Logically speaking your office timing may end at sharp 5PM, but for your customers, they might just be getting started. Your customers might spend their 10 to 5 at their respective jobs and will get time only after your business hours to get in touch with you. That is when you must know what should or should not be said in your after-hours customer support and service. Well, if that is what you have been wondering off late, this blog will walk you through 6 such highly creative tips that will surely give wings to your after-hours customer support. Without any further ado, let us get started with the list.

Table of Contents

1. Provide your customers a self-service knowledge base
2. Say Yes to an AI Chatbot
3. Have an option of Offline Chat
4. Add a section for pre-recorded tutorials
5. Pay heed to the option of Voicemails
6. Provide an after-hours contact number for emergency

Provide your customers a self-service knowledge base

First and foremost, bring out a stellar self-service knowledge base that answers all questions that a customer might have. Having a well-drafted knowledge base will eliminate half the chance of reaching out to a customer support in the first place. On top of that, creating a knowledge base is pretty inexpensive too. When seen from a practical note, small businesses usually do not have enough budget to hire more staff during the after-hours and startups do not generally get that many after-hours calls. Putting up a well-crafted knowledge base does the best job here as it is becomes extremely easy to solve your problems yourself and does not really burn your wallet either.

Say Yes to an AI Chatbot

As per a recently conducted report, about a whopping 85% of the customer interactions will be taken over by AI chatbots and automatic systems by 2021. When you want to render your service after-hours, getting yourself an AI chatbot is possibly the best thing you can do. Chatbots provide users with quick and crisp answers, but most importantly, they provide 24×7 support. They can answer frequently asked questions, book meetings, retrieve resources, connect to an agent, and store interactions for self-learning. In short, they can do that all that a human representative would do, but faster and in a rather inexpensive way.

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Have an option of Offline Chat

With the help of offline chat function, a customer can type down their respective queries and that will be addressed at the earliest when a human representative is available. For this, all the customer needs to do is submit their contact credentials and the issue at hand. They don’t even have to log in or create an account to post this chat. As soon as a human representative comes online, they can start responding to their queries. Even though, it does not provide instant solutions to your customers, it is a good way to decrease frustrations and stay connected with your customers.

Add a section for pre-recorded tutorials

You know that there will always be some questions that the customers have in common. Why not add a separate section on your home page in form of pre-recorded tutorials that can demonstrate the solutions to your customers seamlessly. By assessing the most common support requests, your team can create some ‘how-to’ videos that walk people through troubleshooting. Link these tutorials and webinars in your canned responses. This will automatically eliminate the need to reach out to the customer support after-hours or even during hours too.

Pay heed to the option of Voicemails

One of the easiest ways of providing customer support to your customers after-hours is by adding voicemails.in the very least you can ensure that your customers who wish to get in touch with you after hours are not only acknowledged but are also invited to leave a message about their particular concern. This is not the same as getting on a phone call with a support agent, but at least they need not repeat the issue when they do connect with one.

Provide an after-hours contact number for emergency

Sometimes your customers can face an emergency issue while dealing with your products or services. For instance, a service outage or unplanned downtime is an emergency whereas a password reset is not. When you show your customers that you are available most of the times, assures them that your truly care about their customer experience with you. Further, you can add a note saying non-emergency issues or issues with dependence on IT service vendors, etc, will be addressed soon and they can check out your knowledge base meanwhile.

Parting Thoughts

When you have an after-hours customer support function, you make sure that your customer satisfaction rate stays intact at all times. Not just that, this way you also ensure that the customer acquisition rate does not take a backseat and the customer’s issues are deal with at the earliest. On top of that, you provide flexibility to support your customers and make sure that they have the best of customer experience with you. When a customer sees that you are there for them even during your after- hours, they will get to trust you more and believe in your services. Who knows, they might just reach out to more of their friends and relatives and give you more business unexpectedly? Let your service give your customers reassurance and the best of care.

WRITTEN BYJoseph Henson

Highly accomplished, motivated, and adaptable sales and operations professional with a track record of successful leadership. Known for an empathetic and consultative approach that consistently exceeds growth and revenue goals.

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