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4 Ways to Take Customer Care to the Next Level

Customer Service

By Emily WilsonPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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New customers are what make every business tick. Seeking a new market and getting in touch with new people is paramount to staying relevant in today’s fast-paced and competitive market. That said, they are not the only factor when it comes to success and customer satisfaction. Customer service is the number one way of keeping customers coming for more. Helping them extract the value from our product or service that they have paid for is the name of the game. Customer service is one of the primary reasons people are drawn into their favourite brands. It can make or break our chances of acquiring new or keeping old customers. Businesses that pay close attention to customer service are rewarded by their customers. Let’s go over some of the principles on how to make our customer service experience the best one it can be.

Consistent Responding to Feedback

Relations with our customers come in various forms in today’s modern, globally connected world. The world of emails and phone calls is long gone. Forums, blogs, comments, likes, and social media interaction reign supreme. Now more than ever companies have realized the power of these mediums and are on top of their game. What it means is that every comment, good or bad, is responded to and dealt with. On the other side, unanswered and badly dealt with comments can be seen by everyone else with obvious consequences. It will leave us open to a bad reputation. Rather than leaving comments to fester in negativity which makes our case even worse, make a response of any kind. It is better than doing nothing. Our virtual assistant should answer any and all comments, from the smallest to the biggest ones. The most common way of getting feedback is through cancellations and return forms for our products or services. We can turn this around into something positive and get as much information as possible. We can use it to analyze and understand what our customers really want. And we can also make sure that they are aware of that facto, too.

Supporting Customers Publicly

As mentioned before, social media is pretty much the end all be all of the customer interaction. And for good reason, as it differentiates itself from older, more traditional methods in a way that it is public, rather than private. If the customer agrees to it, of course. It is visible to everyone as opposed to it being a private, two-way exchange. Each and every one of those public interactions is a chance to show who we are, what we stand for, and what it is that we do. Social media platforms are aplenty and it could prove to be impossible to be on each of them. We should offer customer support on those that we already have a marketing presence on. That goes for channels that are most compatible with our business and other ones that are popular with the target audience.

The Power of F.A.Q.

We can further reduce and simplify the entire process of customer support for everyone involved. By creating a Frequently Asked Questions page or some other form of similar documentation, we achieve just that. The goal here is to share our basic policies, instructions, and answers to the most common queries. By making it easy to find, it gives our current and future customers the option to serve themselves and saves us valuable time and resources. It takes time and a bit of intuitiveness to gather enough material for such a list. We may not be operating long enough to have such usual questions. In that case, there are subjects which we can use to proactively provide answers to. The key and common areas are billing, order processing, shipping, returns and exchanges, and customer accounts. These subjects are related to logistics and are not trait-specific, that we have to fill out ourselves. Nevertheless, our content should grow and change along with our customer base. We can always revisit our F.A.Q. page and make changes as we see fit.

Metrics for Customer Satisfaction

Content customers will return and spread the word to other potential ones. That is why we need to definitively know, in a quantifiable form, if our customers are actually happy. We can sum up the support metrics in two main categories: quality and performance. Quality metrics measure how customers feel by providing them with direct questions about our business. Performance metrics such as speed and volume of operations contain data that we, later on, have to dissect. To successfully navigate all of this acquired data, there are rto learning resources that our staff can go through. We, as well as customers, want information. Customer input matters and the more of it we have the more certain we can be on it providing us with valuable lessons for the future.

Customer service is an emerging and constantly changing area and discipline. Thanks to the digitalization and online communication mediums, it is easier than ever to gather information. Investing in our own customers and our relations with them is a self-evident way of building a loyal customer base. Those that feel understood listened to, and appreciated will return and recommend. Consistent service is an elusive goal. We will never be able to have 100 percent customer satisfaction and retention. But it is something that we can promote and strive for.

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About the Creator

Emily Wilson

I am a business psychologist with a passion for travelling and marketing. Researching, exploring and writing are my favourite things to do. Besides that, I love animals and music.

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