Tips for Providing Excellent Customer Service
In a world stricken by the global pandemic, online businesses are more popular than ever! If you thought you had competition before, this year made sure of it and brought more than you could have anticipated. This is why it is so important to create a reliable, recognizable and unique brand for your company that performs to a standard your customers can appreciate.
In this day and age, there is only so much you can do to make your business stand out from competition. What makes a business stand out? Many things, for sure, but the most important aspect is definitely customer service and relationships built with your clients.
What does this mean?It means that you have to go the extra mile to prove to every one of your loyal and potential customers that you care about them and that your service is for them!
This is why I have prepared a list of useful tips for providing excellent customer service. Here’s what is included:
Why is customer service import?
6 Tips for providing the best customer service
Be Present
Pay close attention to the feedback you get from customers
Build special and unique relationships with your customers.
Hire people with good interpersonal skills.
Be true to yourself and your brand.
Treat your employees the way you would have them treat customers.
Conclusion
Why is customer service important?
Today, top-level customer support should be the norm: modern customers expect unique experiences and great products that seem to be produced especially for them. If they are not satisfied with the service, they can easily turn their backs and move on to the competition. Most markets are diverse enough, and today’s customers are accustomed to a wide selection.
What happens when your customers aren’t satisfied with the service you provided?
“71% of consumers have ended their relationship with a company due to poor customer service” - Neil Patel
Yes, they just turn to the competition! In an oversaturated market, there is no need to waste time on interaction with people who don’t know how to respond to your needs, there is always someone who could possibly do it better!
Everybody has had a bad customer support experience at least once in their lifetime. The point of customer service is to meet our demands as consumers and solve them successfully, in the shortest period possible. However, not every company and/or employee knows how to deal with this important segment of service in the right way.
This was well illustrated to me in a recent conversation with a colleague. Her internet connection went down and, after receiving no response on their website support, she had to call the customer service line of her internet provider. First of all, she had to wait for an age until she actually got hold of someone on the line, only to be transferred to another waiting list due to a lack of knowledge and proficiency in her specific problem on the part of the original assistant. Moreover, she was “bumped” from one line to the other, resulting in her waiting for two hours straight without a glimpse of a solution to her problem. Eventually, someone picked up who was said to be of help, only to inform her of “a busy day we’re having” and to tell her that she will be contacted with a proper solution. The call came several hours later, when she already found a solution to her problem on her own. Needless to say, she switched to a different internet provider by the end of that week.
During these times of Coronavirus we have probably all had these kind of experiences as support centres are over-stretched and working from home. Indeed we may even have been guilty in our own businesses of struggling to meet customer needs during these trying times.
Now, not every company does a sloppy job of procuring support to their customers. But it is worth reminding oneself that failure to give needed support, long response times, a lack of foresight, friendly tone of communication and bad manners can all add up to losing customer’s loyalty to your brand in a world where customer loyalty makes up half of the company’s success.
6 tips for providing the best customer service
1. Be present!
Whether your company has ten or a thousand employees, it is important to be “on the line” in order to successfully communicate with your clients and meet their needs and requests - especially if you are an owner of a small business! Remember, your competition will try and find a way to outsmart you! You should take into consideration all the different ways you can accomplish being present:
Make sure your website works properly and that you regularly check the customer service inbox
Pay attention to your social media inboxes and try and reply to messages as soon as possible
If you have a customer service phone line, give your best to get in touch with the clients in the shortest period of time, since no one likes to wait forever
Check your email regularly and respond in short notice
Consider giving your company a face
Use social media pages to connect with customers - they also allow you to include customers in your business. Studies have shown that people like to see faces, which helps customers feel closer to you.If your customer feels neglected, or like they had to wait for too long to get in touch with someone who can help them, they will respond negatively and most probably turn to another company who would meet their needs sooner and more adequately. Whether your customers want to order a product, ask for additional details or simply cancel a purchase - unnecessarily delaying their requests will only properly irritate them and bring you negative publicity. Therefore, try to make this process as easy as possible for them.
NB: This is also an opportunity for you to cross-sell your services or products, so loyalty. It is always easier to sell to existing clients.
People generally tend to like having a real conversation instead of using instant messaging. Customers feel more comfortable with communicating with the right people. Remind them that you and your company are real! You don’t have to write an extensive post about how you spent your New Year’s party, but post some pictures from time to time. Also, it would be good to include a short biography on your website. You should pay close attention to the data you acquire as well - most people have a tendency to focus on the frequency of certain issues and ignore almost completely the time spent on dealing with a specific problem.
