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{In most situations, a customer’s only direct human contact with a company is through its customer service team.<\/p>\n
Usually, the customer isn’t happy about something and needs help.<\/p>\n
As a result, whether you run a Fortune 100 company or starting a new small business<\/a>, it\u2019s critical to have great customer service people on your team.<\/p>\n With increasing competition and choice, customers and prospects will only pledge loyalty to a company if it offers them good reasons.<\/p>\n Happy and satisfied customers are often long-term customers.<\/p>\n If your company can show that it prioritizes the needs of its consumers, you\u2019ll be way ahead of your competition.<\/p>\n Remember that retaining customers you already have is more efficient, profitable, and impactful than seeking new ones.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The White House Office of Consumer Affairs found that on average:<\/p>\n First impressions matter<\/a>, and you only get one.<\/p>\n Customer support is almost always the first impression a customer will have with you, and it\u2019s key to make it a priority for your business. Tony Hsieh from Zappos says<\/a>:<\/p>\n Rather than spend a lot of money on marketing, we take most of the money we would\u2019ve spent on paid advertising and re-invest it in customer experience…We really don\u2019t think that customer service is an expense that you should try to minimize, it\u2019s really an investment in your brand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There will always be competitors with larger advertising budgets, lower prices, and other gimmicks designed to attract customers. Customers will often find a cheaper product or service with the click of a button or the swipe of a finger. But most customers look for great value, not simply the lowest price. And that’s where customer service can tip the scales your favor.<\/p>\n As we wrote previously<\/a>:<\/p>\n Your customer\u2019s problems represent a major opportunity for you to build a relationship with them, surprise and delight them, and build a great reputation and engender strong word-of-mouth. How can you do this? It\u2019s simple, really; building great relationships with customers is little different from building relationships with friends. It is a mater of spending time, paying attention, listening and responding. It works the same with customer relations; just like you learn to appreciate your new friends\u00a0as you spend more time with them and get to know them better, you\u2019ll build lasting connections with\u00a0your customers, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n By providing the best possible customer service, you will nurture increased trust and brand loyalty. Great customer service can mean the difference between your business thriving or sinking.<\/p>\n Build a stronger brand with our free guides. Get actionable insights to define your brand\u2019s unique voice, understand your market, and stand out to customers. The guides are concise, actionable, practical, and tailored for the busy entrepreneur.<\/p> Build a stronger brand with our free guides. Get actionable insights to define your brand\u2019s unique voice, understand your market, and stand out to customers. The guides are concise, actionable, practical, and tailored for the busy entrepreneur.<\/p> Build a stronger brand with our free guides. Get actionable insights to define your brand\u2019s unique voice, understand your market, and stand out to customers. The guides are concise, actionable, practical, and tailored for the busy entrepreneur.<\/p> Your customer service must be aligned with your customer\u2019s expectations. John Tschohl recently talked<\/a> about this alignment of service strategy and expectations:<\/p>\n Why is it so important to understand your different customer groups and tailor an optimal mix and level of service for them? Provide too little service or the wrong kind and customers may switch to the competition. Provide too much service, even the right kind, and your company might price itself out of the market and struggle to balance the books at the end of the year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Four elements make up a service strategy:<\/p>\n One way to align your company\u2019s approach to customer service with your customer’s expectations is to make it a part of every employee\u2019s onboarding and training.<\/p>\n Companies with strong customer service cultures make customer service work part of every new employee\u2019s onboarding. This way, the entire company has first-hand experience with customers\u2019 issues and feedback, which helps inform decisions across the organization. Using a learning management system (LMS)<\/a> can streamline this process by centralizing training materials and making it easier to track employee progress.<\/p>\n Additionally, using a QR code generator<\/a> to create relevant QR codes in the onboarding process<\/a> can provide employees instant access to customer service resources, enhancing their understanding and responsiveness to customer needs. You can also supplement your human resources with an AI phone agent<\/a> that can handle routine calls.<\/p>\n Customer service is an important part of what we today call customer experience.<\/p>\n Customer experience<\/a> covers a customer’s entire journey interacting with your company. An effective customer service strategy and a regular customer experience audit<\/a> can help at every step of that journey.