Mastering Customer Support: Key Strategies for Non-Profits

Train your Staff

Even if you are able to respond quickly, it can do more harm than good if your answers are inaccurate, incomplete, or confusing. This is especially true for non-profits, where providing accurate and reliable information is essential to maintaining trust with donors, volunteers, and other stakeholders.

Surprisingly, many customer support representatives provide their audience with inaccurate answers.

This can happen for a variety of reasons, including a lack of training or knowledge, miscommunication, or simple mistakes. In some cases, staff members may feel pressure to provide quick answers, even if they are not completely sure of the information.

To avoid providing inaccurate information, it is essential that staff members have a deep understanding of the organization’s products, services, and policies. This requires ongoing training and development to ensure that staff members stay up-to-date with the latest information and policies. It is also important to have clear processes and procedures in place for handling customer inquiries, including escalation procedures for complex or sensitive issues.

One way to reduce the risk of providing inaccurate information is to use a knowledge base.

Use a Knowledge base

A knowledge base is a centralized repository of information that staff members can use to find answers to common questions and access important resources. By providing staff members with access to a comprehensive knowledge base, non-profits can ensure that they have the information they need to provide accurate and reliable customer support.

Ultimately, providing accurate and reliable customer support is essential for non-profits to build and maintain trust with their stakeholders. By investing in training and development, using a knowledge base, and implementing clear processes and procedures, non-profits can ensure that they are providing the highest quality customer support possible.

Make use of Chatbots to Answer Basic Queries

In many cases, you will get some basic or common questions, and you don’t have to assign a customer care representative to answer those questions.

Instead, you can get the assistance of a chatbot to answer. As of today, there are artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots that can respond to plenty of inquiries on behalf of customer care representatives. The speed they respond to inquiries is exceptional. Also, the accuracy of the answers is impressive because the chatbots are fed with answers in advance.

In addition to that, chatbots are available 24/7.

Compared to human staff, chatbots are always available any time of the day or night. Basically, a chatbot is a tool that constantly provides accurate information, regardless of the time.

Since chatbots can handle most of the routine questions, the actual customer care representatives can focus on complex or unique questions while chatbots handle more basic queries.

To make it a seamless experience, however, the chatbot should be programmed in a way, that it will transfer the question to a human staff member if required. As a result, the visitor or the user will not have to pose the same query to a human representative. Also, that is an indication that you are taking the inquiry seriously.

Set Clear Expectations

When it comes to customer support, managing expectations is key. Non-profits should be transparent about what customers can expect in terms of response times, available support channels, and the types of inquiries their staff can handle.

For example, it is important to clearly communicate response times for different support channels, such as email, phone, or social media.

This allows customers to plan accordingly and reduces frustration caused by long wait times or lack of response. Non-profits should also make it clear which support channels are available and how customers can access them.

In addition, non-profits should be transparent about the types of inquiries their staff can handle. This includes providing information about the scope of support offered, as well as any limitations or exclusions. By setting clear expectations, non-profits can avoid misunderstandings and reduce frustration for both customers and staff members.

To communicate these expectations effectively, non-profits can use a variety of channels, including their website, social media, and automated email responses. For example, a non-profit might include information about response times and available support channels on their website’s contact page, or in their social media profiles.

Automated email responses can also be used to acknowledge inquiries and provide customers with an estimated response time.

By managing customer expectations in this way, non-profits can provide more effective customer support and build trust with their customers. Customers who know what to expect are more likely to have a positive experience, even if they don’t receive an immediate response or their inquiry cannot be resolved right away.

Use a Customer Service Application to Track Interactions

If you can resolve a particular query in the first interaction, that would be ideal. However, in many cases, it is not practical. This is specifically true when it comes to explaining the purpose of your non-profit.

You may often get unique inquiries, and you will have to follow them up with unique approaches.

In addition to that, there are customer service representatives who may fail to follow up on queries, and this can be a huge loss to a non-profit. In that case, the best option is to use a Customer Relationship Management tool (CRM). With such a tool, you can track how the representatives interact with prospective benefactors or individuals. A good CRM always encourages representatives to follow up on inquiries within a specific period.

Use Timely Email alerts

As a non-profit, it is always important for you to respond to every individual’s questions. You should do it because more than half of the prospective individuals tend to consider you favorably if you respond to them in a timely manner.

If you don’t respond or take too long, you are likely to lose that prospect.

To address such an issue, you can rely on your CRM and configure it in such a way that it will send you timely email alerts. Those alerts will be sent to you if the questions are left unanswered for a particular time.

Responding to queries faster is important. However, it is more important to respond faster with accurate and clear information. Therefore, it is always recommended to empower your customer service staff with updated knowledge and necessary training.

Follow Up with Customers

Following up with customers after their issue has been resolved is a critical step in providing excellent customer support. By doing so, non-profits can ensure that their customers are satisfied with the support they received and that their issue has been fully resolved.

Following up with customers can take a variety of forms, including phone calls, emails, or surveys.

Phone calls or emails allow non-profits to directly ask customers if their issue has been resolved satisfactorily, while surveys can provide a more structured way to collect feedback and identify areas for improvement.

When following up with customers, it is important to be respectful of their time and communication preferences. Non-profits should ask customers how they prefer to be contacted and respect their wishes. In addition, follow-up communications should be personalized and should acknowledge the customer’s previous inquiry or issue.

Following up with customers can also provide an opportunity to further engage with them and strengthen the relationship. Non-profits can use this as an opportunity to thank customers for their support and provide additional information about their programs or services. This can help to build loyalty and improve retention rates.

Ultimately, following up with customers is an important way to show that non-profits care about their customers and are committed to providing high-quality support. By doing so, non-profits can improve customer satisfaction, build loyalty, and create positive word-of-mouth recommendations that can help to attract new supporters.