Many businesses are constantly looking forward to the next service, product or sale. One place such businesses often fall down is in customer service.
Serving customer’s immediate needs when they are unhappy with your product can be a difficult and disappointing job, which is why many companies fail in this area. However, recent statistics show how the importance of customer service. For example, a survey conducted by New Voice Media found that U.S. companies lose an estimated 41 billion dollars every year due to poor customer service.
Customers expect to be serviced. If they are not helped when they are unhappy with your service or product, they are more likely to tell people about their poor experience than they are to leave good reviews about your business when things are going well. This means that years of goodwill built with a customer could all be erased by one bad experience.
So, you might say that customer service is one of the most important parts of your business.
How Can You Improve Your Customer Service?
Every company can build goodwill with their customers and give them an excellent experience. Here are four actions you can take to develop a great relationship with your customers and provide them with an excellent experience at all times:
1. Foster a service-oriented company culture
Improving customer service isn’t just creating one department in your company. It is tied in with how your employees respond to customers during any interaction. So, the first way to revamp your customer service is to foster a company culture of service to your customers. One of the best ways to do this is to keep your company focused on the purpose of your business. Often, your business’ purpose will align with a strong, customer service based culture.
2. Set up a self-service portal
Many customer service issues are easily resolved with a self-service portal. Additionally, according to the 2015 Global State of Multichannel Customer Service Report, 90% of consumers expect companies to offer a self-service customer support portal.
3. Monitor all of the ways people can contact you
We have seen this mistake happen over and over again: a company is on more social media channels than they monitor, so when a client attempts to contact the company about a customer service issue, they may never get a response through their chosen channel. This does not need to happen. You can set up automated alerts that come to your customer service team whenever someone mentions or contacts your company – and then your team can help that customer from there.
4. Cut down your hold times
Everyone has heard that notification “We are experiencing higher than expected call volumes” or been told “We value your time,” while on hold. These comments are not helpful when dealing with a customer who needs to be served. Instead of attempting to pacify an enraged customer who has been on hold for five minutes, work to cut hold times.
Just bettering your customer service can help you increase sales, customer retention and get you invaluable word-of-mouth recommendations from happy clients.
Don’t know where to start when it comes to building your customer service team? Is your customer service less successful than you hoped? Contact us today for a business evaluation!
