Tips for improving your company’s customer service
If you run a business, you already know that your customers are everything. Without them, it won’t matter if you have the best product or service in the world. For that reason, it’s important to prioritize customer service, but what is the best way to do that? The tips below are all good ways for companies to offer people a better experience.
Empower Your Customers
When you’re a consumer, it’s frustrating if you are trying to get in touch with a company but you feel like you keep hitting a blank wall. Transparency helps your clientele feel as though they have some control because they can follow your processes and understand where they might be delays. For example, if you offer deliveries, this is where vehicle telematics can be an excellent tool for helping your customers track their goods. You can count on Samsara fleet management for best-in-class visibility that will also improve route performance, meaning your customers get what they need faster. You should also make it easy for people to get answers for simple issues. A chatbot or even simply a page of frequently asked questions on your website can help address these types of problems.
Empower Your Staff
Micromanaging your staff in their dealings with customers can backfire. You might feel like closely monitoring them and having strict instructions about how to deal with unhappy shoppers ensures the right outcome every time. However, disempowering your staff doesn’t just hurt morale but can also mean people go away unsatisfied as well. Start by hiring the right staff and training them effectively, then give them the freedom to make their own calls about how to fix an issue that someone is having. This lets them adapt their solutions to the situation and respond more effectively in the moment.
Acknowledge Frustration
Giving your staff more freedom to manage situations doesn’t mean not having any kind of framework in place at all for customer service, and one point you should emphasize is that they should always acknowledge a person’s frustration. In many cases, all people really want is this acknowledgment and an apology. Encourage your staff to always look for ways to deescalate a situation, and this starts with acknowledging that a situation has been frustrating.
Consider emergency response training sessions similar to this CERT training offered in California. Giving your staff the tools to handle an emergency that is physical or otherwise is a way to show you care about their wellbeing. This can be even more important if the situation is unfolding over social media. Skillful handling of an unhappy customer can work to a company’s advantage even if the person remains unhappy because others will see how the company responded, and this can reflect positively on the company.
Loyalty Program
A loyalty program can be a great way to better serve your customers. You can gather more data on their behavior and preferences, which helps you better understand what they want. In addition, you can reward your most frequent customers with perks that you know, based on this data, will reinforce their loyalty. Not all of these perks even have to be costly for your business. They can include things like early access to sales or new product lines.
