How to Deliver Unforgettable Customer Service
Creating an amazing customer experience doesn’t just end at your website. It’s everything that happens outside of your website: before, during and after the sale. You may not always be able to compete with your competitors on price, but you can definitely compete on the level of service you give your customers. Here’s how to do it right, no matter what industry you’re in:
Start with the Right Tools
The best customer service doesn’t happen in a bubble. It happens when you use the right tools that are specific to your needs and your customers’ needs. Whether that’s live chat, a knowledge base, or another kind of support ticket system, implementing the right tools allows your team to collaborate on customer issues more efficiently so that their concerns are resolved quickly and more than adequately.
You want your customers to walk away from the situation feeling like they’ve not only been heard but that their concerns are valid and important, which brings us to the next point:
Don’t Treat Your Customers Like a Number
How many times have you received a support email, telling you that your ticket number is #0000 and that your message is important and they’ll get back to you as soon as possible? It really makes you feel like your issue matters, doesn’t it?
Instead, create more personalized emails, even for the common things like letting them know that their support ticket was received, or that their item has shipped. Don’t forget to put an actual human behind these interactions that people can get in touch with if they have questions. The generic “Customer Service Team” also seems to give the impression that “you’re not worth our time”.
Having a name and monitored inbox lets customers and prospects know that there is someone they can reach out to; a point of contact and a face with a name. It sounds like something small and insignificant, but to your customers, it matters.
Deal with Complaints Professionally
No matter how exceptional your customer service, customers are going to complain. Some complaints are legitimate, some are not, but all need to be dealt with professionally. The important thing is to take control of the situation before it spirals out of control. That means taking steps to acknowledge what the user is feeling and focus the conversation on what can be done to make it right.
If you continue to receive similar complaints, this could indicate an actual issue or a disconnect between what is being presented and what is being received by the customer. Either way, you want the customer to feel satisfied that the issue was resolved but at the same time, you want to have a finger on the pulse of issues that could be arising that are indicative of something deeper that needs to be investigated more thoroughly.
Redirect Negatives into Positives
This is an easy trap for any business to fall into. If something is beyond your control to fix, it’s tempting to fill an email with things like we can’t, it won’t be delivered, it’s back-ordered, it’s not possible… If that truly is the case and there’s nothing you can do, look for ways to turn that negative into a positive.
For example, the item is back-ordered: let them know when it might be back and give them the option to sign up for a waiting list to be notified when it returns. If you don’t know when/if that will be, offer an alternative.
There are almost always options to help turn negatives into positives and although they may not be exactly what the customer wants, it still shows that you tried to make the experience as smooth and satisfactory as possible for them.
Don’t Be Afraid to Reach Out for Help
Customer service can feel like a big, amorphous cloud of uncertainty. How can you always be sure you’re delivering the best possible experience at all times? Are you using the tools you have available to the fullest, or is it time to switch gears and try a different option?
There’s a lot that goes into making your customer service as stellar as possible, so if you’re not sure of what your next steps should be, don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for help! At Workdom, we work with companies both large and small to help them not only understand and address their customer service challenges but do so in a way that’s fluid, seamless, and made with consistent improvements across the board.
Contact us today and let our senior advertising and customer service professionals help you create a strategy so that you can deliver winning customer service each and every day!
Originally published at https://www.workdom.io on April 23, 2021.
