 Welcome to Customer Support for IT Professionals Engaging the Customer. In this learning activity, you'll explore ways to engage and retain your customers by improving your customer service skills. Why care about customer retention? Every IT professional needs to actively employ skills to engage their customers. A greater number of engaged customers translates into an improved retention rate. This is the most important benefit for small business owners and IT support specialists. Unengaged customers can quickly become frustrated and upset with your services. Every dissatisfied client who lets you know they're upset represents 25% of your client base, who are also upset but remain silent. Of those, over 90% will leave your business or stop using your services. While customers are always concerned about the speed of service, they also care about the quality and attitude of the people serving them. Engaging your customers helps build a relationship based on trust and commitment, which increases your overall retention rate. Here are four ways you can better engage your customers. Start by providing personalized interactions to build trust. Make a point to use the customer's name and to provide your own name. Sharing your name shows you care because it lets your customer know they can reach out to you if they need additional help. Be an active listener because it ensures your customer's needs are being met. Inattentive listening sure comes up a lot as a pet peeve of most customers. Providing first call resolution is a common goal for many IT support teams. You can help achieve this goal by focusing on what your clients are actually saying. When you're focused on them, you can resolve their problems. In addition, customers always appreciate being heard. They know when you're actively listening to what they're saying, and they appreciate someone paying attention to their problems. Repeat the customer's problem to them as you understand it. This demonstrates your active listening skills and helps you avoid wasting time solving the wrong problem. Communication is another key to engaging your customers. Keeping your clients up to date on their concerns not only reduces their anxiety, but it frees you up to focus on your work. When customers feel nothing is happening, they frequently reach out for assurances that you're taking their concerns seriously. Dealing with these requests can be disruptive to your workflow. You can reduce their quantity by being proactive and keeping your customers up to date on their issues and the solutions. This includes sending an email letting someone know you're still working on their concern, but you haven't resolved it yet. Customers don't mind waiting for a solution as long as they are kept in the loop. For any client, nothing is worse than being kept in the dark. Asking for and acknowledging feedback is another great way to engage your customers. Rarely do we ask for feedback. I mean truly ask for or want their opinions. When a feedback request is genuine, customers will provide you with feedback gifts that can help you provide even better service. There is always a gift for you in the feedback and how you act on it builds trust. Always respond positively to social media posts or product complaints. Acknowledge that a client may not have had the best experience and then demonstrate what you can do to help them. Successfully resolving issues on Facebook or Twitter demonstrates to all of your followers that you do care about the customer. Successfully and positively addressing feedback sets you apart from your competitors and creates a loyal customer base. The bottom line is, actively engaging your customers benefits your business. They'll be happier and more importantly, they'll stay with your company instead of going to a competitor. In the end, you'll have happier customers and we all know that happy customers will tell, well, everyone, about their experiences. You have completed customer support for IT professionals engaging the customer.