As we all know customer service is an essential part for any business to accomplish greater heights of growth and success.
In this blog, we will discuss insights on how you can increase Customer Satisfaction and Retain them so that it will help you grow your business. Great customer service comes with best practices.
Here are the 7 ways you may follow up to delight your customers with excellent customer service:
1. Actively Listen to Your Customers
Listen to what the customer has to say without interrupting with your own predictions. As the saying goes, “ Listening is often the only thing needed to help someone.”
While conversing on a call, use phrases such as Let me make sure I have understood it right and repeat their problem to let them know you have heard them.
Display active listening skills and be mindful of your customers emotional state which results in effective problem solving and happier customers.
2. Be Empathetic Towards Your Customers
It is a crucial customer service skill.
After listening to the customer’s query you must learn to solve their problem as your own. Showing empathy really matters and enhances the chances of pleasant customer experience.
Companies with a customer centric approach are 70 percent more profitable than the companies that are not.
Make the experience personal by being empathetic so that the customer will get a touch and will feel that yes I can rely on them. It increases the customer retention rate and hence you can gain loyal customers.
3. Provide Quicker Resolutions
In this super fast generation there is lack of patience in most of them.
Customers’ expectations are very high as they expect you to solve their complications in a short span. A Help desk software that gives clients and support staff the same power for a quicker response.
The agents should be well versed with the product knowledge so that they can reduce the time to solve customer tickets. Companies can increase their FCR and decrease their TAT if the agents have overall product knowledge.
Your customers are the integral part of your business so do not keep them waiting. Value your customers TIME by having a pleasant attitude and by meeting their expectations.
Do not forget, Time is money and Time is your greatest Asset, and therefore use it wisely.
4. Furnish Agents with Tools to Work More Efficiently and Effectively
If your business has an internal CRM with wonderful tools that help agents in solving the customer’s queries without any hurdles, they can easily resolve the queries in their first call. Like Side Conversations, Agents Assistance, Omni channel support, 360 degree view of customer, B2B Ticketing system, Knowledge base, Single Sign On, Learning Management System, Reports and Analytics and so much more.
Before pleasing the customer’s experience, please and satisfy your agents with the things they like. It would be a win-win situation.
5. Anticipate the Customers’ Needs
Anticipating customers’ needs means being proactive with customer support service. You research, predict and analyze the customer needs and you reach out to them proactively, instead of waiting around for them to contact support.
Study your customers by performing intense market research.
Know your customers by reaching out to them personally or virtually (through online surveys, questionnaires, contests, transaction records and so on).
Once you are aware of their expectations you can make use of this by converting the problem into opportunity by developing new features/products. This leads you far ahead of your competitors.
6. Be Proactively Thoughtful, Supporting and Obliging
By being thoughtful you can often head off problems before they even start. Before the customer starts complaining, you are offering to solve their problem by understanding and being supportive. It saves time for both the customer support team and the customer itself.
Once you are done with dealing with customers’ problems, you should proactively ask them if they require any other help other than the problem they had stated. The chances are they might have other snags.
Or it might happen that the agent would be knowing in future any other issue will occur with that particular query, so here any agent can inform the customer the same by providing them with resourceful information and resolving two issues together. This leads to satisfied customers and reduction in ticket volume in one way.
Last but not the least,
7. Empower Your Customers So That They Can Help Themselves
Try to build tools that will empower the customers to solve their problems by themselves. You can do this by developing a portal that helps them get answers to their Frequently Asked Questions.
You can empower your customers by conducting forums, providing access to AI Chat bot with multilingual chat features, Live Chat with expert Agents, and you may add on to the list.
Empowering helps in reduction of ticket volume and customers don’t have to stress on reaching out to customer support agents. Omnichannel features come into picture, as it plays a vital role here.
You can serve your customers with the channel of their choice.
Customers will reach out by different means through social media, face-to-face meetings, calls etc. Make your customers feel comfortable by reaching out to them in their preferred channels and means of communication.
“Make it easy for your customers while you take it easy.”
Extra Tips to Add on to Excellent Customer Service
- Take Feedback from the customers and ACT on it.
- Always appreciate your customers for making an effort to reach out to you.
- Be polite, friendly and show courtesy towards your customers.
- Always be honest with customers, even a slight misinterpretation affects your business as there might be the possibility of losing a loyal customer.
- Give choice and flexibility to customers so that they might feel the presence and effectiveness.
