As a business, there is nothing more important than your customers and customer service is everything! In fact, it may just be the most important aspect of your business so it is important to make sure that you are offering the highest quality of customer service possible.
So, exactly how can you provide the best customer service possible?
The first step is to determine whether or not you have room for improvement.
If you think that there is room for improvement in your current service, you should fix it as soon as possible.
Even if you believe that you offer the best service possible, that’s great. However, you might find some items on this list that your business does not offer, and you might wish to incorporate them into your business model.
So, let’s take a look at some of the ways that you can ensure that you are providing the best level of customer service possible.
How To Provide The Best Customer Service Possible
Multilingual Options
A lot of the time when customers phone your business, you may have noticed that many of them do not speak English as their first language. It can be difficult for them to communicate exactly what the issue is, and it can be difficult for the customer service worker to aid the client due to this. So, one of the things that you can consider is offering multilingual customer service.
To do this is not hard. All you have to do is make sure that you hire people who can speak different languages. We are not suggesting that you have to offer every language because we know that this is not going to be possible. But, if you provide some options for your customers, they may find it easier to communicate with you, making your customer service a higher quality.
Not many companies offer this option at the moment so this will give you an edge over the competition, at least for a little while.
Freephone Number
Your customers likely don’t want to be charged for calling you to report an issue they are having with your product or service. This is why you should consider getting a free phone number for your business. Free phone numbers are not hard to acquire, and they make it possible for your customers to contact you free of charge. You may have to pick up the bill, but it is going to be worth it when you build a loyal base of customers who know they can contact you without fear of being charged a lot of money.
If your customers are experiencing issues with a product or service that you have provided for them, charging them to report this issue to you is hardly going to please people. That’s why one of these numbers is going to be something that will help here. Your clients will feel better about getting in contact with you, and in turn, you can make sure that they are satisfied and keep coming back to your company for many years to come.
Be Polite
You need to make sure that anyone that you hire is able to be polite to customers. Some people just can’t manage to keep the sarcasm or tone out of their voice when they are dealing with people they deem stupid. You have to ensure that none of your customer service staff are like this. If they are, you are going to find yourself losing customers faster than you can get them. People don’t like to be made to feel like a moron when they call up to ask for assistance, so you need to avoid this at all costs.
If necessary, make all potential employees go through a test of how they should answer questions. This needs to be a verbal test so that you can see how they react to certain things. Give them a whole range of scenarios and see how well they answer. Obviously, this is not going to tell you everything you need to know, so make sure that you are monitoring the calls and emails too, just as an extra precaution.
Respond To Your Customers
It’s not just by phone that customers can contact a business for help regarding customer service. E-mail is also a popular option, and you should ensure that if your customers do choose to contact you in this way, that you are responding. Some companies think that it is okay not to do this because there’s no way the customer can tell if the email has been received.
While this might be true, you will also find yourself saying goodbye to any customers you do this too, as well as their friends and family. While these people might not have been customers yet, they could have been potentials, but laziness lost you all of this. So, it is imperative to know that the emails are being responded to, and not just the calls. This way, your customers will feel that you care enough to take the time to write a kind email in return to assist them.
Service With A Smile
If you have people in your company whose job it is to deal with customer issues face to face, it is imperative that they keep in mind service with a smile. Nobody is going to want to approach someone who looks miserable, as they are likely to feel like they are bothering them. Again, this is going to lose you, customers. If your clients don’t feel like they can come to you when they have an issue, they will go and find a company that they can trust.
We are not suggesting that your employees wear rainbows and unicorns, all it takes is a smile and a friendly tone for this to be done. Keep an eye on this, and if a member of the team starts to lack here, let them know that this is wrong and they need to keep their friendly attitude. If they can’t do this, then you are going to need to find someone who can.
Be Available
What we mean by this is that your customers need to be able to contact you in a way that suits them. Not just this, they need to know that they can contact you whenever they have this issue. We are not saying that you need to have a customer service line open 24/7, but there should be a good portion of the day open to customers.
Social media is a good alternative to the phone and email customer services. Customers can post their issues online and have a response from the company as soon as possible. You should look into this for your company because it gives your clients more options when it comes to ways to contact you. This is going to give your customers alternative ways to get in contact with you, and they are going to love this.
Make Sure You Listen
One thing that you absolutely must do is listen to your customers. If they are telling you something is wrong, don’t ignore them. Don’t assume they are the ones in the wrong. You need to fix the issue that they are having, and if you think that it could be impacting others, you need to try and fix this too.
You should not start calling up all your customers to see if they are having these issues because this is going to make people panic. What you should do, is try to find a large scale solution so that if you do find out more people are experiencing this trouble, there is something that you can do straight away.
Your customers make up your company, and if you don’t listen to them, your company might not be around for much longer. Treat your customers well, and they will treat you well in return.
Have Fully Trained Staff
Finally, the last thing that you should be doing is ensuring that all of your staff have been fully trained. It is not going to be possible to have every incoming employee at the standard that you would like, and this is why you need to offer training courses throughout employment. It is also vital that you don’t just have one before they start. Continuous training is going to be the best way that you can keep your employees up to date on everything new that they need to know.
This, in turn, will make their customer service skills better, and your customers are going to appreciate this. With fully trained customer service agents, your business will be more efficient, and your customers are going to find it a lot easier to get the help and support that they need.
We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now feel like you know how to better the level of customer service that you are offering your clients. If you have everything on this list already checked, then congratulations, you are giving your customers the best service that is possible. If however, you have noticed some things on this list that you do not already have in your business, you might want to think about including them sooner rather than later.
