How To Provide Excellent Customer Service
Whether you’re the head of a small business or an employee of a large corporation, excellent customer service is essential. Providing a high level of customer care fosters brand trust and loyalty; in turn, this boosts workplace morale and increases company revenue. While top-rated customer service may already be at the forefront of your business’s core values, here are some tips for ensuring the best customer experience possible.
Be Friendly
Perhaps an obvious suggestion, but when interacting with customers and colleagues, being polite and maintaining a positive attitude is essential. Every customer wants to be treated as a human being, rather than a number on company analytics. Even if a customer is being decidedly difficult and proving a challenge to your professionalism, remaining calm, collected and pleasant with open body language will help to diffuse even the most difficult scenario.
Actively Listen
Customers - and people in general - want to feel listened to and valued, particularly when there is an issue at hand. Be alert, maintain eye contact, pay attention to body language and avoid becoming distracted when speaking to a customer, client or colleague. Actively listening to your customers’ queries and feedback suggestions will promote the growth of your business and encourage brand loyalty.
Understand Your Product
To provide your customers with accurate information, you must understand your company, products and services inside out. Whether you are selling products, dealing with complaints, or troubleshooting issues, you must be a company expert. A comprehensive understanding of your brand will allow you to confidently discuss goods and services with customers, providing them with valuable information and insight.
Creative Problem Solving
Going above and beyond for your customers and company is a crucial factor in business success. While adhering to company procedures and policies is the best way to keep your nose clean as an employee, sometimes alternative routes are required. It may be unreasonable to make exception after exception to keep customers happy; however, identifying creative solutions to provide excellent customer care will gain you a positive brand reputation.
Respond Promptly
Excellent time management and prompt response times are vital when dealing with customers. No customer wants to spend hours on hold while you retrieve various pieces of information in response to a query, so systems should be in place to ensure optimal organisation. For example, your company may have project management software such as WorkFlowMax, which will enable you to track invoices quickly and efficiently.
Be Professional
While going above and beyond for your customers is a fantastic way to ensure a job well done, remember that you are representing your organisation which means remaining professional at all times. Professionalism encapsulates many qualities - politeness, competence, patience, positivity and more. Value your customers’ time and provide effective solutions that comply with company standards and policies.
Ask For Feedback
Part of listening to your customers is accepting, reviewing and implementing feedback where necessary. You can obtain customer feedback through a number of methods, such as follow-up emails, surveys and suggestion boxes. Attention to feedback demonstrates your company’s commitment to providing exceptional customer experiences, services and products. Even when feedback is decidedly negative, you can always find constructive nuance to implement for positive change.
Reward Loyalty
There are several effective methods of rewarding loyalty to retain valuable customers. You may wish to utilise social media to give repeat customers shout-outs or include cost-effective free gifts with purchases. Another excellent way to reward customers is by providing early access to products that haven’t yet been fully launched to the general public.
Address Your Customers By Name
Addressing your customers by name is a fantastic way to express empathy and build positive relationships, creating a culture of respect and consideration. Repeating a customer’s name during a conversation will make them feel connected and engaged, improving their experience and strengthening brand loyalty. Furthermore, employees should also introduce themselves by name to further establish that there is a face (or many faces) behind the brand.
Consider Automation
Process automation is the method of using software to streamline business processes. In terms of customer service, automation can be implemented in the form of chatbots to solve straightforward problems and direct customers to the appropriate departments if their issues require human intervention. While most customers prefer to have their problems solved by fellow human beings, chatbots can resolve minor issues quickly and effectively.