customer satisfaction. Like any business, keeping customers happy and setting the right customer expectations is the key to long-term strategic growth.