2. pay close attention to the feedback you get from your customers
The best way to see if your business is accomplishing what it ought to is to ask for feedback from the audience it targets.
Getting compliments and nice things said about your company is great, but you should pay even more attention to complaints and requests - this is what gives you the most reliable source of information on what should be improved and/or changed in the services you provide. No matter how hard you try to satisfy them, there will always be clients who will react to your efforts with violent outbursts of dissatisfaction and situations when someone is being unreasonable or generally rude, but those cases are very rare and should also be taken into consideration, in terms of where they actually come from. In such a situation, try to calmly present them with all the options for solving the problem.
When failures in the customer support sector are the result of unintentional mistakes followed by a sincere apology, customers will be more or less willing to get over them. Although cases like these are more the exception than the rule, even the slightest mistake can seriously undermine a company’s long-established credibility. Therefore, timely, responsible and polite resolution of customer complaints will be a priority for all companies that satisfy customers in the first place.Be sure to set up a survey where your customers can express their thoughts on your product and/or service - you can do this in several different ways:
Create a survey on your website.
Ask for reviews on social media like Facebook, Yelp, Instagram or use Trust Pilot.
Create a newsletter.
Try and keep your response time low and your communication standards high.
Apart from being a great way of informing yourself on the productivity and success of your own business, offering surveys to your customers also has a positive effect on them. Make sure that you answer any inquiry or request in the shortest period of time possible and always remember to thank your customers for the insight they provided you with!
People generally tend to pay attention and value more services where they feel like their opinion and feelings matter. Conducting surveys on a regular basis is also a very smart move seeing how customer practices and perceptions are constantly changing, and you want to be on the top of your game always!
NB: This can sometimes be painful, especially when your business is your baby and you feel your vision is being criticised. I am the first one to hold my hand up and say I find this area difficult. Fortunately here at bizee.co we have an amazing team (and amazing customers) that help me to learn from what we do wrong.
3. Build special and unique relationships with your customers.
If you are a small business owner, that probably means that you don’t have as many customers as some large corporation that perceives consumers as numbers, which is actually your perk!
Naturally, you want to broaden your reach and customer base, but according to a study it is seven times more expensive to target new audiences than to keep the old ones. Being an owner of a small business gives you an opportunity to really get to know your customers on a personal level and interact with them in such a way.
Get to know your customers
Send them personalized messages
Award them with special loyalty gifts
Ask them questions about the service you provide
Regularly reaching out to your customer base, praising their own content on social media, promoting them through your profiles and much more, create a sense of importance for your customers and they develop attachment to a brand that sees and values them as individuals.
However, this does not mean that you should neglect new customers or spend all your time focusing on the regular ones. Make sure that you are consistent when it comes to providing service and that there is no differentiation in the timing and commitment when it comes to meeting their needs! Studies show that poor customer support negatively affects the desire to buy - this is true even if your product or service is good! Contact with customers is very important.
Good word of mouth travels far, and recommendation of satisfied customers is bound to bring traffic to your business even more than solely focusing on new marketing strategies would.
Don’t forget to give thanks to your customers - they will appreciate this immensely and surely take into consideration when interacting with your company and employees. Good deeds are responded to with good deeds!
NB: Providing multi-channel support is a major issue for growing businesses so choose the right platforms for you and do them well. You can also explore the possibility of using customer support virtual assistants for support. We work with many businesses to add a little extra time and cover a few more channels such as live chat and support through social media.
4. Hire people with good interpersonal skills and guide them through the tasks they should deal with.
Providing service to other people undoubtedly includes communication. Whether we are talking about the business to customer interaction or communication between colleagues, employers and employees, or team leaders with their team members, it’s always important to remember that we are all humans foremost, with our own feelings, thoughts, problems, requests and ways of processing and sharing information.
What is the best way to implement this in your company policy?
Well, remember, even when you hire people, you are still a small business owner and as such should be familiar with all aspects of your business. Sure, you will employ someone who is specifically right or qualified for a certain position, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn't know what it is that this person does for your company.
Here are some of the things that you should keep in mind when offering a position to someone in your firm:
Make sure that they are pleasant and accessible people. Everybody loves a smiling face and a kind tone of voice.
Communication skills are the most important quality when it comes to offering services.
