Developing a comprehensive FAQ will help you streamline your customer service and have you stand out from competitors. FAQ stands for ‘frequently asked questions.’ These are the most common questions your customers ask when they get hold of one of your customer service reps. Creating a strong FAQ that answers these questions has a huge benefit for both you and the customer. For the customer, it answers their question at a glance without them having to make a call. For you, it saves time dealing with the most common customer issues, so your employees are free to focus on other value-added tasks.
How to Create a Good FAQ
Start by brainstorming a huge list. Take all of the questions you can remember customers asking and start with those. Ask all of your employees to write down each new question as it arrives so that you can add it to the list. Think of other questions customers might ask that you haven’t heard yet.
Another way to develop a FAQ and stand out from competitors is to take your company policies and turn the statements into questions. Try to imagine how your customer would ask each one. Usually the most common questions customers have are related to money matters. They want to know about fees, charges, refund policies, and similar things.
You can also get great ideas from competitors’ websites. See what they have and, if their questions apply to your company, copy and reword them. It may be helpful to look at the sites of totally unrelated businesses as well. You may find something your customers might ask also.
Editing and Organizing
After you’ve compiled a list, go through and edit it. When you’re editing, look for questions that are too basic. You should remove these because they’ll just clutter up your list. Look also for redundant questions that ask essentially the same thing.
Organize your FAQ into subtopics to make it easier for your customers to find the questions they’re looking for. Group items into categories like ‘payments,’ ‘ordering,’ ‘refunds,’ and other major issues. Again, you can get ideas by looking at the FAQ pages on other sites.
Try to anticipate how your customers would search for the information they need to know. Put each item into the appropriate category. It’s a good idea to add a keyword search function as well. This is a search field where they can enter a keyword and it will show them all the questions that contain that keyword somewhere.
Seek Customer Feedback
One of the biggest complaints companies get about their FAQs is that the information there isn’t useful. What this usually means is that their question wasn’t answered. Put a form somewhere on your FAQ page asking for feedback. Ask them, ‘Was it helpful?’ When it wasn’t, they’ll tell you and you’ll know what needs to be improved. This is a surefire to stand out from competitors. For more information on 4 power questions to better understand your customer CLICK HERE
An FAQ Is a Work in Progress
You’re never really done writing an FAQ. It needs constant improvement to fulfill its purpose and stay relevant. Keep it updated whenever policies or prices change. Make sure you update it regularly to avoid confusion. You’ll also need to keep updating your list of FAQs as new questions are asked. All this is effort well worth expending to stand out from competitors.
