Great customer service is the key 🔑 for businesses to maintain strong long-term relationships 🤝 with their customers and improve overall business growth 📈. It doesn’t matter how good your product is; if your customer service isn’t helpful, interactive 🙁, or reliable 🚫, you risk losing customers.
Knowing the importance of delivering great customer service, 80% of companies are planning to invest more in good customer experience and service. This commitment extends to every customer service stage.
Knowing the importance of delivering great customer service, 80% of companies are planning to invest more in good customer experience and service.
But what does it mean to provide great customer service? 🤔 And how can one business do that?
All the answers to these questions are covered in this blog. Here, you will learn about the meaning of good customer service, its importance, examples, and the top ways to lift yourself up in providing excellent customer service.
🔑KEY HIGHLIGHTS!
- Great customer service refers to a business’s customer support system that includes factors like personalization, empathy, and quicker response.
- 10 ways to deliver great customer service are responding quickly, listening, analyzing your product, offering self-service options, keeping the promise, personalizing, focusing on customer support, and offering proactive help with creative problem-solving.
- Good customer service is vital for businesses to increase customer loyalty and profitability.
- Uber implementing AI tech for monitoring health-oriented concerns and Starbucks using feedback collections to improve complaint management are some of the good customer service examples
What is good customer service?
Good customer service is the business support service that includes timely interactions, empathy, personalization, and providing quicker support with valuable resources. It aims to exceed customer satisfaction rather than just meeting the customer’s expectations.
The primary principles of great customer service are to listen and understand customer needs, provide gratitude, and create a friendly and helpful environment that leaves customers with a great impression of the business.
10 ways to deliver great customer service
There are different methods for providing superior customer service. Using the best customer service software helps businesses efficiently manage and respond to customer inquiries, streamline communication across various channels like email, chat, and social media, and gain insight into customer preferences.
Besides using customer service software, here are the other top 10 ways to deliver great customer service:
1. Respond quickly
Customers always expect a quicker response. 66% of people believe that the most important thing in online customer service is valuing their time. Businesses must possess the power and capabilities to resolve customer problems and queries as quickly as possible.
It may entail sending a reply to the customer telling them you have received their query and are working on solving it. Additionally, it could mean calling a customer back quickly after they leave a message on your customer service line.
Fast problem-solving is essential, especially for minor issues that can be resolved in minutes. Exceptional customer service means providing timely responses while maintaining calm and attentive interactions without rushing or cutting calls short. Meeting these expectations leads to satisfied customers and a strong reputation for great service.
2. Listen actively
Building customer trust and satisfaction starts with listening to and valuing their concerns. Pay close attention to customers’ feedback, especially negative ones, and use this information to improve.
Listening to your customers actively in real-time increases the chances of innovative ideas, identifying real problems, and reducing customer dissatisfaction. By actively listening to them and using gentle conversations, you can increase the customer engagement experience.
For example, while on call or live chat, you can use phrases such as, “ Sir/Madam, do you mean…….?” or “ Am I right with this information, sir? ”. Always repeat customers’ problems after them in your own words to let them know you are actively listening to their concerns. Or when dealing with a frustrated customer, you can start with, “ Sorry for the inconvenience, …….”.
Excellent customer service requires active listening and being mindful of the customer’s emotional state and personality.
3. Know your product
Imagine you are on a call with a customer who is frustrated with some troubles with the products. If you do not have enough information about your product, how can you shift that conversation and calm the customer?
Understanding your product is crucial for providing great customer service and improving customer interaction management. Expansive knowledge of your product is one of the important customer service skills.
Ideally, you should be able to discuss your product’s features and benefits in a way that creates a feeling of compulsion to buy it to solve the customer’s problem.
With proper knowledge of your product, your job is to help customers see and feel the true value of a product for their money with a positive attitude, setting the stage for a positive experience.
4. Keep an optimistic attitude
As one of the most influential social customer service pros, Flavio Martins says, “ The right customer service attitude often makes the big differences between good and great customer service.”
Attitude is everything when it comes to good customer service. It is the factor that decides whether the customer returns to the product or not. While most customer interactions are done via call, your positive and optimistic attitude should be reflected in your language and tone of voice.
So, train your customer support agent or hire customer service representatives with an optimistic attitude and maintain the conversation by understanding the customer’s situation, language, and tone to provide great customer service.
5. Innovatively solve problems
It’s common to have problems even after maintaining ways of improving customer service. Businesses are required to innovate ideas for solving every problem. Around 80% of customers reported they are likely to shift their product preference if they receive bad customer service.
Address each problem your customer faces and create thoughtful ideas to resolve it. You must fix issues and utilize new ideas that meet the customer’s needs. Don’t hesitate to experiment with new ways of serving customers and go beyond your working patterns for an innovative start.
