Improve Your Customer Service in 9 Easy Steps

Do you feel as though your customer service isn’t as good as it could be? Maybe you feel as though you are losing out to your competition but don’t know why. Either way now is the time for you to make a change. If you don’t then over time, you may end up running your business into the ground and this is the last thing you need. 

Make less excuses and more success with these tips below! Image Credit: Shamblen Studios

Know your Customer Needs

The more you know your customers, the more likely you are to understand the expectations that they have of you.  Give some thought to what you know about your customers right now, and how helpful that information is. You also need to think about how you can match their needs to the products and the services you have, right now. It’s important to give some thought to where you are going to store the information too. Are you going to use a CRM system? How about a simple spreadsheet? Either way, you have to make sure that your team is ready to help you store and retrieve this information. Understand your customer needs and expectations, as this will help you to improve your customer service while ensuring that any aspirations are met.

Promote Feedback

There are a lot of different ways for you to find out what your customers truly think about your organization. First of all, you need to identify what methods are viable and rewarding. Give your customers the chance to give testimonials and to also leave reviews online. Asking customers what their views are when they have used your product, is also important. Providing a very short and simple survey that comes with an incentive to complete will make things easier too. Some will be eager to help, especially if they think that you are going to use the information to help them going forward. 

By knowing potential issues ahead of time through customer feedback, you can squash any troubles that may arise in the future. Image Credit: Shamblen Studios

Set and Communicate Standards

Set some simple and clear standards so that your team understand how to act. You can also include team members in this process if you want to increase your overall engagement. When the time comes for you to set your standards, it’s important to consider the tone and the type of language that represents your brand values the most. You also need to give some thought to your service ethics. This could include the formal or the informal style of your language. Support processes have to be put into place so that you can make sure that there is always a constant delivery of those standards. Give some thought to staffing levels, technology and even resources, so you can make sure that your expectations are realistic for your business.

Exceed Expectations

Think about it, how often are your customers delighted because they have received something that surpassed their expectations? If you can make sure that you are always surprising your customer in this way, and if you can make sure that you put in the work to guarantee future loyalty then this will work in your favor more than you realize. If you want to take a positive step here then the first thing you need to do is recognise any special events for your customer, or even milestones of their loyalty. You might also want to provide an extension to the product or service that they have purchased. Special, or additional touches get referenced within the online community. Things like this can help to raise your credibility online and they also help to encourage new referrals as well, which is a great way for you to boost your bottom line.

Capture Great Examples

Identify how you can capture your customer’s feedback across your organization. You can also include feedback from your managers or your peers. If they have noticed that a team member has gone the extra mile for someone then make sure that you give them the recognition they deserve. Customer feedback can also tie in with an employee recognition scheme as this helps to give credit to those who are trying the hardest. The best thing about doing this is that it gives people the chance to get noticed, which can contribute to them making the effort more in the future.

Be Effortless

Follow the journey that your customers are taking. In particular, find ways to streamline the process where possible. This has to be done at every stage of the journey. How easy is it for you to understand things from their point of view? If possible you also need to take a look at how accessible you are on a 24/7 basis. Can people reach you by telephone? Email? Live chat? Social media? Any barriers or delays in your customer contact can stop them from getting the response they need from you. The faster and easier you can make it for people to buy from you, the more likely they are to use your service in the first place. Successful companies explain how their products or services are going to be delivered. They also take steps to pre-empt questions by explaining what can be expected at every stage of the process. This helps to eliminate any potential problems that the customer may experience. Overall, the more effortless your service is, the more customers you are likely to retain. Some research has shown that customers tend to go for ease first, rather than going to someone who has given them a positive experience in the past. If you want to make the most out of your customer service team, or if you want people to be able to get in touch with you with ease then one thing you can do is invest in live chat software for website use. This will allow people to get in touch with you in a matter of seconds, and most of the time, they can get a reply instantly. This is just an example, but it does help to show how you can always elevate your customer service by providing a more convenient method of communication.

Everyone is different—so make your customers feel special! Image Credit: Shamblen Studios

Personalize your Customer Service

Take the time to engage with your customers and find out what their needs are. As a result of this, you will be able to provide them with a product or service that helps them the most. As you strive to improve your customer service standards, you will see an improvement. Always use your customer’s name when you chat with them and appear genuinely interested in helping them. Pick up seamlessly from someone else’s conversation if they have been talking to another staff member and show empathy if they have had a bad experience.

This, combined with you going out of your way to provide a good solution, will help you to give them the experience they are looking for. Personalizing your service in this way will help you to build trust with your customers. There are a lot of tools out there that you can use, and they include CRM systems. This helps you to capture relevant historical information that may be useful later on. Along with the provision of coaching and training, you may find that you can reinforce this with great recognition. Things like this can help you to embed a level of customer service, loyalty and personalization.

Invest in Training

Choosing a training provider who gets you, and who knows your business will help you out a lot. You need someone who can support your strategy and your training standards. Someone who is experienced will be able to support you and your team when it comes to your deliverables and it will also help you to do this in a sustainable way. Alternatively, you could easily develop your customer service program. This will help you to raise the bar when it comes to product knowledge, skills and customer service. You may want to train your team on deliverables as well as make sure that you give a  lot of bite-sized training sessions for your team. If you can do this then you are bound to see an improvement.

Analyze Concerns

Get to the root cause of any concerns your customers may have. Find out if anything is going wrong and why this could be the case. It will help a lot if you have a structured system that helps you to store your customer feedback, as well as your concerns and complaints. When you have everything organized, you can then ask yourself, why are the complaints happening? What patterns are you starting to see? How are your customers registering their complaints? If you can keep things like this in mind then it will help you a lot in the future and it will also make it much easier for you to make solid decisions going forward. Share this kind of data with representatives as they can then help you to make all of the changes you need regarding your customer service team. If you can keep things like this in mind then it’ll help you out a lot in the long run.

Now sit back and let the happy customers (and money) flow in. Image Credit: Shamblen Studios

In what areas do you feel you need most improvement when it comes to customer service? I’d like to hear about it in the comments below.