High-quality customer service is integral to a successful business and can make or break your company. That’s why it’s paramount to invest the time and effort into continually improving your customer’s experience. A solid CX strategy builds your business’s reputation, builds trust and loyalty, and boosts customer lifetime value (CLV). Ultimately, high customer satisfaction levels lead to increased revenue.
Here, we’ll explore ways you can improve your customer service.
6 Ways to Deliver Top-Notch Customer Service
1. Understand your customers’ needs
Get to know your customers and their experience with your brand. It’s important to have insight into what customers need and why they use your service or product. Meet your customers where they are.
You can better improve your customer service by meeting your customers' needs and expectations:
- Determine your key customers and how your product or service meets their needs.
- Put yourself in your customers’ position and think about any challenges to using the product or service and opportunities for improvement.
- Consider questions customers may have and address them pre-emptively.
- Use "open-ended surveys" to hear the voice of the customer (VoC) and measure customer satisfaction and NPS.
- Examine the feedback you receive. Look for any patterns, address shortcomings, and build upon the positive elements that your customers value.
2. Encourage customer feedback
Allow customers to tell you what they like or dislike about your product or service. There are many feedback channels available, such as online reviews, contact forms on websites, follow-up calls, emails, live chat, and social media. You can also prompt customers to complete a survey. Keep in mind that customers are more willing to fill out short and accessible surveys. It’s important to ask loyal customers for their feedback as they will likely be willing to share what they value the most about your brand.
Digitizing and automating your feedback strategy can go a long way if it’s done well. Aim to make the customer’s experience of providing feedback smooth and seamless. A customer relationship management (CRM) program can help with this by automatically sending a survey upon completing a service call or live chat. Having an avenue for customers to provide feedback immediately deters them from making a more public complaint if they’ve received poor service.
3. Personalize your customer service
Make sure your customer service team engages customers in a way that builds trust with your business. Here are some tips for making customer service feel more personal:
- Ensure your team greets customers in a warm and welcoming manner– ’humanize’ your approach.
- Always refer to your customers by name.
- Ask open-ended questions.
- Empathize with customers who are upset by a poor experience.
- Actively listen to the customer and respond appropriately.
4. Review and analyze customers’ feedback
To get a clear picture of how you can improve customer service, make it a point to collect and analyze customer feedback to detect trends. Identify trends and focus on the common or recurring complaints. This will help your business prioritize and implement solutions.
5. Engage and follow up
Taking the time to follow up with customers who have provided feedback shows you truly care about their needs. If you receive an online review or a post/message on social media, be sure to respond whether the feedback is good or bad. At the very least, you show that you acknowledge them as customers. If your product or service didn’t meet a customer’s expectation, take accountability, apologize, and let them know you are working to resolve the issue.
6. Consult your customer service representatives
Your employees deserve care just as much as your customers do. Show that you value your representatives just as much as your customers. Ask for their feedback and make sure there is an internal procedure for them to share their experience. If your customer service team is unhappy, they may pass on a poor attitude to customers. Satisfied employees are more likely to help retain customers.
Also, make sure to give credit to team members who do an exceptional job. Those who receive recognition have a greater chance of performing at a higher level.
Benefits of Outsourcing Your CX Team
Does your business need help improving customer service? Consider outsourcing your CX team with RUI. RUI has been providing unparalleled customer support expertise for over 25 years. We know how to engage customers; we focus on high-quality interactions at every touch point. Our strategy involves the perfect combination of digitization, automation, and human talent. If you’re ready to deliver a seamless and efficient experience for your customers, get in touch with us.
