When it comes to any customer wanting to spend money in your store or even online, they need to receive excellent customer service. If a customer doesn’t feel like they have received good customer service, it is doubtful that they will want to spend any time or money with your business. Unfortunately, getting customer service right isn’t always easy; you have to make sure your staff is clued up and know what you need to change to improve customer service.
Not only will having better customer service increase your chances with that customer in particular but also on the chances of them referring you on to friends and family based on the experience they had with your business, so there is the long term aspect of increased customer base if you manage to get your customer service right.
Suppose you are unsure what changes you could make to your customer service or whether your customer service is up to scratch. In that case, these tips should help give you an understanding of what you can do to better your service and where to start when it comes to making changes in your business.
Understanding your customer
Getting to know your customer is critical as what this does is allow you to tailor your customer service to make sure you are pleasing as many customers as possible. You need to look at a few things to make sure you can understand your customers properly, what do you currently know about each of your customers, and how helpful is the information that you now have, and if not practical, what else would you need to know for it to be beneficial.
This is the best place to start as it will give you the base understanding of your customers and what that information is showing you; it will also let you know what areas you need to be sure of when gathering information on your customers. For example, when compiling data on your customers, you need to make sure you think about security and how you store the information you have on them; if you are not compliant in how you store data on customers or store data that a customer has opted out on then, you can be liable to severe consequences.
Try to promote feedback from customers
When it comes to knowing what customers want and how you can get better, there is no better way to get this information than the customers themselves. Customer feedback is vital and will help you understand what you may be doing well and improve upon. To collect the feedback from the customers, there are a few different things you can do; one of the main things used is the online review or testimonial. If you have a website, getting them to review the experience online or what they bought online is an excellent option for you, and also having reviews and testimonials on the website is a great way to show new customers how great you are, which is another reason to make sure you deliver excellent customer service.
Another way is to talk to your customers and ask them for feedback personally; this could be done face to face or via a phone call; no matter what way you do it, this method can be a good option as it helps build personal connections with your customers. One of the more popular ways to capture feedback is via surveys, this can be a form instore, or it could be simple online forms, and surveys are great ways to ask the questions you want answering and allow for feedback, try to keep them short as more people are likely to fill out shorter forms and surveys.
Make sure you set out customer service standards
To allow your team to know what you want from them regarding customer service, make sure you set out some standards you want them to meet. Please make sure they are easy to follow and complete and that the team is fully aware of what these are, what this does to make sure they are always keeping customer service to the same standard; this will mean it is more likely that most customers will see an excellent level of customer service. You can set things like the tone of voice they use and what type of language is acceptable to use, the primary customer contact point, and support processes to ensure they can keep delivering the level of service required, like communication templates.
Try and exceed customer expectations
Exceeding a customer’s expectations is a great way to encourage referrals and loyalty in your customers. You can do this by rewarding their loyalty, maybe with offers and discounts or a treat. Anything that the customer is not expecting will affirm their want to shop and stay with your business. Just acknowledging the longevity of their time with you and awarding it will make them understand that they are respected and wanted at your business; this should lead to them praising you and referring you to other people to use you.
Acknowledge and reward great customer service
If you capture customer feedback across your business, whether customers or colleagues and managers, make sure you acknowledge when a staff member does a good job. This will help to boost morale and help to motivate staff to want to keep on doing their best. In addition, implementing a recognition scheme will help to acknowledge the team or individuals offering excellent customer service. It will help them understand that the management is paying attention to what they are doing and will motivate those who may not try as hard.
Make sure your team is reachable
When it comes to customer service, it does not just mean you have to be present for the customer there, and then they may need to get hold of you after they have purchased something or even before they even make a purchase. If you do not have a way to answer their questions, you could lose a sale or upset a customer, not suitable for business. It would help ensure your store or customer service team is continuously reachable during opening times.
You can do this a few ways, have a manned telephone that always has someone to answer it, have an email question form online they can fill out, make time for customers that come into the store, or get a chatbot software for website. By having these options available to your customers, they have more chance of getting the help they need to make sure their whole experience in the business is positive. There is nothing worse than compounding an awful customer experience with even worse experiences trying to resolve it.
Invest in your team
If you want your team to perform well with customer service, it is good to invest in them and send them on some training and workshops that will help them understand customer service better and what they should be doing. When sourcing training, it is best to find a training provider who is going to be able to help you with future training and help support the business with all training needs, as if they are familiar with your business, it is easier for them to tailor training and build up a good rapport with staff.
If you do not want to train all your staff, then it can be best to train your team leaders who will then be able to teach the staff on the job and help them out; this is easier for big teams and when you are a busy business and do not have time for days shut for training days.
Make your team’s job easier
If you want your team to focus on giving the best possible experience to those that call in, you should make sure they don’t have other stresses on their plate. For instance, give them resources that allow them to answer the most common questions without too much effort, and look at investing in contact center software that automates many of the processes that otherwise take up their time. If you can free up their focus to be aimed chiefly at providing a better customer experience, they will be much better able to do it.
Make sure to analyze your feedback
Ensure you are analyzing any negative feedback from customers; this will help you identify any patterns, what time the complaints can usually occur, how they are registering the complaints, and what is letting the business down. With all this data, you can pinpoint people or processes that may be letting the company down. This then allows you to make changes or administer training where necessary to help rectify the issues. You will also see the best feedback process to push that more to get more feedback in the future.
Run a business, and you are unsure what changes you could make to better your customer service, or you need more ideas to help you and your business. Hopefully, these tips will help you get started on your new customer service journey and help you understand where you can implement changes in your business structure.
