Tip of the Week: 4 Ways to Improve Customer Service that Any Business Can Do

Providing outstanding customer service is a requirement to be successful in today’s business environment. If you ignore this valuable tenant of business, then you’ve got a competitor who will gladly jump on the opportunity to steal away your customers and prospects by offering better service. What steps is your business taking to make sure that your customer service is second to none?

For this week’s tip, we’ll share four fundamentals of what good customer service looks like, as well as how technology can help.

Be Easy to Work With
Having a customer service team with likable personalities and good communication skills goes a long way when it comes to gaining and retaining customers. That said, it should be fairly obvious that not every employee fits such a profile. It’s, therefore, advantageous if you’re deliberate about putting the employees that are the easiest to work with on the front lines with your customers. Alternatively, having employees with awkward and obtuse personalities serving customers may end up driving them away from your business, and to another company with a more likable customer service team. Depending on what technologies you use to communicate with your customers, some solutions allow customers to rank the quality of service they receive, allowing you to get an accurate picture of your team’s customer service skills.

Meet and Exceed Any Commitments
The customer-business relationship comes with a set of expectations on the customer's part regarding your company’s product and service. Keep in mind that doing the minimum amount of work to meet these expectations will only put your business in the danger zone, seeing as your customers and prospects will be susceptible to being swept away by a competitor that promises to go above and beyond. Remember, if you go above and beyond and exceed customer expectations, you’ll build brand loyalty that will keep customers within the orbit of your organization.

Be Available to Answer Customers
We live in an age where more services are offered 24/7. Maybe your business can’t have a customer service representative on call 24/7, but you can implement communication tools that will allow your staff to be more available to customers.

You can achieve this in two ways: 1) by having your staff carry mobile solutions that allow them to stay in touch with customers while they're on the go, and 2) by equipping your company with multiple ways that customers can reach your team. Regarding the latter, keep in mind that not every consumer prefers to communicate the same way. You’ll want to take advantage of email, phone calls, instant messaging, and more. Even having a designated employee to answer inquiries over various social media platforms will go a long way in serving a customer's needs in a satisfactory manner.

Have an Agile Work Environment
Having an agile work environment really shows when it comes to handling a customer’s request. By having departments equipped with technology that allows them to freely share information and collaborate easily, you’ll be assured that customers will be processed as quickly and efficiently as possible. If you don’t take such efforts, then it’s quite possible for different departments to be their own silos of information, and for a customer’s request to get tied up by a single employee at the top.

For all of these customer service initiatives, you’ll want to collaborate with your IT provider in order to find ways that technology can be integrated into these processes and provide customers with the best experience possible. What technologies can your business implement that will keep your customers coming back for more? To find out, give the IT experts at Directive a call at 607.433.2200.