They should practice empathy, consistency and patience.
They shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions and say openly when they don’t know something.
Using negative language is a no-go; using positive language and an overall positive attitude is vital on all sides.
The best way to keep all of these things in mind is to put yourself in the position of a customer. Ask yourself, how would you like to be approached and what do you value most when interacting with a business or service. I always make sure that I am open, straight forward, willing to listen to and understand other people’s wants and needs, that I am not afraid to ask questions if I am not sure that I got something correctly or completely and that I try my best to put myself in other people’s shoes.
Just so you would understand how this process would look like in a real life situation, I wrote down the basic steps of offering the right kind of service for your customer:
Greeting the customer
Identifying his or her needs
Meeting those needs (and being realistic about whether you can, but nor eon this later...)
Being overall professional and kind so that the customer would remember the nice experience they had
Checking the result of the service you provided
Leaving the door open for further conversation and interaction
The first and second steps are very similar to the steps in retail sales. Practically, they are related to establishing communication and harmonization with the customer (to make them feel like they are in their own house) and to effectively discover their needs (to find out what they want).The third step means you need to provide the right help to them. You must be realistic here in terms of what you can offer in order to avoid dissatisfaction.The next important thing is to make an effort to remember that moment (this can include an unexpected gift or gesture).The fifth step is to check the result (to ask them if they are satisfied) and to make sure that their expectations are fully met (and exceeded). In the sixth step, you will try to make them come again, to enable open and continuous communication.
Every customer, without exception, deserves to be treated with patience and respect. Allow them to make purchasing decisions at their own pace, and never tolerate inappropriate verbal remarks by employees.Good interpersonal relationships are based on the following idea: treat others the way you expect others to treat you. This golden rule also improves customer support skills. The strategies described here help you build future development for your business and create positive customer relationships.
NB: Time for some honesty here. Checking in with clients is an area which I have failed in the past. Despite knowing the importance of this area of customer service, as a growing business you always get stretched at times. The “product” itself is not an area in which we ever wish to be stretched so whilst all our customers will always have assistants to fulfill their roles or deliverables that get delivered on time, inevitably at times some areas of the business have lost out to this. The best advice I can say is keep an eye on it. You do need to invest in people in all areas of your business, so whilst demands in one area increase do not lose sight of the impact in others.
5. Be true to yourself and your brand - never make false promises or guarantees!
Modern day media has adopted the so-called “clickbait” culture and embedded it into our society. Perhaps it works for some businesses, but what I can’t emphasise enough is that you always have to put yourself into the customer's position! Just think how frustrated you would be if you were interested in a product or a service advertised, only to find out that it has all been a marketing trick! When offering customer service, it’s of utmost importance to follow these rules:
Be consistent in your branding
Pay attention to what people need - after all, you are there to provide services
Try and avoid generic messages
Always follow up on the promise or offer you made
Check regularly the content you share and whether it’s in accordance with your current situation
Sometimes it will happen that you had an offer regarding the services your business provides that theoretically still stands, but you have no means of following through. This is why it is important to be consistent in your branding and pay attention to all of your company’s outlets - the website, social media, internal communication between employees, etc. If you had an offer on your social media profile that you can’t complete, but a customer already asked for, try to provide it anyway, and in case it’s impossible, apologize and try to figure out another way to make it up to your client.
Large companies and corporations that employ entire teams of online support would have something to say in favour of the benefits of customer support through generic messages. Saving time for the sake of the capability of addressing the requirements of the dual client may justify the use of generic messages, but you should be aware that you use them at your own risk, and don’t forget to check whether they are useful and relevant to your clients, depending on the situation.However, if you are growing a small business owner, you probably want to deal with each problem and complaint individually.
Taking the time to tackle every single problem your customers stumbled upon, as well as being consistent in the quality of service your company provides is what will differentiate you from competitors and give you a foothold for creating a strong and loyal customer community. Not to mention the value in can bring you in terms of learning.
NB: Barely a week goes by in which we don’t tell someone that we cannot do something. “No” is often the hardest word to say when you want to grow your business but if you cannot do something (to a high standard) or it is not right for your business, service or personal brand, then you must say so. You are being honest and true to yourself as well as your customers.
6. Treat your employees the way you would have them treat the customers.
I already spoke of the importance of picking the right people for the job, but what might be even more important is the climate in which your employees spend their working days. The golden rule applies to this as well: Treat people the way you want to be treated. So, in order to have good communication between your customers and the people that work for you, apply the same set of rules of interaction you would have them apply to their communication with clients.
