Emotions are wonderful and in every human interaction they are present. Fostering positive feelings during a customer service interaction is of the utmost importance. A lot can be achieved through a friendly and helpful approach, leaving the customer with the feeling of being helped and turning a negative experience into a positive one. Very often the memory stays with the person. Sometimes they share this experience with others, sometimes not but as we all know most often people are more likely to tell others about the negative experience. This raises a very important question: What can we do change a negative experience into a positive one?
Since the introduction of the internet, customer service has been an integral part of the experience. You purchase products or services online and when something goes wrong or something of the product or service is unclear, we simply go online and write an email or use the company’s online chat function and we are immediately brought in direct contact with their customer service department.
Food Delivery Services are still experiencing a huge boom.
Customers want a simple and convenient way of ordering food and are more and more frequently using websites or apps. These days, people have less time to spare due to work and family commitments and to compensate for this lack of time, people’s habits are changing. A huge variety of choice, the option of cash-free payments and user-friendly handling are leading people to order online, rather than choosing to cook. In the USA, 16 million Americans ordered their last Thanksgiving dinner online instead of preparing it themselves. The Customer Care department of a company must provide absolute courtesy, competence and profes-sionalism in order to ensure a satisfied customer. In order to ensure that a hungry customer is satisfied is ten times harder. In the Food Delivery business there are two types of customer; the person ordering on the website and the restaurant partner who delivers the food. Both types of customer are extremely different to each other. The customer ordering food is, above all, one thing: hungry. Hunger is one of the strongest feelings some-one can experience and can work people up into a frenzy. When these customers then contact the Customer Care department, they have to be handled with special care and wholehearted understanding. Some-times customers have not yet received their food or have had a bad experience, which is why they are con-tacting us. On top of this, these experiences connected to strong emotions are particularly vivid and remain in the customer’s mind. It then comes down to amending this bad experience in partnership with the restaurant. The running of the Customer Care department of a Food Delivery Service is therefore an exceptional chal-lenge. Being extremely easy to reach, offering fast solutions and employing helpful and friendly staff are the absolute minimum of what is required. Customers expect a round-the-clock service, rapid response times from our service channels and a customer-orientated approach via social media. Restaurant partners are fully aware that excellent customer service is a vital component of a successful business relationship and they expect this from every business partner. Due to the variety of cuisines on offer, many different nationalities are represented in the Customer Care department, each with their own unique and personal style of handling issues. Since the most frequent request from restaurants is making changes to their menu, this service must be completely free-of-charge for the restaurants. Furthermore, through VIP service, restaurant partners with high order volumes must receive their own personal in-house contact, as well as detailed reports containing statistics relating to orders and turn-over. Opportunities of increasing order volumes should be discussed, as well as measures to entice new and maintain regular customers. But no matter if B2B or B2C Customer- Each customer must be treated individually, with human warmth and respect, always. |