What is the most important thing you can do to reduce churn and increase word-of-mouth referrals? The answer is obvious, but it’s often overlooked: improve your customer service.
No matter how awesome you think your product is, or how skilled you think your team is, what your customers are most likely to remember is the direct interaction they have with your company.
In an industry saturated with competitors selling similar products, it doesn’t matter how great your product is, or how skilled your customer support team is, customer interactions leave a lasting impression on your customers. In a world where most of the companies sell the same product with a different name and packaging, if you’re not constantly looking for opportunities to improve your customer service, then your customer relationships are likely to deteriorate over time.
One of the methods we use to keep our support team on their toes and our company culture on track is a customer service tip-of-the-day. In this post we’d like to share our best tips with you, so you can use them to give your own support team a crash course in amazing customer service.
How to Deliver Excellent Customer Service
You can click on a theme below to learn how your customer service team can use these tips.
- Understand Your Customer
- Train Your Customer Service Team
- Improve Communication Skills
- Keep Tabs on Customer Service Metrics
- Personalize Your Customer Experience
UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMER
#1 Know Your Customers
There is absolutely no substitute for knowing who your customers are, why they invested in your product, and what they love or hate about your company. Enable your customer support team to leverage helpdesk software that helps them record, analyze and infer from customer conversations easily. Now, whenever your customers contact your support team, they can have a meaningful and personalized interaction.
#2 Ask Your Customer Questions for Better Clarity
Make sure you understand what your customers are trying to communicate. You may also want to clarify in case they comprehend exactly what you mean to convey. You don’t want your customers to think they’re getting 25% off when they’re actually getting 25% more product. Ask customers if they understand what you’re saying.
#3 Make Collecting Customer Feedback Easy
The key to improving your customer service and growing your business is to learn about the good, the bad, and the ugly experience your customers have faced. Even though you might have accounted for every customer issue as part of your customer service experience strategy, you may face difficulty in streamlining the workflow. The best thing your customer support agents can do is create multiple touchpoints along the customer journey to encourage customer feedback.
TRAIN YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE TEAM
#4 Imbibe the Right Customer Service Skills
You know the old saying “the customer’s always right”. The best customer service reps who have received training in light of this philosophy, develop the ability to swallow their pride and accept blame or negative customer feedback. They are adept at handling unreasonable customers in an empathetic way. Not to forget, delivering exceptional customer service is your primary goal. If a customer is completely unreasonable, just be human and let them know that you’re doing your best.
#5 Practice Empathy, Patience, and Consistency
Your customers might have a lot of questions, some are just chatty, and others may be annoyed. Your customer support team must be prepared to empathize with your customers and offer the same level of service every time. Well-trained customer service agents are better at building customer relationships and generating high customer loyalty. You may refer to The Complete Guide to Customer Service Training to onboard your customer service employees.
#6 Use the CARP Method
It’s important for customer service teams to stay consistent in the tone they use and the processes they practice. A great way to do both is to use the CARP method:
- Control the situation
- Acknowledge the dilemma
- Refocus the conversation
- Problem-solving agents ensure happy customers
#7 Customer Service is a Continuous Learning Process
Every customer is unique and every customer interaction is different. In order to handle surprises, a customer service rep should be able to sense the customer’s mood, offer a workaround to address new challenges and be willing to keep learning and upskilling. Don’t forget to share The Ultimate Guide to Customer Service Skills with your customer service team.
#8 Your Work Ethic=Good Customer Service for All
Your customers will appreciate a customer service representative who closes the loop only when the customer’s problem has been solved. However, a customer service agent is equally responsible to all your customers. They can’t spend too much time handling one customer while others are waiting for their concerns to be heard. A customer service rep needs to stay focused to achieve the right balance and do justice to all your customers.
#9 Use Customer Service Templates
Keep your standards high and your response times low. There’s no need for you to keep reinventing the wheel for every basic and common question. Build scalable templates so you can respond to these types of inquiries with ease and professionalism.
IMPROVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS
#10 Choose The Right Tools
Having the right helpdesk software allows you to integrate with multiple tools and helps you bridge the gap between your customer service team and your customers. Your customer service reps can easily engage with your customers across a platform of their choice with an and open and flexible helpdesk software and effortlessly collaborate across teams to resolve customer issues in no time.
#11 Be Real
When you speak or write to your customers, be personable, casual, and most importantly be friendly. Don’t treat customers like a number on your log by using an overly formal tone. We have noticed that many companies have customer service teams that have been trained to be formal and they seem as if you’re interacting with a programmed robot. Please don’t be a robot nobleman. Have a real conversation with your customers.
#12 Practice Active Listening
Proactive Customer Service and Active Listening go hand in hand. When you use active listening, your customers feel heard. Your support agents need to make sure your customers understand and trust them by clarifying and rephrasing what they say. Here’s a way they can appease angry customers. They can empathize with them and reflect their feelings by saying, “I’m sorry, I can see why that is upsetting” or “That is a problem and I understand what you’re saying”. Gestures like this make a customer feel valued for their feedback.
#13 Practice Clear Communication
How you communicate with your customers is integral to your business. The use of positive language, coherent speech, and tone of communication affects your customer’s perception of your brand. Train your customer support reps to be careful with their interactions. Watch out for passive-aggressive language, avoid slang, colloquialisms, or technical jargon. Keep it simple so your customers understand exactly what is being communicated.
#14 Use Positive Language
Here’s an example of negative language in a customer support setting: “I can’t get you an upgrade until next month. Our service is back-ordered and unavailable right now.” Now, let’s do a quick comparison. Here’s an example of positive language in a customer support setting: “That upgrade will be available next month. I can put in an order for you right now and make sure your account is upgraded as soon as it’s released!” See the difference? Note: Use positive language, stay cheerful, and always end a conversation after your customer is satisfied with the interaction.
#15 Don’t Be Afraid to Say “I Don’t Know”
Your customers rely on your support team for transparent communication. This requires your team members to know your product inside out, stay informed about updates so that your support agents can offer a proactive approach to meet customer expectations. Your support team should even know who they can reach out to for a suitable answer. There might be instances when your support agent doesn’t have an answer to the query raised. Remember: It is okay to let your customers know, “I don’t know” as long as you follow up with the “but I’ll surely find out”. Customers will appreciate your honesty and your efforts to find the right answer.
#16 Admit Your Mistakes
Humans make mistakes. Remember, when your support team focuses on being human to empathize with their customers, they should also understand that it’s okay if they made a mistake despite them being careful. They just have to remember to accept their mistake and apologize, even if the customer didn’t bring it up. Admitting you messed up builds trust and restores your customer’s confidence in your service. It also allows a company to control the situation, re-focus the customer’s attention, and fix the problem.
#17 Always Close Conversations Correctly
Every conversation you close with a customer should end with you saying “Is there anything else I can do for you today? I’m happy to help!” and your customer saying “Yes, I’m all set!” loud and clear. Correctly closing a conversation shows the customer three vital things:
- You care about getting things right
- You’re willing to keep going until you get things right
- The customer is the one who decides what “right” is
#18 Follow Up After a Problem is Solved
Follow up with your customers to ensure their issues had been resolved properly and that they were satisfied with the service. A quick phone call, a good support email, or even a feedback survey is a great way to let them know that you value your customer’s time and you’re always on their side.
KEEP TABS ON YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE METRICS
#19 Monitor Performance Metrics For Your Team
Don’t rely on “It feels like we spend a lot of time addressing this issue” when customer data can easily eliminate the guesswork. All you need to do is to track the frequency of issues as well as the average handle time and it will give you the insights you need to improve your business.
#20 Solve Problems the First Time Around
One of the best ways to keep customers happy and be seen as a company that provides outstanding service is to practice first contact resolution. In other words, solve your customers’ problems the first time they call in/ contact you. There’s nothing your customers will appreciate more than getting their issues addressed the first time around.
