How to make your question and complaint handling digital and personal

Does an item not meet expectations? Is a salary payment incorrect? Has anyone made a mistake, or is there a delay in the expected delivery time? Many entrepreneurs are sweaty. The increasingly impatient customers and employees want to be helped. Direct and good.

If you don't quickly find the perfect solution, today's version of the former pillory looms: a sneer on social media, or, even worse, a bad Google or TripAdvisor review. Every organisation's nightmare. Because there are so many others for you. Trust comes on foot and goes on horseback. And online, that horse gallops at turbo speed.

How do you ensure the best customer and employee experience? We have listed some ideas for you.

1. Chatbot

Many Dutchmen have already met Anna, Wout, Buddy and their buddies. Many companies think that a chatbot can be the solution. That in itself is not surprising. According to a Microsoft study, more than 60% of customer journeys begin online. Then offering 24/7 online customer contact seems like a logical choice, isn't it?

However, no matter how fast developments with AI go, a bot does not always appear to be the ultimate solution. It often takes quite a bit of effort for someone to formulate the right question with which the chatbot can come to the answer they are looking for. Then irritation grows with every click of the mouse, and the customer or employee feels more lonely, misunderstood and sent further from cabinet to wall.

Are we then an anti-chatbot? Certainly not! Of course, a chatbot offers advantages: once programmed, it (she?) always available. It limits a lot of routine work by customer service agents. And it also provides the organisation with a wealth of customer and product information. But use it wisely.

A few tips:

• Let the chatbot 'speak' the language of your target group and organisation. The employee not only understands the answers better, but can also better follow the bot's “way of thinking” and feels heard sooner.
• Make sure you have sufficient practical AI so that no errors occur once a question falls outside the decision schedule.
• Connect the chatbot to your business systems, with sufficient access to customer or employee data. This increases the possibility of personal services.
• Limit the chatbot's field of work mainly to simple actions and questions and leave more complex questions to people.
• Make sure there are sufficient and timely escape routes to e-mail or a call back, after which a “real employee” will take over answering the question. That's better than having the bot repeat the same question over and over again.
• Regularly review common questions and adjust the system accordingly.
  

2. Man

Whichever way you look at it: a person is and remains a social being. Every customer or employee wants to feel heard and understood. A website or chatbot, no matter how well designed, cannot always replace the person behind it.

For more complex questions or topics that are highly sensitive, a good human sounding board is and remains essential. In other words: the old, trusted customer service employee. At Pluvo, we are a big believer in personal customer service. We are rated 5 out of 5 stars and have an average response time of 3.8 minutes.

Tips for these human complaint solvers and questioners:

• Do you have a larger organisation or customer base? Provide a fixed contact person per customer or employee. You build more trust and also get more insight into what is really going on.
• Set up workflows and staffing in such a way that there is a good balance between online and offline knowledge sharing and complaint handling. Not every question needs a human answer.
• Have an employee answer questions that come in via the website or chatbot as quickly as possible, by phone, WhatsApp or email.
• After the personal response, send a link to clarifying information (such as a blog, a manual, or a website). This has the advantage that the customer or employee can re-read the information at their leisure later, but also lowers the threshold for searching and finding other online information.
• Interview regularly. Then you can make optimal use of other experiences and you can help each other.

3. Social learning

Does your customer or employee have a complaint or question about using a system, product or method? Then social learning often works better than blindly sending a tutorial, a dry manual or having an online lesson module follow. At Pluvo, we are happy to give you a tour of the platform. Curious about how Pluvo can help your organisation? Schedule a live demo!

A joint online knowledge session brings that important personal touch to your e-learning. It promotes collaboration and collegiality. People learn from each other and it ensures that people who are not eager to learn new knowledge or skills online are also involved.

How do you make the most of social learning?

• Set aside enough time and space for individual questions. One person's question can also provide important information for another.
• Ask participants to rate them in a star rating or a rating that is visible to other customers or employees.
• Ask in-depth questions that stimulate interaction. Ask for examples, participants' personal experiences, for example via a discussion in Pluvo.
• Share interesting articles and literature about a specific topic yourself and explicitly invite others to do the same.
• Respond positively to everyone's contribution by thanking each participant after a session, preferably with a substantive touch.

Hybrid expert
At Pluvo, we love nothing like smart online solutions. But solutions are only really smart when people can understand and use them. Are you looking for a good way to keep customers and employees informed and happy? Then you've come to the right place. We bridge the gap between people and automation that you need. Contact us, we would love to think along with you!

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