Also read 📖: How to handle the angry customer in call center? 13 Smart Tips
6. Provide customer self-service
Customers don’t always have the time to talk to someone about their problems. Often, customers want to resolve issues themselves. A report shows that 81% of customers attempt to take care of their matter themselves before connecting with customer support.
You can invest in customer self-service options like FAQ pages, chatbots, and knowledge-base information that are scalable and cost-effective while ensuring the customer experience and customer success. If customers are unable to find solutions on their own, provide them with real-person assistance quickly and effectively.
7. Stay true to your word
Being true to your words is the foundation to build strong customer relationships and win their trust. Don’t mention any features that your product or service doesn’t provide. Customer service is all about respecting customers and getting credibility.
For instance, if you promise that the latest features will be available sooner, you should deliver them sooner. If you claim to provide 24/7 customer support, offer it under any circumstances. Doing everything you promise lets you keep up with the customer satisfaction score. If a customer’s delivery goes wrong, provide them the chance to replace their products or refund them with their money.
Losing money in the short term to improve customer engagement can help you gain loyal customers. Remember that customers do not feel grateful when you deliver what you promise; they may feel angry and frustrated when you break a promise.
Keep it like this: Under-Promise and Over-Delivery to maintain the social interactions with customers.
8. Prioritize customer support
When you want to deliver effective customer service, remember that customers are the most important part of your business, as they directly affect your profits. Be customer-centric and let customers feel it.
Once, there was an incident when a Southwest Airlines pilot held a flight back just for a customer traveling to a funeral. They put their customers before their targets or profit, which the customer will never forget.
This incident follows Kristin Smaby’s saying, “Being Human is Good Business.” You’ll need to consider this and provide human-focused service that prioritizes knowing your customers and humanizing yourself.
9. Maintain personalization in your service
Customers always expect to interact with a person, not a company. This is why you should provide personalization to improve customer interaction management.
Get to know customers while interacting individually. Learn about their birthdays, interests, and hobbies, which will make it easier for you to go out of script and add a personal touch. However, it’s not always possible to provide each one with this type of service.
Adding a personal touch when you can is an effective way to let your customers feel that you know and care about them. Provide them with services that fulfill their needs and requirements,
10. Offer proactive help
Letting yourself put in more effort is one of the most important factors to consider while providing great customer service. This is when you give all the needed things and still want to offer more.
Being helpful also refers to providing customer support before the customers ask for it. Sometimes, customers ask for something without realizing that they will require more after that. It is always your work to anticipate customer needs and be proactively helpful.
In social psychology, there’s a phenomenon of reciprocity that says if you do something nicer for your customers, they will want to return the favor, such as buying your products. You’ll need to follow the same for conquering great customer service among your clients.
Also read 📖: How to Improve Customer Service?
Why is great customer service necessary for businesses?
Great customer service is vital for businesses because it directly impacts customer loyalty and the company’s overall profit.
89% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase if they are provided with a great customer service experience. Also, the HubSpot research shows that 93% of customers are likely to repeat their purchases with the companies.
Therefore, business owners must focus on great customer service. By providing a better customer service experience, companies can grow their revenues between 4% and 8% above their market.
Good customer service examples
Let’s look at a few examples that show good customer service:
1. Uber – Implement AI tech to speed up problem-solving
During COVID-19, while every business struggled to provide good customer service, Uber focused on providing top-notch customer support in record time. It uses AI-powered tools to monitor and solve health-oriented concerns raised by customers. This lets the company reduce first response time by 33%, saving 4,000 hours for customer support teams.
2. Starbucks – Use feedback collection to get the insights
Customer feedback is vital for every business; collecting it effectively is key to providing excellent service. Starbucks collected all the reviews and customer feedback from their customer through a unique customer survey that contained easy readability with an easy way to respond. Also, they offer loyalty points to each respondent for their valuable time, which improves the customer satisfaction score and effective complaint management for the overall business success.
Also read 📖: How to Handle Customer Complaints – 10 Best Ways
Conclusion
Businesses must provide great customer service to increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability and reduce customer churn. Excellent customer service increases repeat business and grows the company’s revenue above average. Providing superior customer service requires proper knowledge of products, responding quickly, and problem-solving innovations. Remember to keep an optimistic attitude towards the customers and keep up the word you promised.
FAQs
What are the 5 key elements of excellent customer service?
The 5 key elements of excellent customer service are:
- Effective communication
- Responsiveness
- Personalization
- Empathy
- Consistency
What are the benefits of great customer service?
The benefits of great customer service include:
- Build strong relationships with customers
- Increased sales rate
- Improve brand reputation and customer loyalty
- Positive reviews and referrals
- Competitive edge in the market
How can you measure the customer service?
The top 10 ways to measure customer service are:
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
- Customer Effort Score CES)
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Customer Churn
- Social media metrics
- First contact resolution rate
- Average handle time
- Overall resolution rate
- First response time
- Customer ticket request volume
