The success and sustainability of any business largely rely on customer satisfaction. If they’re happy and satisfied, consumers easily become long-term loyal customers who also regularly refer the business to other potential customers. This means that especially in this age and day where the competition is really stiff, providing incredible customer service is one of the key secrets to staying strong in business.
It’s all about showing customers that your business prioritizes their needs and you are there to provide solutions to their problems.
Needless to mention, a bird in hand is worth more than two in the bush, meaning that it’s more profitable to retain the already existing customers than having to seek new ones as you lose the old ones. But customer service is a broad area and depending on the size of your business, it can be a whole department on its own.
Considering that many businesses fail due to poor customer satisfaction, customer service is something every entrepreneur should continuously seek to improve. On this note, here are some proven ways to improve your business’ customer service.
Have a Professional Call Center Team
If you’re running a small to medium business, phone calls are most likely one of the ways customers can reach you or your staff when they need help, clarification, or information about something. But depending on your customer base, phone calls from customers can get too overwhelming for you and your secretary or personal assistant to handle. This brings in the need to have a professional team answering calls and responding to customer queries over phone calls.
You can have an in-house call center team or alternatively hire a call answering service. The best thing about hiring these answering services is that the call-handling operators are highly trained for the job. They are equipped with a tremendous set of customer service skills and will be well knowledgeable about your business.
Outsourcing call center services can also be more cost-effective compared to in-house operations where you’ll need additional office space and equipment, not forgetting the additional labor and training costs for your employees.
Utilize Customer Service Technology
There’s a wide range of tech and innovative tools you can use to streamline and improve your customer service operations. Chat apps, for instance, are a good example of channels that can be used to increase interactions between businesses and customers.
If you have a website for your business, you can also make use of chatbots, which are software applications that utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to simulate conversations with customers. In most cases, chatbots are especially helpful in keeping customers engaged and noting their concerns when human support is not immediately available.
It’s important to note that bots are not meant to replace human support, but rather they’re supposed to help human customer service staff and improve their efficiency while boosting business-customer interactions.
Utilize Social Media
The importance of social media in customer service should not be underestimated. For starters, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook improve interaction while providing customers with an alternative and convenient method to reach your business when they need support. It shows that you value your customer’s needs and you’re available where they are to provide support whenever they need it.
Customer Experience Analytics
Nothing is more important than understanding your customer’s needs and challenges as much as you can. It gives you insights into changes or improvements you can make in certain areas to add value and improve customer satisfaction. This intel allows you to become a smarter decision-maker and can be achieved through the use of customer experience analytics tools.
Omnichannel Support
As earlier hinted, it’s good to provide your customers with various alternative methods of contacting you to access support from a real person. For this reason, it’s crucial to ensure your business has an omnichannel support strategy. This means providing various support alternatives such as:
- Call center/phone
- Social media
- Live chat
- In-person interactions
When you have several alternatives, customers can choose whichever channel that they feel is more convenient for them.
Reward Loyal Customers
These days, personalization is something that most consumers are after. Well, one of the ways you can use this to your advantage while improving customer service is through customer loyalty programs. By setting up personalized gifts, rewards, discounts, and exclusive offers, most loyal customers will feel appreciated and will have all the reasons to remain loyal to your brand.
There’s no denying that customer service can make or break a business’ success. To have an edge over your competition in the industry, it’s always important to find ways to improve customer experience. With the above few proven ways, you can take your business’ customer service to a new level while growing your customer base and improving your bottom-line.