#21 Make Sure Your Customer Service Team is Happy
Your customers’ happiness and your customer service team’s happiness are equally important. Make sure you keep tabs on how your customer service team feels about their working conditions, compensation, opportunities for career advancement, training, available tools, resources, and their peers. Normalize collecting and receiving feedback for your employees so that you can set benchmarks, revise goals, and track performance metrics.
PERSONALIZE YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
#22 Revisit Your Customer Experience Strategy
Bad customer service at any point in the customer journey can hamper your relationship. We suggest that you pay critical attention to key touchpoints: customer trial periods, customer sign-ups, customer onboarding, etc. Your support team needs to have a complete view of the customer journey, or you risk bad experiences getting in the way of your business. If they discover a lapse in services, they need to escalate such issues with the management team so they can be fixed.
#23 Be Accessible
When your support team works day in and day out to add a personal touch to customer interactions, you should understand that 50% of this effort refers to being available. You have to make it easy for your customers to reach you when in need. You might be part of a digital-first business but you should try to meet your customers in person or offer a video call for face-to-face interactions. Remember, the more ways you are accessible via a phone call, a chat, text message, or email, the more trust you’ll build.
#24 Be Where Your Customers Are
Make sure your support team has the requisite customer data to craft a personalized customer journey. Be present wherever your customers are. Respond to customer concerns and posts on social media (LinkedIn/ Facebook/ Twitter/ Reviews). Don’t forget to showcase your support team pictures and bios on your website. Show your customers that your company has real people working to cater to their needs.
#25 Create a Customer Community
A great way to make your customers feel valued is to invite them to a community based around your product/ services. Your customer service team can initiate this by bringing your customers together for webinars, interactive sessions, social media forums, trade shows, and conventions. Even though your customers visit these forums to learn from you, it’s a great opportunity for you to learn from them.
#26 Add Personal Touch to Show You’re Human
We are sure that your support agents are doing their best to resolve customer issues quickly and efficiently. However, you should encourage them to identify common grounds and shared interests with the customers. They can leverage insights from a real-time dashboard of the right CRM Software and personalize the customer journey. Not only would this help them resolve conflicts more easily but promote customer loyalty.
#27 Self-Service: Help Customers Help Themselves
Good customer support should always be available, even if you aren’t. Chatbots, FAQs, and Knowledge Bases are a great way to make resources available to your customers without getting involved personally. However, your customers want to be personally catered to. Make sure you are offering a self-service helpdesk with screenshots, videos, formatted layouts, so that your customers can choose from these resources at their convenience and avail your services better.
#28 Appreciate Your Customers
Take the time to thank your customers for their faith in you and your services. This is the kind of gesture that builds rock-solid customer relationships. Customer appreciation goes a long way. Special discounts and a preview to new features for your loyal customers will continue to be a win-win strategy, helping you to improve customer retention and promote customer loyalty.
#29 Remember that Customer Service is Everyone’s Job
Everyone in your company should understand the customers’ pain points. When your whole company is encouraged to be involved in ensuring a great customer service experience, each team finds a faster way to make amends and drive your business forward. It’s simple, yet often overlooked. For companies that are just getting started, we recommend you just talk to your customers. Here’s a quick guide that might help.
Conclusion
Here are the steps you can take to deliver excellent customer service.
Start by choosing the right helpdesk for your customer service team. Follow up by analyzing your customer interactions and constantly monitoring your customer complaints. Understand how your customer feels by interpreting their feedback. Personalize your customer service experience and go the extra mile to ensure happy customers. Don’t forget to keep tabs on your real-time metrics so that your customer service agents can constantly make amends and deliver better customer service. This approach will give your loyal customers more reasons to keep coming back for more and help you acquire new customers on the go.
We hope that our recommendations help you stay ahead in the game and exceed customer expectations. Do let us know your favorite customer interactions in the comments below.
Originally published on Jun 29, 2018. Updated on Feb 21, 2022.
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