Be understanding
Listen closely and carefully
Have an overall positive attitude
Try and see the situation from their perspective
Be open to communication and suggestions
Take the time to get to know your employees and take into consideration their thoughts and opinions on how you could optimize your business to be even more successful and consistent in providing good service. Organize training sessions to acquaint your coworkers with your brand’s ethic and the way you do things in your company. If someone doesn’t understand something, has a different point of view or has difficulties following the instructions, be positive, calm and understanding. This way, not only will you help your employees, but you will also be in a position to improve the internal communication, training process and apply it to customer relations.
Sometimes things will elude you that others will see, and that is precious. We all make mistakes and we should learn from them! This is why implementing the whole-company approach is beneficial for everybody involved. Naturally, you will delegate different responsibilities to adequate people - you won’t ask your copy writer to deal with the code of your website, same as you wouldn’t ask a physics teacher to sew a suit. Customer service, however, is a skill that should be mandatory in today’s society where everything comes down to the exchange of services and goods.
Situations will occur where some of your employees who are tasked with customer service will have too much to do, and therefore will be unable to answer all of your customers' needs. In this scenario, the whole-company approach is a life saver! This way, not only will you successfully meet all of your client’s demands, but you will also create a wider understanding of what it is that your business provides, as well as respect amongst your employees for different sectors and responsibilities they manage in your company.
When we talk specifically about customer service, you should try and unify a specific team that deals with this segment of business. Just as you couldn’t have a football game without a set of rules, trying to work on any particular task without some guidelines will only wreak chaos and confusion on those assigned to it.
Create a support lexicon that adheres to your company’s general tone
Address the objections that are most common
Create an outline for the entire process
Generally when starting a business you should spend some time thinking and optimizing the general tone of your brand: Who is it for? How do they speak? What is the impression I want people to have of my company
The same thing applies to customer service. Create a list of dos and don’ts when interacting with customers that your employees will have access to in order to help them fulfill their task in the most efficient way. Include in this document the FAQ (frequently asked questions) section that will answer all the dilemmas your employees might have, such as “Is it okay to say this?” and “What should I do if this situation occurs?”
In order to save time and energy, you should also write down a list of the most common objections and questions your customers might have about your business. This includes things like specifics of your company and how is it different from the competition, pricing of the services and/or products you provide, etc.
Lastly, outlining the entire process of customer service is what will make sure that all of your coworkers can be successful in meeting their set quotas and efficient in the work they do. In this document you should cover things like instructions on documenting bugs and errors, approach to different sets of problems your customers might come with, the situations in which it is appropriate to write a piece of help content and any other problematic that might directly affect your business.
In conclusion…
Customer support is like your business identity card. My advice is to treat your business like your home - greet everyone with great care, love and patience. Good hosts will be talked about for a long time - don’t forget that!
In addition to advertising, which is an important element in attracting customers, pay attention to providing great customer support, since it is a vital part of every business that speaks volumes about your company, employees and the culture you nurture.
Remember to stay consistent and true to the original idea you had for your business, but also to be open to new ideas, commentaries, insights and different points of view. No person in the world ever made anything solely relying on themselves, and neither should you.
I pride myself in having a great internal communication with all my coworkers and employees, and working in a healthy and positive environment reflects on the effectiveness of the services we provide to our customers and clients.
As motivational customer service keynote speaker, expert and author Shep Hyken wisely put, customer support is an ongoing process that needs to be improved constantly. Shep is the author and Chief Surprise Officer of Shepard Introductions and one of the most famous figures within the field of customer support. He has created 7 top of the line trade books on diverse themes related to client benefit. One of his most recent is called The Comfort Insurgency – in which I have found many interesting quotes and pieces of advice on this topic:
“Every interaction counts. Even the small ones. Make them all relevant.”
I hope this article will be of assistance to you and will help you create a strong, positive and consistent brand for your company! If you have any questions or comments concerning this topic, please feel free to share your thoughts!
Author: Thomas Smallwood is an outsourcing specialist. Having worked in companies around Europe, from the support desk to the boardroom, he founded bizee.co to help small businesses grow through efficient delegation to skilled virtual assistants. He is an award-winning blogger and a passionate advocate for mental health awareness.
Connect with Tom on LinkedIn.