<\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s social media, email, phone, or chat networks like WhatsApp, you want to be where your customers are<\/a> and provide a consistently high level of customer service that fits each platform. To achieve this on WhatsApp, a popular messaging app, for example, consider implementing WhatsApp automation<\/a>.<\/p>\n If your customers consistently post support questions on your Facebook page, you want someone available to address their issues promptly and effectively.<\/p>\n If you put a chat widget on your website, make sure it\u2019s integrated with your customer service team so questions made there do not vanish in the void.<\/p>\n The days of funneling all\u00a0customer services through one narrow channel are over;\u00a0multichannel customer service<\/a> is now the law<\/span>.<\/p>\n Multichannel customer service can be broken into three different forms:<\/p>\n All of these can exist simultaneously. By effectively leveraging each one, you can help free up your service team\u2019s time to tackle more difficult issues.<\/p>\n For example, you can gather your most common issues into FAQs and knowledge base posts and use many-to-many methods such as Facebook to help customers find the answers they need. Crowdspring offers many FAQs<\/a> to help our customers.<\/p>\n You might experience death by a thousand cuts, but the lifeblood of good customer service is found in a thousand small interactions.<\/p>\n Strengthening your customer service skills doesn\u2019t have to mean a massive reset.<\/p>\n The \u201cThank You Effect<\/a>\u201d\u2014always saying thank you when responding to a customer\u2014is a perfect example of a small action that can grow into a meaningful (and measurable) change for your company.<\/p>\n Knowing the places or touchpoints where your customers interact with your company is critical before you start looking for these micro-improvements.<\/p>\n Creating a customer journey or experience map is one way to establish this.<\/p>\n A great example of a journey map is this one<\/a> that traces the steps a Starbucks customer can take as they order coffee. It doesn\u2019t just cover the contact points when the customer enters a Starbucks cafe; it also covers them before they leave their home or office and after the purchase.\u00a0If you need to create one for your business, you can use\u00a0Smaply, a tool to create visual and accessible customer journey maps<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n From this journey map, you can see the number of touchpoints where customer service can play a role.<\/p>\n By creating your own journey map, you can identify areas for small (or large) improvements.<\/p>\n Just a few of the improvements you could potentially implement include the following:<\/p>\n It’s important to treat your customers like they matter every day, but sometimes doing something special can take a good interaction and turn it into an outstanding one. As Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, said:<\/p>\n We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It\u2019s our job everyday to make every important aspect of customer experience a little bit better.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Client relations<\/a> play a crucial role in this. Offering extra special treatment to your customers is a great way to let them know they are valued, and it\u2019s one way of making their customer experience a little (or a lot!) better.<\/p>\n You can offer all kinds of incentives and promotions to keep clients assured of how important they are to you – run a survey with them to get some great ideas as to what they might like the most! They\u2019ll appreciate knowing they were so important to your company that you asked for their input.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re looking for examples of successful companies that have focused on surprising customers with exceptional service, look no further than Zappos<\/a>.<\/p>\n Zappos customer service touts its amazing support as the foundation of its core values. They\u2019re well known for going above and beyond to please their customers. Senior brand marketing<\/a> manager Michelle Thomas says<\/a>:<\/p>\n Our biggest efforts revolve around building likeability around our brand so that consumers turn to a brand that they trust, find reliable, and have an emotional connection with. That\u2019s where service comes in!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Just what kind of service?<\/p>\n It\u2019s remarkable: Zappos sent flowers to a woman purchasing shoes because her feet were damaged from medical treatments. Overnight shipping is par for the course for Zappos, but how about the time they overnighted a free (!) pair of shoes for an unfortunately shoeless best man stranded at an out-of-town wedding?<\/p>\n These kinds of \u201cstunts\u201d aren\u2019t just for publicity with a company like Zappos. Adopting their customer-first policy is a surefire way to win hearts (feet?) and earn brand loyalty forever.<\/p>\n The science is clear: stressed-out, exhausted employees will dry your business. Consider these facts<\/a>:<\/p>\n These issues affect the mental and physical well-being of the American workforce.<\/p>\n They also cost U.S. businesses $300 billion yearly<\/span> because of lost productivity.<\/p>\n Employee self-care is a growing trend and for excellent reasons. Encouraging employees to take care of their health results in several benefits for business owners:<\/p>\n We\u2019ve written a lot about self-care for employees<\/a> because, at crowdspring, we\u2019re big believers that healthy, happy employees make us better. This is especially true in customer service because your team is often the first real contact consumers will have with your brand. No one wants to ask for help from a cranky, overtired employee!