5 CSR Phrases That Every Customer Service Agent Needs To Use

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Customer service representatives (CSR) need to be trained to handle a variety of situations when dealing with client inquiries or complaints. Words are a powerful thing and when used correctly, expressions and phrases can help resolve disputes and misunderstandings amicably.

The way that things are worded is everything!

For example, in 2016 Facebook made a very not so subtle change to help users improve their experience. Posts previously features a “Hide or Mark as Spam” link. This link was re-worded to say “I don’t want to see this.” This resulted in a significant increase in the number of people who responded and gave feedback on the posts that appeared on their Newsfeed.

All just because of a simple linguistic change.

Coaching and training your CSR’s on similar changes in their response phrases, can help improve your customer experience with your representatives.

In this article, let’s explore a few new phrases you can implement into your CSR program to improve communications and deliver outstanding customer service. By doing so, you’re laying the foundation to build stronger, ongoing, customer relationships.

  1. “Let me look into that or find out for you.”

One of the most reassuring things that a CSR can do for a customer is being polite and respectful while patiently answering any questions the customer has. In highly competitive or saturated markets, prompt and professional customer service keeps your customer happy, so they don’t have to seek out alternative vendors to patronize.

Providing stellar customer service means that you’re willing to go the extra mile to assure that the customer is satisfied with their interaction and transaction.

The more seamless you can make your sales and service processes, the better!

  1. “I apologize for any inconvenience.”

When someone is having an unsatisfactory experience with your company, an apology can go a long way. A sincere apology that exhibits understanding and empathy, can help to form a positive outcome from the interaction.

Chances are good that the reason the person is upset, is (hopefully) by something other than the CSR they are speaking with. Being genuinely sorry for their inconvenience/confusion/insert reason here, lets the customer know that you care.

  1. “It is my pleasure to help!”

Just with many other things in life, your attitude can determine your altitude. Keeping a positive and upbeat attitude helps shape your reality.

When speaking or corresponding with customers, positive words go a long way. The use of positive words supports positive reactions and lets the customer know that you’re excited to help them with whatever they need.

Let’s say that you sent a company you do business with an Email. You can get two different responses. A bland one with a simple answer like ‘I’ll check it out for you” or one that says “It would be my pleasure to help.” Which reaction would you prefer to get back?

I’m guessing you – like many others – would prefer the latter.

  1. “I will update you as soon as possible.”

The primary goal of customer service is to help the customer solve their issues, regardless of their concern or reason for inquiry. When a client has to “follow-up” to get a status report on their open issue, this could indicate that there’s been a failure somewhere in your business processes.

To avoid the frustration and miscommunication, review your CSR process and ensure that all customers with open tickets get proactive status updates. Also be sure to communicate with your customer an expected ETA on their inquiry. If you are unable to deliver the solution within this estimated timeframe, alert the customer to the delay and be understanding of the situation.

  1. “Thanks for letting us know!”

If a customer has an unpleasant experience, finding out about the problem helps your company preemptively curtail the problem right away.

Recent studies found that for every single customer who takes the time to make a complaint, there is an average of 26 others who don’t say a word. What this means for you is one customer complaint could represent dozens of other people having the same problem but aren’t taking steps to let you know.

Having gratitude and appreciation for clients is key to building a stronger relationship. A simple ‘thank you’ always goes a long way.

If your customer buys from you, thank them for their purchase. Should they report a bug, let them know you appreciate their input and feedback. If they leave a positive review on your social media page(s), thank them on your profile or via a direct message.

Always be sure to add, something like “please let me know if there is anything else I can help you with” so your client knows that they can reach out to you anytime.

One thing to keep in mind at all times is that every customer service engagement is an opportunity to build a stronger relationship with your existing – or a potential new client. By offering an exceptional CSR experience, you can learn more about your customers and possibly come up with additional products and services to solve their problems, whatever they may be

Thanks for taking the time to read this article, we appreciate your time and your interest! We hope this article is helpful with achieving all of your customer service goals and objectives.

Start Link Building Like a PR Pro [infographic]

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Denese EakinsDenese is a lover of knowledge and puts her research skills and creative eye to good use with her infographics. When she’s not researching and designing visuals to present data, she spends time volunteering in her other passion–health education.

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Let Log File Analysis Be Your Guide

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The ultimate goal of every successful online business owner is to extract as much value as possible from their website and other digital assets. However, this result usually isn’t something that happens by accident. In fact, it takes quite a bit of skill, knowledge, and time to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together in just the right way for the desired result to occur.

