Our Top Tips for Customer Service

As anyone will tell you, customer or business owner, customer service is one of the most important things that a company can provide to positively impact their business. If the staff are rude and are unhelpful then it will put people off using them.

 

As we help you with your reviews and online reputation, we’ve seen some of the best (and worst) customer service examples around, so here are our top customer service tips as an extra bonus!

 

Provide Your Customer Service Team with the Right Tools

 

The first thing you need is a medium to actually communicate with your customers, right?

 

Arming your team with the right tools will go a lot further than you might think. There will be some customers who might not have the certain outlets that you use therefore making it tricky, near impossible, to communicate to you their needs. It will be very frustrating for the customer if they can’t talk to you easily and quickly.

 

It’s important to ensure that you have all avenues covered for any enquiries you might get, such as phone, email, social media, and even postal! Not only does this help them, it also helps you as that’s now a new way of reaching potential sales. Another form of customer service that is widely forgotten is responding to reviews! What shows appreciation more than showing that you care about what their experience with your company was like?

 

If you’d like to learn a little more about why responding to reviews is important, you can read more here.

 

Always Sound Positive

 

This might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many businesses don’t prioritise this as much as they should.

 

Using positive language is a great and simple way of avoiding any conflicts originating from miscommunication between you and your customers.

 

For example, let’s say that you’ve been asked for something that your service doesn’t provide or can’t do. Your initial thought will be to tell them no, but to end on that will sound too negative.

 

A method we use is to offer an alternative solution to our client’s need or issue. Using this means that you’ve told the customer that you can’t do exactly what they’re after, but you can do something very similar – making your response sound positive.

 

 

Service Over Speed

 

If you went to a restaurant and ordered your meal, would you rather receive it in under three minutes but cold, or wait a bit longer for that standard you were expecting?

 

Yes, it’s good to reply to emails promptly, but if your service in that email isn’t as good as it can be, is the email even worth sending? To reply in five minutes with no real solution, the customer will just feel like you’re clearing your inbox. Trust us – a client would rather have an end to their problem instead of a quick reply, wouldn’t you?

 

 

Help Your Customers Learn

 

Your customer service doesn’t just have to be your staff. Yes, they’re a fundamental part of it but who said that a customer can’t help themselves?

 

We often get enquiries from our clients about their accounts and how to do certain things within it. Instead of just doing it for them, we recommend that you explain how to achieve what they’re after and do it for everyone by way of a PDF or a blog post or knowledge base entry. This way, the client can learn how to solve different errors that may come up by themselves which will prove to be very worthwhile if there’s someone who isn’t around to help. Before we started our help pages we would often get clients asking us the same questions repeatedly and as we, as a business, have scaled we have had to rely on our help articles that explains how to configure clients accounts, widgets and more.  It also means that you can build better relationships with your customers, encouraging them to come back/stay with you and promoting the idea of your customers being your priority.  Remember the old adage – Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime!

Reputations are built on happy customers

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