This guide outlines strategies to achieve customer service excellence and keep improving it through top notch customer service skills.
Customer service excellence should be the main goal that all companies strive to achieve. With word of mouth and online reviews having an impact on companies attracting new business, it is important to focus on customers’ needs and if they are being met as a high standard of customer service experience.
There are a variety of different ways you can improve customer service excellence within your business, whether that means referring to a customer experience agency, learning how to understand your customer’s needs and exceeding their expectation, or seeking and promoting customer feedback to work from.
Ways to achieve customer service excellence
If you think your company could do with a bit of a customer service excellence refresh, read on to find out how.
Understand your customer’s needs
Firstly, understanding what your customer needs from you is a great place to start for customer service excellence. The more you know about what your customers require from you, the more likely you are to be able to meet their expectations. You could do this by asking a long-term member of staff for feedback on customers they have encountered in the past and how they have or have not been able to meet their needs.
You could also get other members of your team to retrieve and store information from the customers, allowing you to reflect on this and ensure you are meeting customer needs as best possible. Reflecting on what you already know about your customers can help when trying to understand if they are getting the service they need from your company.
Promote feedback
We are all familiar with customer feedback and reading reviews, whether it’s about a product before we buy or a comment we read about a restaurant before we book. Customer feedback is important for customer service excellence as this allows your company and staff to adapt and make the necessary changes to suit your customer.
Promoting feedback by asking a customer’s views on a product or service, face to face or over the phone is useful to find out how your customers feel about your company and its services. Online reviews and testimonials are a great way of doing this, as well as using surveys that can be completed in the customer’s own time.
Exceed expectations
Delighting customers by going above and beyond to meet their needs will almost certainly have them returning to you in the future. You could do this by recognising loyalty as well as special occasions and milestones. If basic needs are being met by your company, adding something a little more and going the extra mile will lead to a very happy customer. Special touches will stay with them.
If your customers are getting something more than they expected, it is likely they will tell family and friends, as well as the community. Boosting your customer service excellence can help to not only ensure your company gains loyal customers that will return in the future, but you will also come highly recommend to others, leading to new referrals and higher credibility for your company.
Show interest in the customer
Do you feel more comfortable and well received when someone pays attention to you or when someone doesn’t seem to give you much importance? If you chose the first option, know that the vast majority also select it. This is precisely what should apply to customer service excellence.
The best thing is that you can show interest in small actions, such as greeting the customer with a smile (in the case of a physical store) or sending a happy face (in digital format), wishing him good morning, good afternoon or good night, listening carefully to what he has to say (with all the information gathered, this also makes it easier for you to find a solution in an agile and efficient way) and avoiding negative expressions such as “cannot” and “should not”.
Happy friendly cashier taking customer credit card to purchase payment, talking, smiling and laughing. Medium shot. Shopping concept Free photo
Transmit confidence
When you pass on confidence, the consumer feels safer to accept your help and believe that you will provide the best solution to your problem or goal. Here it is also worth leaving the customer at ease: depending on the type of customer, he can fit the confusing or non-communicative model, and this can make him feel inhibited before the seller. Clear, polite and discreet communication is a good way out.
Put yourself in the customer’s shoes
It may be obvious to treat each other as you would like to be treated, but many people forget this maxim. It is also very likely that you are a customer of another business(s), and being aware of how you are served is a good exercise in putting yourself in the consumer’s shoes in practice.
For example, if one day it took a long time to serve you, try to avoid waiting. If they didn’t pay much attention to your complaint, pay attention when the customer has some criticism to make.
Personalize the service
Personalization implies investing time in the customer, something very well regarded and a great differential for the conquest of the consumer, and with Salesforce implementation, it has never been simpler to achieve. Adapting the speech to the different niches, sending customized letters with the product and offering a sweet or tea before service are simple actions that make a difference int he customer’s perception of your company.
In addition, another way to customize service is to be present in several service channels with integrated communication. Also called omnichannel, this strategy aims to strengthen the relationship between company and customer, as well as between offline and online, through the interconnection of channels. With this, the consumer feels satisfied in any means of communication he prefers, which represents a gain in financial resources and brand image by the company.
Invest in management tools
A slightly more technical tip is to invest in tools that monitor and record consumer contact processes, which includes service, sales and marketing. Having precious information gathered on a platform makes it easier to put together new strategies, measure whether actions are giving a positive result, verify customer satisfaction, among others. One of the main tools used by business is CRM, a great foundation for building success plans.
