The 6 steps to improving customer service
Customer service is the degree to which a company deals satisfactorily with its customers. To provide good customer service, they make sure that customers can easily reach them and their employees are friendly and knowledgeable about the company’s services and how to help issues customers may be having.
It’s always better to please the customer by meeting their needs, satisfying their requests, and helping them achieve their goals.
There are many benefits of having an excellent customer service team such as:
- Improved morale because people feel valued and appreciated at work.
- Increased productivity as employees can focus more on quality tasks instead of dealing with negative attitudes associated with unmet expectations.
- Increased company image because your customers will view your company as a reliable brand that they can trust and build a long-term relationship with.
Below we have talked about some of the customer service strategies to win your customer’s heart.
1. Be proactive and anticipate customer needs
As a business owner, you know that the best way to keep your customers coming back for more is by providing them with top-notching service. This means being proactive and anticipating their needs before they have time or opportunity of asking about them personally; which will help avoid any potential misunderstandings down the road!
2. Smile and greet customers with a warm, welcoming tone
Because when others are in a good mood, you feel more comfortable and the environment becomes friendlier. Smiling is contagious.
A smile can improve your mood, lower perceived levels of stress, increase levels of intimacy in interpersonal relationships, decrease incidents in domestic violence and crime by up to fifty percent according to several studies by Lawrence Sorrentino at the University of California. A smile is exchanged between people 50% more than any other gesture.
Smiles or greetings may change how customers perceive us- sometimes to our benefit! It’s well documented that people working behind counters are made much happier when they’re greeted with a genuine “hello” for example.
3. Listen to the customer’s concerns and address them in a respectful manner
You cannot please everyone, but everyone needs to be respected. We know this for a fact because we’ve seen examples of Australian companies that went out of business because they lost their focus on the human aspect of their product or service. When you listen to people, your customers will appreciate it and come back again and again… especially if you can maintain great customer service at all times! People don’t take kindly to rude servers, managers who yell over the phone, etc., so take care that you treat your customers with respect!
4. Provide timely service while maintaining quality standards
Deliver a great customer management experience by timing services according to customer needs and expectations, while focusing on the quality of service.
Customers want a high quality of service, but they also want it delivered on time. One way to provide timely service is by training your staff to recognize the importance of punctuality. For example, make sure to consistently start contact with customers at their preferred time and respond promptly if a customer sends an email or text message.
Embrace tools that help you keep track of tasks and efficiently manage resources across shifts. In addition, give advance notice when changes are made that might result in delays in delivery timelines for work done after the change takes effect.
5. Offer service that exceeds expectations
While designing customer experience you need to understand that offering services that surpass your customer’s expectations are very important to get deals again and again.
Professionals who offer above and beyond customer service will probably outperform the competition in terms of client satisfaction, reputation, customer loyalty, and profits. And if your business depends on repeat customers to survive, then this should be a very important question that you should respond to accordingly.
Offering service that exceeds customer expectations is how professionals set themselves apart from the competition. It’s one of the most important things a professional can do when it comes to developing a business because customers will tend to stick with companies they feel have gone out of their way for them in some way, no matter what the price point may be.
6. Personalise your customer service
Personalisation helps to increase customer satisfaction, decrease wait time in calls, and decreases the number of abandoned calls.
The more a customer has to do what you’re asking them to do on their own, the more frustrated they might get and more likely they are to give up. A good way of looking at personalisation would be as removing some obstacles that your customers have come into contact with – steps that can often be difficult for someone else doing it for the first time. Your understanding is greater than theirs so making it easy on them will go a long way towards creating an excellent first experience and giving them faith in what you do and who you represent!