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Companies are constantly trying to find new & exciting ways to improve relationships with their customers, but they forget the easiest & most obvious method, improving customer service. 86% of customers will pay more for a better customer service experience. Regardless of how great the products or services that a company offers or how skilled and creative the employees are, customers more often than not never forget the direct interaction they have with your company. Your customer’s experience will be rated by the quality & skill of the support they receive. If you’re not finding new ways to improve your customer service, you are at risk of stagnating or even ruining your customer-company relationship. Below are some steps to providing excellent customer service.

Know Your Product

Having product knowledge is an essential skill for both salespeople and customer service representatives. By having the ability to understand your product’s features, it allows you to break down benefits, features, and potential troubleshooting issues. This creates trust & confidence for your customers.

Friendliness

Having a friendly attitude is essential to excellent customer service. Having a friendly attitude shows that you value your customers. Customers want to deal with employees that they genuinely believe care about their problems and not someone who seems inconvenienced or bothered by their questions and concerns. A friendly employee should be warm, show courtesy by acknowledging customers immediately, being attentive, and genuinely working to resolve a customer’s issue.

Training Staff

It is impossible for a company to have excellent customer service without training their staff. When dealing with customer service, there are 5 critical skills that need to be addressed: empathy, positivity, patient, clarity, and improvement. Empathy is the most fundamental customer service skill since it emphasizes helping customers be happy & successful. Positivity refers to the language and tone you use when communicating with customers. Subtle changes in word choice and tone can have a huge difference in how a customer perceives your customer service. Patience is crucial in customer service because not all customers have a quick and easy question. Some questions and concerns can be complex and cause frustration for both you and the customer. The worst thing you can do is lose your cool when dealing with a customer and potentially ruin your relationship with that customer. Clarity creates trustworthiness, dependability, and smooth support for customers. Training shouldn’t just be when a person gets hired, companies need to have a culture of continuous improvement when it comes to customer service. There is always room for improvement and if you aren’t improving in regards to customer service, there are other companies out there willing to and they can potentially convert your customers.

Listening

Empathy begins with listening. Listening shows that you are engaged in what the customer is relaying to you and you are focused on a resolution. Active listening reduces the chances of miscommunication which can increase the likelihood of frustration for both you and the customer. Committing your full attention throughout an entire interaction keeps the focus on the customer and their needs. Your customer will appreciate it whether they express it or not.

Feedback

Customer feedback is the last piece of the puzzle. It is one of the easiest ways a company can learn to provide excellent customer service in the future. Successful companies are successful because they continually look for ways to be better and customer service is a key area that companies focus on. Companies need to focus on accepting feedback and also purposely asking for it. Getting both good and bad feedback will help improve customer service going forward. There are numerous ways to get customer feedback including online feedback forms, email surveys, polls, live chat support, and monitoring social channels.