Tips for Improving Your Business’ Customer Service

The problem of lousy business customer service should always get addressed on time. If business owners or managers imagine that they’ll get around to it, usually that time rarely comes due to the obligations concerned with a day-to-day running of a company.

The fact that businesses today live in the “Age of the Customer” has made business leaders realize that customer-centric company policies are rather crucial to staying relevant to their customer needs. These policies involve training your service team for necessary skills and an entire overhaul of obsolete service strategies.

As for a business’ long-term success, improving customer service is essential. Support strategies should reflect the today’s rapid technological advancements, because if you step up– your customers will do the same. Here are some of the things you could do to up your customer service game. 

#1 Share Feedback Through a Community 

Community managers are the ones that usually comb through social media streams and online forums, read and listen, create meaningful conversations, manage feedback, and respond to their customers’ questions. Social media experts and community managers belong to the marketing area of business but have a strong impact on customer support for creating an effective customer support strategy. 

Your customers should have a designated place for leaving their insights and feedback on your content. Social channels, blogs, rating systems, and blogs with open comments and ratings are great because you show them that you value their opinion and are trying to find a resolution path towards product improvement. 

#2 Make Your Knowledge Accessible

FAQs are an important part of your customer service plan. However, modern customers do not want to write an email or open a chat discussion to find a resolution for the problems that emerge. What if they are in the midst of purchasing, but need more product or service information to feel good upon completing the purchase? If they cannot find a quick answer, almost half of them will abandon their online purchase. Thus, your FAQ solution should not be restricted to one page of your website.

#3 Always Be Accessible

A sure way to alienate your customers and have them seek a better alternative is to leave them waiting for resolution or answers. A significant number of consumers (33%) would recommend a brand that provides an ineffective, but a timely response, while only 17% of them would recommend you if your solution is effective but slow.

According to certain test results, when customers ask a question on Twitter, 53% of them expect a response within an hour, and if it is a complaint– the number skyrockets to 72%. Customers are also self-reliant of finding necessary information, so your customer service should allow communication and feedback from all the mobile and touchscreen devices. Employing a virtual receptionist is sometimes a great solution for a fast and an accessible customer service.

#4 Self-Serving Solution

Gartner has made predictions that, by 2020, about 85% of a customer’s relationship with an enterprise will occur without human interaction. Thus, it is what your customers expect, but a self-service solution does not presuppose creating a knowledge pool with a widget that is easy to use. It supports personalized escalation paths for high touch issues to an appropriately skilled agent.

Human customer service is certainly not becoming obsolete, but technological advancements help your organization optimize the potential of each worker and create the best solution for your customers to find the information they need quickly.

It supports personalized escalation paths for high touch issues to an appropriately skilled agent. Human customer service is certainly not becoming obsolete, but technological advancements help your organization optimize the potential of each worker and create the best solution for your customers to find the information they need quickly.

Good customer service should be made a company-wide value. It neither begins nor ends with the people answering your customer queries on the phone. Every employee has to value their “people” or customer-centric skills.

Attentiveness that your support team shows on the phone or email correspondence should be reflected in the attitude shown to your customers, general email correspondence, and marketing messages. As a business leader, you should nurture an environment that stays both thankful and hungry for the end-user.