If you're not new in the Business industry, Mancao E-connect Business Solutions is here for you to help you become a pro customer agent!
The key to being balanced is to bear in mind when it comes to your own customers. If you want them to remember you for the right reasons, you need to offer a genuinely outstanding standard of customer service.
Well, have you ever wondered what a constitutional employee/ agent is like? Is it about individuals who go the extra mile, or is it about a culture that prioritizes the customer above all else? Is it a matter of ensuring your team is well-staffed enough to be properly attentive to customers or is it about training them in what customers are looking for? The correct answer is that it’s a combination of all these things.
We are in the modern era that our consumer is used to the modern environment, reputation really does matter a huge amount. It’s never been easier for consumers to give their opinion or to find the opinions of others, thanks to online reviews. So providing exceptional customer experiences, and the question of how to be better at customer service has never been more important than they are today.
With the rise of the internet, customer reviews, and social media, reputation management – as well as the satisfaction of doing a good job – requires you to prioritize customer service.
Here are a few tips on achieving a world-class like customer service:
1. Listen
This might seem like an obvious, elementary point, but you’d be amazed how many businesses don’t take it as seriously as they ought to. It’s very easy to tell your customers that you’re listening to them, but it’s quite another to actually take their feedback into account – and act on it. You really do need, though, to pay close attention to what your customers are trying to tell you, and if you fail to do so, your business is likely to pay a heavy price.
You should respect the fact that customers are taking time out of their own schedule to provide their views – even if those views are negative. Indeed, even negative feedback can be useful; it may be that it highlights a genuine problem. Few people complain simply for the sake of it. If negative feedback hits upon an issue that genuinely needs resolving, then you need to take the requisite action.
2. Empathize, Empathize, Empathize
Another one of the most elementary ideas for improving customer service is that of treating customers with respect when they contact you to make a complaint.
It’s a simple fact of running a business that you will, every so often, receive some complaints from customers. You could run the tightest ship in the world, but there will be times when your business falls short of the customer service standards to which it aspires.
The point is to be prepared for any issues and to know how to deal with these complaints when they arise. Firstly, you need to appreciate that when a customer contacts you to complain about some aspect of the experience they’ve had, they’re probably already feeling a bit tense about the matter. They may even be angry. So your staff needs to be thoroughly trained in how to handle these situations.
3. Create a Customer Service Culture
The thing about customer service is that it’s not just about giving staff a list of dos and don’ts. Your approach to it has to go much further than that. It’s a matter of instilling a particular type of ethos, and ensuring as best you can that your staff embody that ethos in their approach to customer service. This requires creating an internal, customer-first culture that accords customer service the overarching priority it deserves.
In every aspect of your business, there needs to be a laser-like focus on meeting the needs of the customer, and ensuring that they have the best possible experience. Everyone in the organization must be made to understand that the work they do is geared towards this fundamental end. It’s not simply a question of training staff during the onboarding process and then leaving them to do the rest. There needs to be a continual emphasis.
4. Communicate Clearly With Customers
We’ve already noted how the rise of the internet and social media have made it easier than ever for customers to give their views on your business. But, on the flip side, it’s also easier than ever to keep in touch with your customers. When a customer reaches out to you to raise an issue, you need to redouble your efforts to address it in a timely and clear manner, so there’s no room for ambiguity or uncertainty.
Make sure you pay proper attention to your social channels because customers will use them to contact you. The days when people solely raise issues via a phone call or even an email are gone. Of course, people still use those channels, but society has come to take on increasing importance over the last few years.
The danger here is that everyone can see how you reply to a tweet or a Facebook post; this means that you need to be very careful in how you handle issues raised via these mediums.
When responding to a customer, keep them updated with any progress relating to the issue they’ve raised with you. Don’t bombard them with irrelevant updates as this will only antagonize them, but at the same time, don’t leave them in the dark. Your communications with customers need to be friendly but professional, and they need to be strictly relevant to the matter at hand.
5. Hire the Right People
Again, you’d think this was another self-explanatory point that needed no further elaboration, but many businesses are way too careless when it comes to their hiring practices. When thinking about how to improve customer service, you need to think about who you’re bringing into the team. Do your new recruits have previous experience in providing top-class customer service? Do they really buy into the ethos you’re trying to create?
