Good customer service has been said to be the make or break of all businesses. It doesn’t just happen overnight though, it takes time and effort to perfect the right customer service for your own customers. You may have a brilliant service or product but if your customer service is found to be unhelpful, unreliable or maybe rarely replies then, unfortunately, people are going to hear about it. Ever heard the saying ‘bad news travels quicker than good news’? Well, they’re not wrong, customers are very quick to share something you may have done wrong whereas you often have to fight or entice people to speak good and leave reviews.
Good customer service, although hard to achieve straight away, isn’t as impossible as you may think, people can be pleased and they can rave about the service you provide to them. Have a look at this way you can provide the ultimate customer service.
Excellent Product Knowledge
It’s highly important that anyone who is dealing with questions about or dealing with customer complaints knows the in’s and outs of any products or services. Quite frankly they cannot and will not be providing the best customer service without having adequate training involving extensive knowledge. This includes having regular updates on new products and services or any changes that have taken place. Not only this you want your staff to actually believe in the product they’re selling and how can you expect them to do this if they don’t understand the value it brings to the customers? Try sending out regular product and service emails to your staff so they can familiarize themselves with them. A brilliant way of communicating changes to teams of people is to train managers and supervisors centrally and have them feed information down to the rest of the teams.
Have A Quick Response Rate
As a customer, there is nothing worse than waiting for long periods of time for a company to get back to you regarding complaints, inquiries or order updates. People value there time and if you’re not going to meet the standards of a customer’s expectations then you are likely to lose their custom. Saying that on the other hand providing good customer service trumps speed of service at any time. If you know that it’s going to take a while to get back to the customer than share the expectation with them, they most definitely prefer to be in the know about it rather than just waiting to see if they get a response. Try using tools such as straight to voicemail if you have busy phone lines, allowing customers the choice to leave a message where you can return their call rather than them waiting in long ques.
Provide Self-Help
Not all customers want to or feel the need to talk to someone about their issues. Often they would prefer to solve the issue themselves (if it’s possible). Try offering an extensive FAQ’s area on your website that’s searchable so customers can view questions and answers that have cropped up regularly before. You could also try adding a contact form to this area so that they can ask a question to be answered via email. Offering a self-service part of your business will also help to cut customer service costs. Along with providing a self-help section, it could be a good idea to include a live chat for customers to contact you by. This is becoming more and more popular. You don’t have to have it manned at all time however it is useful to advertise the hours it is available or show an expectation of how long the wait will be.
Keep Positive
Having a good attitude and your customer service provider having good attitudes really goes a long way. How many times have you experienced a customer service professional who’s miserable, doesn’t smile or sounds short and sharp when spoken to? Probably more times than you care to admit. Unfortunately, nowadays you come across service providers like this and it seems to be unavoidable. You should make sure that the people you have working in your customer service department are using the right tone, are keeping things positive and understand the importance of this. This becomes even harder with emails as it’s difficult to portray a tone or convey warmth over text rather than a phone or in person. It might be a good idea to write a few generic customer service email templates that your team can use to make sure they are always in line with the message your business stands for.
Do you have any other ways you can start to provide the ultimate customer service? Please share them in the comments section below.