Good customer service is good business.Whether it’s selling a product or offering services, no business can deny that they deal with customers even with today’s automated world.
In a fast-paced world, the bigger challenge though is to not disappoint even a single customer.To bring new customers return and become loyal to your brand, pay attention to ensuring good customer service experience.
Merely launching promotions or slashing your products’ prices are definitely not enough, especially if your customers are not satisfied with your offerings. Worst, they can spread fury and vitriol against you, which can snowball into a disaster.
What is Good Customer Service?
There’s definitely a lot of definitions to use when talking about customer service. But after distilling the messages, it all boils down to the actual practice of fulfilling your customers’ needs in a professional, helpful, superior service and assistance in all levels of transactions until your customers’ needs are met.
From the start to the completion of a transaction, it’s inevitable that a customer neither feel neglected nor abandoned. Every single moment with you should feel special. That’s why delivering a good customer service is relevant in order to survive.
And to offer outstanding customer service, money as well as time and effort are important. Keep in mind that your work’s not done until your customers are satisfied. It also helps if customers are passing their positive experience because a customer care specialist was present and helpful.
Customer service is, by essence, the effort of establishing a relationship with your customers. Or the kind that is worth pursuing for a long-term. And to truly create a good, lasting customer service, this blog shares some key pointers:
The Customer Service Debate: Cost vs. Result
Sometimes, for lack of understanding, experience or misguided notion about customer care, newbie entrepreneurs’ notion of the practice all about cost, cost, cost with no return.
This is then tendency among startup bosses who hold back hiring a frontdesk receptionist or help center staff with good customer service skills.Thus, they thought of customer service as a useless aspect of business that’s not worth pursuing.
Here are some additional signposts to detect mediocre practices and help you question your own customer service practice if you’re doing it all wrong.
Customer Service is not viewed as part of marketing.When it’s not considered vital by your marketing department, management rarely push or pursue customer service investments. But what’s forgotten is that customers can do a couple of things much better than you are.
Positive word-of-mouth exposure, for instance, can bring tremendous support to your marketing effort. It can eventually draw more sales out of new customers who’ll line up to order your new product offering, even help you outperform the competition.
When there are few complaints, the service is great. Don’t instantly assume you’re a genius if people don’t lodge a complaint about your poor services. Believe it or not, only a fraction of your disgruntled customers might visit your website and write a complaint or call you to report an injustice.
When you’re viewed as small or a startup, customers rarely give time to report a problem or alert you that you messed up big time. Because why would they waste time composing emails when simply looking for a replacement can be a smarter move.
But to get the whole picture, seek out from your customers feedback that will help you improve your service delivery. Generate a survey form and offer some incentives to those who will respond and give their genuine no holds barred feedback.
Thinking that acquiring new customer is much important than retention.While it’s already a struggle to invite prospective customers to pay attention and be convinced that you’re worth checking out, but the stake’s even bigger with customer retention.
When your customer service fail your customer, you’re a sinking ship, weighing down your business with huge amount of cost.
Just consider losing a powerful customer who share a very bad experience before his social media audience, you not only lose that person but a couple of supposed customer.
Too bad, all these misconceptions are hurting them so bad that these businesses are losing all important opportunities to succeed. And while customer service might be present, worst, theirs just plain sucks. And it’s important that you worry.
Keys to Outstanding Customer Service
After we’ve discussed that customer service experience is really important in propelling long-term business gains, focus on these steps constantly to deliver professional customer care with ease:
Answer your Phone. If you can’t handle frequent phone calls from customers inquiring and seeking response from inquiries, hire an outsourced staff with good customer service skills. Read carefully, not an answering machine.
Listen to Your Customers.When customers call you, let them talk. Your customers should feel like you’re actually listening by making the necessary responses. When you keep asking your customers to repeat, that’s a sure sign your focus is somewhere and customers are sensitive to instantly notice your inattention to the latter’s concerns.
Be Helpful. When you offer some help to your customers and declare that you’re not charging him for a fee, that story will surely go a long way. When such story of yours, event if there’s not immediate profit that you’ll get out of going the extra mile, can bring more benefits that you’d otherwise imagine.
Be Professional. This pretty envelops almost all good qualities of customer service work: keeping your promises to your customers, being knowledgeable, courteous, patient, and willing to take the extra mile in order to satisfy your customers.
Train and Empower Staff. Whether it’s your in-house staff or outsourced call center agents, provide the necessary training either by doing it yourself or hiring someone to conduct the training. Give your staff enough information and motivation when dealing even with the smallest of customer-pleasing transactions.
Final Words
Today’s customers are more and more challenging to deal with, especially so, they’re very demanding and easily-distracted. The price of competition and a hyper-connected and informed society that we have.
Here is why good customer service is important and vital to gain positive words from your customers about your products and services. You can just imagine when these good words about you gets passed around, you benefit profitably in the short to long-term, right?
Where does this leads us? It’s high time that you pay attention to the relevance of providing and ensuring good customer service. It’s because taking care of the ones you have is one vital side of your marketing effort that’s going to generate you more revenue and then acquire more customers for you.
