Customer service is a surprisingly elusive concept. It makes sense that providing the best products and services possible would be the best way to win over customers with your brand, but there’s a lot more to making your customers happy than that.
People today are even more picky than customers of the past as they search for companies that go above and beyond to provide them with goods and services.
How do you stand apart when there are so many other companies vying for your customers’ attention?
Use Chatbots
Chatbots don’t have the best reputation. That’s because when you think of chatbots, you’re probably thinking of chatbots from the past. Typing to one on the computer was frustrating because you could tell right away that you were talking to a robot and not a person.
That’s not the case today! Chatbots have evolved to provide convincingly human responses to a wide variety of inquiries in real time. It’s a great way for customers to get an answer to their question quickly without having to call and speak to a customer representative or wait for a response to an email.
eCommerce chatbots improve ROI, making them an especially good option for brands. A marketing chatbot can help guide potential customers through extensive catalogs, they can give customers the appearance of personal service, and they can personalize the user experience on other places than your website, like on Facebook Messenger and the Google Display Network.
Respond to Any and All Inquiries as Quickly as Possible
You’re busy. Sometimes it just isn’t possible to help a customer the instant they need help, especially in today’s 24/7 world where customers may be making inquiries in the middle of the night.
It’s best to answer your phone and emails right away, but if you can’t, you should focus on responding to inquiries as quickly as possible. That means learning how to professionally put a caller on hold and responding to emails multiple times throughout the day. The less time your customer spends on hold and the quicker they receive an email message, the more likely they are to become a loyal customer.
Ask for Their Feedback and Act on It
As the years go by, it’s easy to start operating in a bubble. When it’s time to collect new ideas, you go to your employees first, but you would do well to involve your customers in the process. After all, no one knows what your customers want better than they do!
There are multiple ways for you to request feedback from your customers. A few ideas include:
- Surveys
- Feedback boxes on your website
- Reach out to customers directly and ask
- Analyze user activity and purchasing data
No matter how you decide to gather feedback from your customers, make sure you actually pay attention to their feedback and act on it. It can be very frustrating for customers to spend their free time providing you with feedback only to discover you haven’t made any changes.
Personalize Your Service
There are more businesses than ever before competing to win the same customers. With so many choices, customers care just as much about their experience with a brand as they do about the products and services that brand provides.
Great customer service in the 21st Century means providing people with a personalized customer experience. Avoid using automated phone answering services, send them special coupons for their birthday, and have conversations with others on social media. Customers will feel like they are interacting with real people and not just a company, which will drive sales and loyalty.
Stay Positive
Dealing with customers isn’t always easy. No matter how good of a product or service you provide, you can bet that you’ll hear from an angry customer at least every once in a while.
It’s important to know how to deal with them when they call or come into the store. It involves maintaining a positive attitude, smiling, and using their name throughout the conversation.
It’s important that any employees who deal with customers are trained in these techniques to ensure they’re providing a consistent customer experience. If everyone deals with unruly customers in a positive way, you can maintain their business, and the word will get out about the positive way in which you treat disputes.
Improve your products and services to make your customers happy, but you should also make time to develop the points on this list in order to provide a great customer service experience.