If you own a business, you will know the importance of customer service. Whether you own a product-based company or a service-based one, your customers should have a positive experience while interacting with you.
Customer service is not all about being courteous, it is a vital part of your business that should never get ignored. This is because good customer experience can build up your brand in the public. You will see that several high-profile companies have degraded their brand image by not providing quality customer service.
Whether you own a small or a larger business, investing to build up good customer service is a must for you.
What is customer service – what does it include?
Customer service refers to a collection of policies based on which one will be able to govern the way all the employees of an organization interacts with their customers. It will cover all the meeting points, from the front desk to the chat help, using which you and your customers will interact. In words, customer servicing is all about making your customers feel valued, fairly treating them and appreciating by your business.
These days social media platform is a great place to voice opinions. You might receive negative feedbacks there from your client which can potentially harm your image. Thus, it is important that along with providing quality customer care services, you should also monitor things that are said about your company. In the case of a negative post or comment, take that as a complaint and respond immediately.
Why is Customer Service of supreme importance today?
Customer loyalty is something that all businesses run after. Thus, you must be investing a lot in advertisements and marketing. But one thing for you to remember is that when the customers are happy with your products and services, they will automatically be loyal to your brand. We understand that it is important to attract new customers, but it is equally important to retain old customers in the best possible way. You can hire virtual answering services from VoiceNation to give the best customer services.
How can you provide exceptional Customer Service?
The whole process of customer service starts with you and hence you and your employees must be well-behaved and well trained. You will find trained professionals who are capable of turning an irate customer into a happy one. They will help you to bring your company to limelight and also increase business for your organization.
Revising the existing policies
As much as it is important to give training to your employees, it is equally important to introduce the right policies to them. You should implement policies that cover all the conceivable parts of a customer’s experience. This will include even small things like how fast the phone calls should be answered or the response time of chats and e-mails. You should put yourself in the shoes of your customers and then analyze different situations to understand the reactions. Make sure that the policies are customer friendly. You can include your staff in the policy-making sessions as you will get unique and fresh ideas from them.
Hiring the right resources
When you hire employees to form a customer servicing team, make sure that they understand what the process is about. They should know what quality customer service actually means. You can give them some customer scenarios and ask them how they are going to react to that. This will help you to understand whether or not, the people you are hiring are worthy enough to represent your brand reputation to the masses.
Customer service training
Help the team understand the policies and then train them so that they can execute it all properly. You can include some role-playing session wherein one staff can act as a customer servicing agent while the other one will act like a customer. Ask them to carry out a conversation based on different situations, so that they can make improvements. Make the training sessions an ongoing part of your company’s professional development so that the staff will also feel charged up to raise their game.
Surveying the customer base
To understand whether your customer servicing practices are really working or not, you can include surveys in the process. This will give a platform to the customers to voice their opinions and asses the services that your employees are providing them. You can do this through surveys or online comment boxes. You can also ask your customers to rate the interaction. Do review the surveys minutely and work on the common threads of problems.
Why opt for customer servicing?
Always remember that customer retention will help you to acquire new customers as well. Some reasons for opting for customer services will include:
Customer service represents your brand image and mission. Customers cannot interact directly with you, hence they will take various platforms as the literal representation of your brand. The intermediate between you and your customers is the customer servicing team, hence they should be trained enough to give out the correct picture of your organization.
You will see that people often agree to pay more to companies that offer better customer services. The most important thing here is how your customers perceive your brand. Make sure that the customer service provided by your company is prompt and to the point. Customers should not have to wait for long to get a response to their queries or complaints.
When the customer servicing team is good, it will grow Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). This is one of the most important metrics. This basically refers to the total value that you can expect from a customer’s account. So, if you have good customer services and if your customers had positive experiences while shopping from your company, then they are likely to come back. They will not only refer you to new customers but you can individually up-sell or cross-sell to them for additional products.