One of the paramount yet overlooked factor that spells success in today’s over-competitive market is providing exceptional customer service. More than a valuable product or talented sales team is, your customers are more likely to develop stronger ties with your company if you provide them with genuine and special experience when they visit your store or website.
To help you gain more loyal customers, here are six ways to level up your customer service today.
- Sharpen the Customer Service Skills of Your Team
The first step in achieving great customer service is to ensure that your customer service team is equipped with the right skills. No matter how advanced your CRM tool is, addressing customer’s needs will be extremely hard if your team lacks the necessary skills to execute their job effectively. That said, these are the qualities that your customer service team should enhance further:
- Empathy, Patience, and Consistency. Your customer rep must be able to handle all type of customers with the same level of service consistently.
- Adaptability. One should be adapt quickly with the customer’s mood and attitude right after they enter the store. Willingness to continuously learn about providing good customer service is also a must.
- Strong Communication Skills. One should be able to convey the message effectively and efficiently to avoid any miscommunication during the purchase stage. Having a strong grasp of positive language and having a cheerful personality also ensures that the customer is satisfied at the end of the conversation
- Work Ethic. Good time management skill and problem-solving skills ensure that all customers are being attended accordingly and in a timely manner.
- Knowledge. Anticipate that your customers will ask a lot of questions about your product, and as such, it is only important that your team knows all the things about your product so that they can provide your customers with the right answers.
- Reassess Your Customer Touchpoints
In order to achieve better customer satisfaction, you must first have your customer in mind at every touchpoint. Customer touchpoints refer to the points by which your brand interacts with your customer, from start to finish. That said, a negative customer experience even on one point can immensely impact your relationship with your customer. Ensure that your team delivers the optimum level of service at each touchpoint consistently so that all your customers have a satisfying experience interacting with your brand.
- Improve Your Relationship with Your Customers
Having the right customer service skill is one thing, but maintaining a good rapport with the customers is another. These are the tips to make sure that your customer service is both systematic and well-received by your customers:
- Establish a common ground – like shared interest – with the customers they are attending to. Doing so makes the interaction more natural and easier to sustain in the long run.
- Make active listening a habit. Clarify and rephrase what your customers say to ensure that you got it all correctly. This makes them feel understood, thus allowing you to create a better brand image.
- Always admit your mistakes before your customers point it out to you. This builds trust and confidence on your customer’s end, and also leads to faster resolution of issues.
- Conduct a follow-up after a problem was resolved. Whether it’s through email, phone call or even a feedback survey, follow-ups let you know if your customers are still loyal to your brand or not.
- Augment Your Customer Service Strategy
Your skilled customer service team are no use if the customer service strategy that guides them lacks the basic elements to keep your customers happy and satisfied. Here are the following tips to an effective proactive customer service strategy that will ensure that your customers are happy before they tell you their issues:
- Engage with them on a more personal level.
- Let them know that you are always around to answer their questions.
- Establish a community that your customer can get involved with, such as webinars, interactive websites, social media groups, trade shows, and conventions.
- Improve Your Employee Engagement
You may have the best customer service skill or the most detailed customer service strategy in the world, but if your reps are disengaged with your company, it won’t matter at all. Another way to achieve better customer service is to make sure that the people that are providing the service are satisfied with their jobs first.
To know how your customer service team feels about working conditions, compensation, career development opportunities, training, and their co-workers, you can conduct a survey or even deploy an anonymous suggestion box in the office. In this way, you will know the exact nuts and bolts to adjust to make your customer service team work on their optimum level.
- Collect Response from Your Customers
Sometimes, being proactive is not enough to identify the exact pain points of our customers. To make sure that you know all the experience your customers have with your business, you need to make it easier and accessible for them to send their feedbacks, as well as suggestions for your company.
This can be done through a phone survey, email survey from your CRM tool, or through a form on the “Contact Us” page of your website. Regardless of which medium you use, getting a response from your customers allows you to streamline your customer service efforts and work on other areas of your business which needs improvement.
Excellent customer service has become one of the most important factors that people look into when rating their overall experience when engaging with a business. Make sure to follow all these tips and you will not only gain more loyal customers but also better revenue and stronger brand image today.
Garret Norris
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