What Is Customer Service? How You Can Improve Your Customer Service
A key to providing greater customer service is to meet customers’ expectations whenever they reach you. What do you think of customer service? It may be a barista who knows your name and the type of coffee you like or an agent who makes a call, sympathizes with you and solves your issue promptly.
Excellent customer service can change customers’ perceptions of your company and help you build a loyal customer base. Creating exceptional customer service is not simple; it takes a long time and effort. You need to hire agents with exceptional skills and provide them with all the facilities that help in improving customer satisfaction and ultimately lead to more sales.
In this article, we will understand what customer service is and how you can provide the best customer service to your customers.
What Is Customer Service?
Customer service can be defined as direct or one-on-one interaction between customers purchasing products or services and an agent selling them. This direct interaction between agents and customers is crucial in customer satisfaction and creating a loyal customer base that purchases from you repeatedly.
Even in this advanced digital age where chatbots or automated self-service systems handle most customer care, the option to speak to human beings is provided by most businesses to satisfy customers.
Providing excellent customer service is necessary for all businesses to increase brand loyalty and improve sales.
Understanding Customer Service
Behind the scenes, in every company, some people never come in contact with the customers who purchase their products or services. The customer service agents or representatives directly come in contact with the customers.
The way buyers perceive the company and its products is partially shaped by their interactions and experiences with the person representing the company.
It is a reason that companies work hard to improve customer experience and enhance customer satisfaction levels.
How Can You Deliver Excellent Customer Service?
All good companies aim to deliver excellent customer service. It means great competition exists, and companies must go further to stand out.
Moreover, customer expectations are continuously rising, so here are some ways to help businesses make their customer service exceptional.
i. Channel Choice
When a customer complains on social media, the instinct may be to move the conversation to a private setting. However, it is not always that simple. Some customers have tried calling the toll-free number and faced long hold times, while others prefer using social media for customer service. People choose channels based on how fast they want a response and how complex their issue is.
Customers feel more comfortable connecting with businesses on the same channels they use for chatting with friends and family. Meeting customers on their preferred support channel is key to excellent customer service.
To deliver top-notch service, your agents should be proficient in handling questions via phone, email, messaging, live chat, and social media. Technology tracking all these channels and allowing seamless switching is a huge asset. Companies using unified or omni channel communication platforms.
ii. Empathy
To create a truly great customer experience, connecting to the customer is essential. It begins with empathy, where we place the customer at the heart of every interaction and genuinely strive to assist them.
Instead of viewing them as a bother to deal with, we see them as the hero of our story. Empathy is a crucial skill in customer service, as it helps build strong connections and ensures that customers feel valued and heard throughout their journey.
iii. Be Customer Centric
The rise of customer-centric companies is evident, and they seek individuals passionate about delivering outstanding customer experiences.
It is not just a feel-good approach but also a profitable strategy. Companies with a genuine customer-centric culture enjoy a 60 percent higher profit than others. Being customer-centric goes beyond providing excellent customer service. It’s about making customers the heart of every decision and action.
Businesses need to prioritize people to embrace customer-centricity truly. That means hiring with a customer-focused mindset, where staff sees the customer as the story’s hero, not a problem to solve.
Customer-focused organizations actively gather customer feedback across all channels and use that information to shape business decisions.
Remember, the customer’s experience matters as much, if not more, than your product or service. Even with an excellent product, a poor user experience can lead customers to seek alternatives. Putting customers first is the key to lasting success in today’s competitive market.
iV. Personalize The Experience
According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report, 67% of customers are willing to pay more for a great experience.
Personalizing the customer experience is crucial to create a connection. Customers now expect tailored service, with companies knowing their preferences and past purchases. They value convenience and dislike having to repeat themselves.
While customers may hesitate to share personal information, Accenture’s research shows that 83% are willing to provide data if it leads to more personalization. However, businesses must handle customer data carefully, ensuring privacy and obtaining explicit permission, as trust is challenging to rebuild once broken.
V. Provide Proactive Support
When customers have issues, they might express their frustrations to you. But excellent customer service goes beyond just fixing problems. It involves foreseeing their needs and providing proactive assistance before they ask for help.
