Customers need to be able to contact you when they have a problem or even if they just want to tell you what a great job you’re doing. That is why you need to have a lot of different ways they can communicate with your customer service department. Here are 5 ways you should offer customer service.

1. Phone calls

Being able to call a business when you need help is important. While other means of communication are nice, sometimes you just want to be able to talk to someone and describe the problem you are having. Customers hope the traditional phone call will yield better results. Make sure you have other forms of communication in place to help shorten phone call wait time, or add a feature where you will call back customers instead of making them wait on hold for an hour.

2. Texting

Customer service texting is a newer form of customer service, but it is proving to be very effective. In fact, over half of customers polled said they preferred texting customer service over other methods. That’s a pretty good margin. Text marketing and customer service texting should be an important part of your business.

3. Email

Letting your customers email in when they have questions is also effective. It is starting to fade out slightly as more and more consumers are picking up on text marketing, but for now, it is still a valuable way to communicate, especially with the older generations.

4. Social Media

Use social media to communicate with your customers. 67% of consumers have lodged a complaint over social media, which means you need to be on social media to field those complaints and answer customer concerns. It is also a great place for you to get positive reviews and bolster up your company.

5. Review sites

There are plenty of review sites out there where customers are already ripping your business a new one about some complaint they have. Rather than working with you to get it resolved, they complain on the sites and prevent you from getting new customers. Your customer service people should be scanning these sites, looking for bad reviews, and addressing them publicly on the sites. It will hopefully repair the broken relationship with your customer and help future customers see you care about them and want to make things right