When you run a business, one of the most important things is how you interact with your customers. You need to make sure that the customer journey is always consistent and goes beyond the expectations of your customers. To do this effectively you need to know what good customer service is.
Customer service is the support a business provides its customers before and after they purchase something. This support gives customers an easy and enjoyable customer journey and a good relationship with your brand.
When you are looking to elevate your customer service, you need to remember that solving a customer’s issues and making a sale is just the tip of the iceberg.
In this article, we give you a clear guide on how to conduct good customer service as a small to medium sized enterprise (SME).
Customer Care and Customer Experience
Customer care and customer experience are two characteristics of the concept of customer service. Customer care is all about building and maintaining the relationship you have with your customers. It is how you solve their problems and how you connect with them emotionally that makes up your customer care. Good customer care will ensure that your customers come back and that they tell others how good you are to them.
Customer experience is the final part of the customer journey. The customer experience is the measurement of your customer’s physical, emotional and psychological connection to your brand and company.
Tips for Great Customer Service
Here are some tips for your business to provide good customer service.
1. Hire the Right People
You have to ensure that you hire the right people to interact with your customers. Look for people with good interpersonal skills such as listening, leadership, flexibility and patience. Also, ensure you hire people who want to help your customers quickly and effectively.
2. Leverage Customer Support Software
Good customer support software can help your team track customer issues from multiple channels such as email, live chat, web forms or help centres. Additionally, the software can automate and auto-assign tickets to agents to help them resolve any issues quickly.
The customer support software is not only beneficial to your team but also to you. You can use it to track ticket resolution time, response time, ticket backlogs, customer satisfaction and other metrics.
3. Practice Empathy
One of the best things you can do in customer service is to be empathetic towards your customers. Empathy means you understand your customer’s problems, you are sensitive to their emotions and understand what they might be going through.
Empathy means you put yourself into your customer’s shoes and use that feeling to help them with their issues.
4. Build a Relationship With Your Customers
As an SME, you have the advantage of being able to build personal relationships with your customers. To build a rapport with your customers, do the following:
- Talk to customers about their interests.
- Offer them sincere compliments in a professional manner.
- Make them feel comfortable talking about themselves.
This will build your relationship with your customers and increase the trust they have in you and your brand.
5. Know Your Product or Service
No matter what your business sells, you need to know everything there is to know about it. When you get new products, make sure your customer service and sales teams get adequate training for the new products.
Additionally, you must encourage your teams to use the new products and get a more hands-on experience with them. This will help you spot any issues customers might experience, and it helps your team figure out how to solve those issues quickly.
6. Positive Language
When dealing with a customer make sure you use positive language even if you are telling them bad news. For example, if a customer is looking for a product that is currently sold out, say “Let me order that product for you and you will get it soon” instead of “the product is unavailable, you will only be able to get it next month”.
This helps change the narrative in the customer’s mind and shows them that you care about them getting the product.
7. Keep Your Website Updated
Your website is probably the first way customers interact with your business before they come to the store. Your website must offer your customers information on your business, what you do, why you do it, and what you sell.
You must also monitor your website traffic and track conversions. If you see a gap between the two different data sets, it means that your customers are not finding enough information on the site.
8. Reward Loyal Customers
Loyalty programmes are a great way to increase your customer service. The programmes are great for retaining current customers and getting new ones. You can offer discounts; bundle offers on products or a rewards point system/card.
9. Follow-up With Customers
Always make sure you follow up with your customers after they make a purchase. This shows that you care about them beyond just buying and betters the relationship between you and them.
This also helps your customer service team solve any issues that might come up after a customer has purchased something.
10. Close the Sale Properly
When a customer buys something, it’s important to end the conversation/transaction properly. The right closing leaves a lasting impression on customers’ minds and makes them feel valued at your company.
Before a customer leaves, make sure they understand everything about the product, let them know you are always there for support and end on a positive note with a “have a good day”.
These tips are going to elevate your customer service. Your business will benefit from good customer service as it will ensure customers come back and purchase something. And for your customers, it means they will purchase from a company that cares about them.
To speak to someone about your business, visit SME Advice to speak to one of our experts.
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