Too many companies hire new staff out of necessity, indeed almost out of panic, and this means they don’t always take the time to assess whether newcomers are actually likely to be a good fit for the company. But the caliber of the staff you hire will have a major bearing on the standard of customer service you provide, and hence the customer experience as a whole.
It goes without saying that training can make a big difference, and previous experience isn’t necessarily the be-all and end-all. However, you do need to take a step back before hiring and consider whether the person you’re thinking of bringing in really shares your commitment to exceptional customer service. If you have any reservations at all on this score, it may be best to continue your search until you find the right addition to your team.
6. Honesty is Always the Best Policy
It takes a lot to build up a good reputation, but it takes nowhere near as much time or effort to knock it down. However well established you are in your field, and however many years you’ve been providing consumers with amazing experiences, all that can be undone remarkably easily. A surefire way of wrecking a good reputation is to be dishonest with customers.
You have to remember that your customers are intelligent people. They’re not stupid or naive Some may have years of experience of customer service, and they know the difference between good and bad. Trying to pull the wool over their eyes, or hoodwink them in some way, is a fool’s errand. If there’s a genuine problem, you need to own up to it and address it in a transparent and honest manner.
Mistakes happen: we’re only human, at the end of the day. This is a much more effective way of getting the customer back on the side than kicking the can down the road or trying to pass the buck.
7. Respond to Customers Quickly
When a customer goes to the trouble of contacting you, it’s because they have a point or a query they want to raise. You need to demonstrate that you respect them enough to respond to them in a quick, timely manner. This is one of the top tips for great customer service: your communications with customers need to cover the issues they’ve raised in full, but they need to be as swift as possible, too.
This is all the more important on social media, because – as we’ve discussed – other people can see your interactions. Respond to social queries quickly and always be scrupulously polite, but know when to take them private. Potentially thorny issues are better discussed in private messages away from prying eyes. This is as much about the customer’s privacy as yours. But again, always be absolutely polite and professional in private messages.
8. Answer the Phone!
If you’ve ever been frustrated in your efforts to get hold of a business by phone, you’ll understand perfectly well how people get so annoyed about it. There are certainly few things more irritating than being left on hold for hours on end, forced to sit through the same irritating music. Then there are the businesses that don’t answer your calls at all or fail to respond to your voicemails in a reasonably quick manner.
If you really pride yourself on providing excellent customer service, you need to prove it by answering phone calls in a timely way. Don’t leave people hanging around for ages. Make sure your team understands the importance of responding to calls – tell them not to leave any phones ringing out for more than a couple of rings. They must appreciate that your customers have their own lives to be getting on with.
9. Try to Avoid Escalations
Whenever a customer makes a complaint, it brings about a very sensitive situation – perhaps the most sensitive you’ll have to deal with in customer service. The fact that they’ve gone so far as to make a complaint already indicates that they’re not happy with your business. You need to start by getting to the bottom of why this is, and then assess exactly what you can do to resolve the problem.
If you’re determined to grow your business and build its reputation for outstanding customer service, you need to be prepared to make compromises in the face of customer complaints. This may require you to do certain things that you’re instinctively not comfortable with.
10. Preempt Further Questions
When responding to a customer, you must appreciate that the issues they raise may themselves create further questions. You should try to anticipate these as best you can. If you start going off on a tangent, talking about things that have relatively little relation to what the customer has actually said, it’s unlikely to impress them.
Addressing customer queries and dealing with customer complaints can be something of an open-ended process. It helps if you can thoroughly understand your customers. Be prepared to be patient, and don’t feel like you have to dispatch customer queries in double-quick time.
In conclusion, customer service, however, really can be the difference between lasting success and rapid failure. If you can keep your customers happy, you’ll also keep them coming back to your business, time and time again.
So, gear up for building a sustainable relationship with prospects, get a healthy sales pipeline, and close more deals. Contact us today! Get in touch with us at randy.mebs@gmail.com
For more details, feel free to visit www.mebsph.com/ or contact our company at +1 (917) 725 2180. Check out Mancao E-connect Business Solutions (MEBS) and learn about their top-rated Customer Service Representatives, Lead Generators, Appointment Setters, Virtual Assistants, Cold Callers, and Telemarketers perfect for your business in cities like Tampa, Beverly Hills, Orlando, Los Angeles, and many more.