I am constantly under pressure to get back to my customers quickly. They expect a response within minutes, and I can’t manage that. How can IT help?
Is it OK to tell them an expected response time?
My business changes with different clients and staffing. How would I go about communicating to customers any changes in response and reasons why?
IT can help you in a lot of ways, one example is, an online helpdesk as part of your website. Customers can submit their queries to a helpdesk and get an automated email to confirm their query has been logged. It would include an estimated time that you will respond by. You can then assign the job to the appropriate staff and they can update the customer or ask questions about the issue - all from the same system.
Also, a live chat with multiple representatives is also a good alternative, and yes, it's ok to give an estimated time. This is a good way of managing expectations. And to your last question, think about putting up warnings for expected downtimes in employee work on a website.
When your customers have a problem that they need fixing you can send them an estimated time that it may take for a response. You could set up an automated response system for any customers with frequently asked questions. This could also be helped by putting the frequently asked questions on a webpage with answers next to them, like this page.
If you have enough staff you could monitor your social media and respond to questions and complaints in direct messages.
Explore the details in the Customer Service section of our knowledge base.
