Customer service is vital in every industry around the globe. Whether you work in retail, technology or manufacturing, you'll encounter customers with quibbles, queries and questions.
How you respond to those will define your success as a business, although some companies may not be quite as invested in others. Larger companies have very little front-facing customer service; contacting Amazon can sometimes feel like navigating a maze. It's so complicated, leading to bad feedback for the company. They're a multi-billion-dollar company, and sadly a complaint over a five-dollar gadget won't break them.
However, if you're a company in a choked industry, one complaint could cause a significant problem. You can see an example of this in the online poker industry. Not only are there many providers, all wanting business, but it has previously had a bad reputation. The 2011 Black Friday event shook confidence in providers, and a decade later, those ripples are still being felt.
That's why every contact with an online poker supplier is hugely important. More people than ever
play poker online, but that doesn't mean a provider can rest on their laurels. There are so many options for customers that a single complaint can result in lost business than can never be won back. If you don't get a reply from Amazon, you're unlikely to conduct all of your online shopping elsewhere, but a complaint for a similar value to an online poker provider might mean you never return.
That's why online poker companies have triple-A customer service; this is how they do it.
Extensive FAQ Sections
Frequently Asked Questions sections can, at times, feel like a fob-off. If you have a problem and you see a list of generic answers which don't cover your issue, it can be a serious customer service failure. However, if the FAQ is thorough and packed with actual FAQs, not just a handful of common problems, then there's a likelihood a customer's problem can be solved quickly. It's important that the titles of the questions are accurate and that the database is fully searchable to answer a query quickly. Online providers often have extensive FAQs which deal with many of the most common problems. That allows them to fall back on real-person interaction for more challenging issues.
Bilingual Operators
Online poker is an international business; any table you find yourself around could feature players from other countries. That's fine if it's England and the United States, but what if you attract players from France, Brazil and Vietnam? You're going to need a bilingual customer service operation. That's something online poker providers have; they're often able to communicate in commonly spoken languages, especially if that contact is done via a written medium rather than face-to-face.
Live 24-Hour Chat
Live chatbots are not quite the
latest technology in customer service, but they are an important tool. For example, if you send an email to Amazon, you might be told you'll receive a reply in 48 hours; that's not good enough in online poker. If you have a problem as a player, you want it solved there and then, and if you have to wait, that could be lost business.
A live chat puts you in front of someone straight away, and given that it's written, you can usually communicate in multiple languages. Online poker isn't the only industry to use these; Rockstar Games have a live 24-hour chat function for reporting online issues with their titles. The internet never sleeps, so customer service needs to reflect that.
AUTHOR BIO: Jake Ward works in the iGaming industry. In his spare time he writes Marvel fan fiction and collects rare Lego sets that he cannot afford.
