Good customer service is an important part of running a successful business. A positive customer service experience encourages customers to keep supporting your business and helps to boost your reputation, which gives you an advantage over your competitors.
If you’re searching for ways to improve your customer service skills, look no further: this list of customer service tips will help you get started.
- Understand your customers
It’s much easier to help customers if you know why they buy from your business and what they expect from you. Make sure you’re familiar with your customer base before engaging in customer service. This means you’ll be better placed to handle complaints as you’ll understand the customer’s perspective. You’ll also be able to make suggestions and recommend products based on what you know appeals to them. This will help to create a positive image of your business, making customers more likely to come back.
If you’re unsure of a customer’s expectations, you can ask them directly. This helps you to understand what they want and lets them know your business has a genuine interest in listening and responding to their views.
- Ask for feedback
Asking for feedback after speaking to a customer will help you to understand how they perceive the business and your approach to customer service. An outside perspective is useful when it comes to identifying what you’re doing well, as well as finding out how you could improve. Gathering feedback also allows you to discover which products are popular among customers, which could be useful if you’re planning to expand your business in future.
Seeking feedback lets people know you’re listening to them, which makes them feel valued as customers.
- Communicate effectively
Always check whether the customer understands what you’re telling them, and that you understand them. This lets you avoid confusion and, again, demonstrates that your business actively listens to its customers.
Making your customer service calls better also helps to make communication effective. You could look into updating your communications systems to ensure their reliability – you don’t want to get cut off and miss something the customer is telling you because your phone lines are overdue for an upgrade!
- Pay attention to complaints
Although it can be frustrating to receive complaints, they’re actually a great opportunity for your business to learn. For example, if you often get complaints with a similar subject, you can look into this and find out what needs to change. You can also get in touch with customers to find out what steps you can take to resolve the complaint, which makes it less likely that they’ll complain about the same issue in the future.
Training staff in how to handle complaints is key, as this will assist them in achieving a positive outcome when talking to a customer who has made a complaint.
- Follow up
If a customer has recently bought something from your business, get in touch with them and find out what they think about it. This is particularly helpful if you’re trying to gauge your consumer base’s reaction to a new product – for example, whether they like it and how it can be improved.