The most significant tool in demystifying what actions people are doing at your website is your log file. If you are unsure what a log file is, here is a simple explanation. It is a simple file output that originates from the web server. This file contains a record of all requests (or ‘hits’) that get sent to the server.

All data that’s received gets stored anonymously. The data file may include the time and date the request was made, the IP address the query was sent from, the URL or content that was requested, as well as the user-agent, browser type, and device information. These files usually are used for technical site audits and basic troubleshooting. Additionally, these log files are extremely helpful for auditing your web results and fine-tuning your pages to improve your metrics and your results.

Why is it essential to conduct log file analysis? There are a number of reasons. Since all requests to the host server are recorded, you get an extensive overview of precisely what type of activity is taking place on the site. Visits from search engine crawlers, robots, and human visitors are recorded every time they visit a page. For more precise information on website activity, operators can filter the user-agent and client IP range to see grouped actions. Using this information, you can get a better understanding of how your site behaves when crawlers or robots visit.

By analyzing your log file, you can pinpoint if website visitors, crawlers, or robots encountered any “bottlenecks” or “obstacles” on your site. The earlier that you detect these barriers in your website navigation, the better! You always want to provide a stellar user experience, so being proactive about fixing potential leaks on your sales and marketing funnel, the better.

If you notice low to no search engine crawlers on your website, this could signify a more significant issue that’s holding your site back from regular crawl activity. Low crawl activity could indicate that your site has thin or low-quality content, poor site speed and/or performance, lack of a Secure Transport Layer (TLS/SSL) connection, duplicate content, or a temporary or permanent penalty.

Another factor to consider is your crawl budget. If you aren’t familiar with what a crawl budget is, here is a brief explanation and some information on how this budget is calculated.

The first thing to recognize is that your crawl budget shouldn’t be confused with your ‘crawl rate.’ They are not one in the same. Your crawl rate refers to the speed that search engines request your pages. Whereas your ‘crawl budget’ refers to the maximum number of pages or documents a search engine crawls when it visits your site.

It’s believed that the crawl budget/allocation is determined based on domain authority. In days past, domain authority was decided by page rank or PR, as part of Google’s ranking algorithm. The higher the site PR, the more crawler activity the site received, so more pages, links, and URL’s were crawled regularly. In many cases, this meant that having a link – preferably one that utilized a keyword rich anchor text – could be the difference between getting first page rankings and not getting found in results at all. Another tactic was to amass many links from sites with lower PR to stimulate crawl activity and influence search engine results.

It’s worth noting that having a sizeable crawl budget should be treated with respect. If possible, you want to eliminate the need for valuable search engines crawlers to traverse thousands of irrelevant, links, especially if they lead to thin, outdated, or absent resources. By keeping your website and funnel content tight and error-free, you help build more authority and trust in your preferred niche. You’re also taking proactive action to prevent penalties or other ranking infractions that can negatively affect your website rankings, as well as free organic website traffic to your site.

Many people find it difficult to decipher the data that raw log files contain, so this is a time when using an internal statistics program is helpful for sorting and identifying areas in your funnel that can be improved for better results. For instance, if your Internal stat program shows that 50% of website visitors on your checkout page are clicking on a different link than the “pay now” button, this is enough evidence to warrant further investigation and the removal of the non-relevant link which blew out your sales funnel in one swoop! Once this leak is “fixed” so to speak – you can test and observe to ensure that the funnel is working as it’s expected.

You can also use a tool like Google Analytics and Google’s Webmaster Tools for further insights into the behavior and performance of your website as well. Setting these tools up takes some time and a bit of technical savviness, but once established, they offer a wealth of information about the activities, click paths, demographics, conversions, keyword rankings, and even live time website traffic data! Further, they collect log file information including where the visitor was referred from, so you can track the number of website visitors you get from social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter – just to name a few.

The devil is always in the details, so making sure that you get everything set up right in the first place is helpful in laying a solid foundation for online success. While this can be a painstaking process, having access to all of this beneficial information gives you a competitive edge in improving your website pages and sales funnels for more conversions and revenue!

SEO Steps Every Local Online Marketer Needs to Take [infographic]

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Denese EakinsDenese is a lover of knowledge and puts her research skills and creative eye to good use with her infographics. When she’s not researching and designing visuals to present data, she spends time volunteering in her other passion–health education.

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SEO and SEM Vocabulary Terms You Must Know To Succeed!

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If you are just getting started in the Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Marketing industry, you undoubtedly have a bit of a learning curve ahead of you!