<\/p>\n We recommend keeping you and your employees in top shape in several ways. Exercise, meditation, and\u00a0getting enough sleep are all excellent starting points for getting the most out of your team. Consider implementing\u00a0automated customer success workflows<\/a> to enhance your team’s efficiency and effectiveness<\/span>.<\/p>\n To succeed in business, you must consider long-term relationships. That means you must cater to your customers\u2019 needs. Trust, accessibility, and community are all cornerstones of thriving business\/consumer relationships, and you’ll want to ensure you’re addressing each when evaluating what your customers need.<\/p>\n The best way to do this is to make lasting relationships a key part of your business plan<\/a>. This can differentiate you from competitors and build customer loyalty.<\/p>\n The first step in creating lasting relationships with your consumers is to meet their needs fully. Assigning members of your customer service team to specific customers<\/a> so they can build a relationship is a great way to do this. Having a dedicated touch point builds trust, and trust fosters strong loyalty. Feeling like you have access to one person also improves your customers’ feelings that they have access to you in a personal, reliable way.<\/p>\n And remember that the best customer service teams are empathetic, not merely sympathetic<\/a>. There’s a difference between empathy and sympathy, which is important. As we explained<\/a>:<\/p>\n Most customer service teams respond to customers with sympathy. A sympathetic response could be: \u201cI\u2019m also unhappy with the way that product works.\u201d<\/p>\n Sympathy is rarely an ideal response to a customer\u2019s problem. Instead, show empathy. Empathy allows to you be professional and caring at the same time. It also allows you to avoid becoming emotionally involved (like when you show sympathy).<\/p>\n Think about it this way: when you\u2019re sympathetic, you simply feel badly for someone. Sympathy doesn\u2019t communicate to a customer that you understand WHY they feel the way they feel \u2013 it only allows you to communicate that you understand their problem. A typical response \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d \u2013 is insufficient to solve a customer\u2019s problem. You must do more.<\/p>\n On the other hand, empathy communicates that you not only understand the customer\u2019s problem, but also that you can relate it to something you yourself have experienced.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And don\u2019t forget to provide your customers with a physical address. Knowing that your company has a real, live address is reassuring, builds trust, and reminds them that your company has a legitimacy that others may not have. That kind of trust is invaluable in setting minds at ease about your business’ credibility and accountability.<\/p>\n Creating a community is integral to building a brand with staying power. Treating your customers as important community members will nurture your relationships and help them grow.<\/p>\n You can connect with your customers in many ways, including webinars, an active blog or message forum on your web page, social media use to reach out and stay connected, and appearances at relevant conventions.<\/p>\n Remember, while your customers come to these forums to learn more about you, the gift goes both ways. Learning about your consumers will ensure you know who they are, what they want, and how to keep them engaged with your brand.<\/p>\n Knowing where your service weaknesses are is a great idea so you can remedy them, but sometimes things take you by surprise. If you want to cover all your bases, provide an easy way for customers to give feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n There are good ways to allow people to get in touch with you<\/a>. Any of the following ways are easy, convenient, and inexpensive:<\/p>\n Whichever of these methods works best for your business, remember that you can’t gauge customer satisfaction without authentic feedback. Getting direct feedback might be the answer if you\u2019re experiencing a problem with your satisfaction ratings and are unsure why.<\/p>\n These seven tips will help you improve your customer service and help your business succeed. Efforts to provide effective, friendly customer service will make your company shine\u2014and a little extra sparkle could be just what your business needs to take it to the next level.<\/p>\n\n
Essential Branding Toolkit for Entrepreneurs<\/h2>
Get your free branding toolkit<\/i><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>Essential Branding Toolkit for Entrepreneurs<\/h2>
Get your free branding toolkit<\/i><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>Essential Branding Toolkit for Entrepreneurs<\/h2>
Get your free branding toolkit<\/i><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/p>\nHere are 7 proven customer service tips to help you put smiles on your customers’ faces.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
1. Align your customer service to your customers.<\/h3>\n
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2. Go where your customers are.<\/h3>\n
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3. Maximize your customer interactions.<\/h3>\n
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4. Surprise your customers.<\/h3>\n
5. Be more productive with what you have.<\/h3>\n
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6. Invest for the long term.<\/h3>\n
7. Give your customers a way to provide feedback.<\/h3>\n
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