By being proactive, you can prevent problems from escalating, save time for your customer care team, and keep customers happy.
Moreover, using customer data to understand preferences allows agents to offer personalized recommendations, fostering loyalty and opening up upsell opportunities.
Vi. Offer Quick Response Time
Customers have high expectations when it comes to response times. Millennials and Gen Z prefer channels like social media, in-app messaging, and social messaging apps for faster responses.
However, older generations still lean towards traditional methods like phone, email, and in-store interactions.
The demand for quick responses is evident, with 51% expecting a response within five minutes on the phone and 28% expecting the same on live chat.
Vii. Offer Self Service
Customers often prefer to resolve issues independently, making self-help options essential for excellent customer service. 69% of customers want to handle as many problems as possible independently, and 63% start by searching a company’s website.
Surprisingly, many companies are not fully utilizing this opportunity. Only one-third offer a knowledge base or community forum; even fewer provide social messaging, chatbots, or in-app messaging.
You can ease the burden on your support team and ensure happier customers by offering easy self-help options.
Viii. Use Advanced Tools
Good customer experience and a good employee experience go hand in hand, like peanut butter and jelly. Engaged employees lead to 81% higher customer satisfaction, lower turnover, and competitive advantage, as per Forrester.
You must provide your team with the right tools and processes to support. Simplify their work by offering a unified workspace with customer context, routing customers to skilled agents, and using bots for repetitive tasks.
This way, agents can focus on more engaging aspects of their job, leading to better customer interactions.
iX. Empower Agents
Customer issues often require agents to work with other departments, and customers expect businesses to collaborate effectively.
According to our research, there has been a 31 percent increase in agents expressing the need for tools that facilitate internal team collaboration compared to the previous year.
Agents can easily collaborate within and outside the CX organization using tools like Slack and Zoom integrated into their workspace.
This seamless collaboration ensures that customer problems are addressed efficiently, leading to more satisfactory resolutions.
X. Use Analytics For Improvement
To meet customer needs effectively, support teams require analytics software that provides instant access to customer insights across channels in one place. It empowers them to be agile, moving beyond data collection to better understand and respond to customer feedback.
By integrating real-time and historical analytics into their CX solution, support leaders can take immediate action and gain valuable insights into past trends.
It helps them identify areas of improvement for their team and understand how customers interact with their services, leading to overall experience enhancements.
Significance Of A Good Customer Service
Customer service plays a critical role in how customers perceive a company. Surprisingly, just one bad customer service experience can make 61 percent of customers consider switching to a competitor. If they face two negative experiences, 76 percent are likely to leave.
Since the pandemic, customer expectations have only risen, with over 60 percent raising their standards for customer service. It puts added pressure on businesses to deliver exceptional service. However, it also allows companies to grow and retain customers through great customer service.
Seventy-four percent of customers will forgive a company’s mistake if they receive excellent service. It highlights the power of outstanding customer service in building loyalty and fostering customer satisfaction.
Benefits Of Having Good Customer Service
According to 73 percent of business leaders, customer service significantly impacts business performance. It is not just a nice-to-have; 64 percent believe customer service directly contributes to their company’s growth.
The positive effects do not stop there. Sixty percent of business leaders recognize that customer service is crucial in improving customer retention.
Moreover, 47 percent have seen their ability to cross-sell products and services increase because of effective customer service.
The quality of customer service influences the customers themselves. An impressive 70 percent of customers admit that the level of customer service influences their purchase decisions. It highlights the importance of delivering exceptional service to create happy and loyal customers.
Final Thought - Customer Service
Excellent customer service is a key differentiator for businesses. It directly impacts business performance, customer satisfaction, and growth. Meeting customer expectations, showing empathy, being customer-centric, and providing personalized support is essential to exceptional customer service.
Businesses can create happy and loyal customers by offering quick response times, self-help options, and advanced tools and analytics. Prioritizing great customer service helps retain existing customers, drives growth, and prevents churn.
Ultimately, outstanding customer service is a powerful tool for building a strong and loyal customer base.
Read More : 5 Ways to Find An Internet Business Expert
Read More : What is 4C’s Marketing Model for Business?