In this vertical – more than any other industry vertical – you’ll come to learn all types of acronyms and jargon to describe almost everything!

If you’ve never given much thought to vocabulary like keyword density, internal links, landing pages, website crawlers, SERPs, local results, conversion goals, and other phrases, that’s about to change!

To help you get a better understanding for some of the most widely used vocabulary words used in Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing, here is a short glossary of Industry related terms you need to know.

A/B Test or Testing

A/B Testing is conducted by showing two different layouts of the same web page to visitors. The software is used to track behavioral differences on Page A versus Page B. A/B Testing determines which web page is more efficient at making conversions or sales.

301 Redirect

A 301 Redirect Message gets displayed when a URL you’re attempting to access is permanently unavailable. This message indicates the destination URL changed location and won’t be shown again.

AdWords

AdWords is Google’s advertising network. AdWords gets used for reaching markets via display and video ads on their partner networks.

302 Redirect

A 302 Redirect is a form of redirection commonly used when an URL has temporarily changed location.

Anchor Text

Anchor text are the words used in the text area of a clickable hyperlink. Anchor text usually describes the subject of the resource to which it links.

Algorithm

An algorithm is search engine technology that’s used to determine a site’s ranking on search engines.

Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO is used to describe Search Engine Optimization tactics that do not adhere to ‘best practices’ in the Industry.

Backlink

A Backlink is used to describe any link to or from another referring website or resource.

Bounce Rate

Your Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors that only look at one web page and don’t view or visit any other pages.

Conversion Rate

A Conversion Rate is established by counting the number of visitors that complete a desired action or goal.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

Cost Per Click Advertising, also known as Pay Per Click (PPC), is a type of advertising where the advertiser pays a set fee each time their ad gets clicked.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand)

CPM is a type of online advertising where advertisers pay a set fee per 1,000 ad displays.

CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)

A CPA Ad is measured by the total cost of each sale or leads throughout the sales funnel and ad campaign.

CTR (Click Through Rate)

Click Through Rate is established by calculating the percentage of users that click an ad.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

Cascading Style Sheets is a methodology for adding styles and changing document appearance seamlessly.

Domain Name

A Domain Name is the website address for the site you’re visiting.
(For example Facebook.com or Yahoo.com)

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

HTML is the website code that search engine crawlers and robots read and disseminate.

Indexed Pages

Indexed Pages are single pages on a website that get returned as results by search engines.

Infographic

Infographics are designed to illustrate various facts in an easy to understand and visually appealing way.

Keywords

Keywords are used to describe words or phrases people enter into search engines to find relevant results. Keywords are used for both advertising campaigns and to rank highly in organic search results.

Keyword Density

Keyword Density is used to describe the number of times a specific word or phrase gets used on a blog or a page. Keyword Density is calculated as a percentage by counting the number of times the keyword was used on a page to the total number of words on the page.

Keyword Research

Keyword Research is the process of choosing keywords or phrases that people are most likely to search for in any given market niche.

KPI (Key Performance Indicators)

Key Performance Indicators are methodologies for measuring online marketing goals.

Landing Page

A Landing Page is a strategically designed page that is optimized for results and conversions when a visitor ‘lands’ on the page.

Local Search Result

Local Search Results are search results that give preferential rankings to local companies, businesses, and service providers.

Long Tail Keywords

Long-Tail Keyword phrases are search terms that include more than two or three words.

Meta Description

Your Meta Description is a couple of sentences that display in search results describing the content of a page.

Organic Search Results

Also called “Natural” Search Results, Organic Search results are the unpaid search results. These listings appear underneath paid advertisements on the search results page.

Query(ies)

A Query (or queries)  is used to describe the keyword or keyword phrase a searcher inputs when using a search engine.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing is used to describe the different advertising techniques used to increase the visibility and ranking of a website.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is used to describe all of the processes used to assist a site in ranking higher in search engines.

Search Engine Ranking Page (SERP)

This acronym is used to describe the results page that web searchers see after they’ve put search queries or keywords in the Search Box.

Sitemap

A Sitemap is a page that offers search engine robots and crawlers access to all website pages on a website.

Social Platforms

Some of the most popular Social Platforms used today include Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, and others.

Website Traffic

The overall count of visitors, spiders, and robots that visit your website.

User Engagement

User Engagement is the measurement of how people engage with your website once they’ve visited. Engagement is calculated using some factors including actions taken on the page, length of visit, etc.

We hope you found this glossary of SEO and SEM terms helpful and thanks for reading!