Improve Customer Service and Grow
Everyone has had a bad experience with customer service. Everyone has had good experiences with customer service. Which experience usually stays with you, which experience causes your voice to go up a few octaves when you share it? The bad experience is the one that will be shared, unfortunately. That’s why it’s crucial to learn how to improve customer service in your business.
Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Damon Richards
One bad experience can lead to a domino effect along the lines of“she told someone, and then she told someone, and soon and soon.”What the customer needs and deserves is an incredible experience that they will happily share and not make them dread having to call for help. Having a culture of service as the foundation of your business will establish a loyal customer base.Those loyal customers will be more than happy to share their experiences of top-notch service to friends who are frustrated by poor service provided by a potential competitor.
Some easy ways to improve customer service:
1. Understand that your business IS customer service.
No matter what you are selling it is the service you provide that will attract and retain customers, repeat business, and success. Friendly, helpful, genuine customer service might seem like a relic from another era, but when you realize how essential it is to your business – and how it can separate you from the pack – you’ll see that it’s an emphasis today’s business world needs more than ever.
2. Make great customer service a piece of cake.
Are you making it as easy as possible for customers to get answers and assistance?Quick response, easy connection to a real person, one-stop service OR is their experience a maze of transfers, repeating themselves and waiting for a real person, one-stop service OR is their experience a maze of transfers, repeating themselves and waiting for a call back? Guess which one customer’s perform. Here’s a hint, it involves the word quick.
3. Empower your employees to enable customer delight.
Give them the freedom to make decisions to ensure customers get instant (or as close as possible) solutions. Ask your employee’s for feedback, they have the direct interaction with customers, they hear the good and the bad. They represent you, they interact with the customers, they can mean the difference of red or black for the bottom line…hire the best.
4. Invest in improving customer service training for your team.
Keep your employee’s skills fresh and up-to-date. Try your best to make the training as entertaining and exciting as possible for your employee’s.
5. Track your customer service results to measure your improvement.
The training, the time, and the focus can be tracked and you can track it in your revenue and profits. You should see an improvement in social media mentions, your online reputation as a whole, and in the proportion of happily resolved customer service tickets.
Sounds simple, something everyone assumes they are already doing. But we all know that saying about “assume”. These five easy steps to show your commitment to your customers, to ensure return business, empowering your employee’s and helping your business stand out from the rest. Take those steps; the health of your future depends on them.