Providing excellent customer service is a great way to keep your current customers loyal to your business, and it gives them plenty of great things to say when they refer their friends and family to you too. In a crowded marketing world, customer service helps your business stand out from the competition.
One survey conducted found that 68% of customers claim they are willing to spend more with businesses where they have experienced a positive service interaction. On the other end of that spectrum, 71% of consumers have ended their relationship with a business due to poor customer service.
This just shows how customer service is important as it establishes trust, familiarity, and comfort between you and your customers. So, how do you do it well? Here are some tips to consider:
Know Your Product Well
While this heading may seem like a no-brainer, you’d be surprised with how quickly small businesses go from zero to one hundred when it comes to feature development. When you’re looking to go big (but not home), that can be the perfect backdrop for experimenting with your offerings and semi-crazy ideas.
That being said, it can be tough for your customer service agents to constantly keep up with new changes without making sure everyone is on the same page.
Have A High Response Rate
There may be nothing worse than nonresponsiveness to a customer who is trying to get help, resolve an issue, or find out more about what you’re selling. It’s important to respond quickly to all inquiries, even if it is only to say you are looking into the issue and will be back in touch. Some response is always better than none so the customer doesn’t feel ignored.
Suggest Solutions
Have a menu of calming remedies which you and your employees can use. Whether it’s purely a refund or return, or if it’s coupons or a free service. By agreeing in advance on the scenarios where you will provide these remedies, and how much you’re willing to spend, you will be able to speak calmer and more confidently when offering the solution.
Commit to Customer Satisfaction
When you’re only starting to expand your company, losing customers is not an option. When customers reach out to your small business, they expect your business to save their day, and often, on the spot. In many cases, clients call or write in and expect one agent to resolve their issue. Without adequate customer service training, this scenario can result in the customer being shuffled around leading to increased dissatisfaction.
Know Your Customers, Personally
One of the best ways to offer a more personal customer experience is using the customer’s name when talking with them – in person, over the phone, through email, or when coming up with customer surveys. A friendlier approach that doesn’t feel forced humanizes the consumer-business interaction.
Take the example of Starbucks which is one of the top brands enjoying a high NPS score and with billions in revenue. Starbucks’ employees always address their customers by name when greeting them, calling their drink, or thanking them for their visit, in order to set the premises for a long-lasting relationship built on recognition – considered to be the foundation for great customer service.
Communicate Well
During the inception stage of your business, it’s possible your target audience is in one country. However, as you grow, things will change, and you’ll onboard customers from multiple countries.
In that case, your team should scale accordingly. Besides providing solutions in an educated and respectful manner, they should tailor each response to the customer’s language and be sensitive to culture and syntax styles.
Utilize The Right Technology
As customer service has gone increasingly online, your customers typically aren’t interacting face-to-face with business much anymore. And even phone calls are falling out of fashion. Many customer service interactions take place via chat, email, or help desk. Getting the right customer service tools, templates, and software in place can help streamline workflows and ensure customers have a good experience from start to finish.
These tools might be a way to help your agents do their job to the best of their abilities–or you might want to think about ways to add automated help to your customer service channels to deliver great customer support too. Personal support is very important, but so is a fast, scalable response plan so you can help all your customers as quickly as possible.
Key Takeaway
All consumers want an excellent customer service experience. Without an authentic customer-centric culture, which allows the company to provide fast support and memorable conversations, a business leaves itself vulnerable to its competition.
Overall, the best thing to focus on is to treat customers well, show empathy, and keep smiling. Before you know it, you will have not only happy customers but a happy business.
