Your customers are your bread and butter — quite literally. Without them, your business wouldn’t exist. So it goes without saying that you better treat them well and provide exceptional customer service so they continue to come back.
But customer service is as much of an art form as it is a strategy, and it takes a bit of re-figuring to get it right. So, what can you do to make your customer service top tier?
Become a Great Listener
Great customer service is about 90 percent listening and 10 percent everything else. Okay, I might have made that statistic up, but listening is worth a lot when it comes to providing exceptional customer service.
Great listeners talk less and understand more. If you need more information, ask questions. It can also help to repeat important information back to the customer to double-check that you are understanding what it is that they’re trying to achieve or frustrated with.
Body Language is the Most Important Type of Communication
Body language is really more important when it comes to interacting with customers offline and in person. Regardless, it is incredibly important to improve your customer service.
The words you use only convey a small part of the message, the majority of it comes from the way you interact with someone — body language can give you away in a second if you’re not really there, or if you simply don’t care.
Good body language is open (such as not crossing your arms), direct (like looking at someone in the eyes) and kind (like showing a smile). And, most importantly, leave your phone alone. Seriously, nothing says I don’t care about what you’re saying faster than taking your phone out.
Apologize When a Mistake is Made
Mistakes happen, we’re all human. But companies do nothing to help their customer service when they pay more attention to making excuses than simply apologizing.
Apologizing really doesn’t take a lot of work. And nine times out of ten, in my experience anyway, people understand an apology and are quite receptive to it. What they don’t like is excuses being made at them.
Add Value
Good customer service is done when unexpected value is given to a customer. Adding value really means giving someone something on top of what they were expecting.
No, you don’t have to give them a free upgrade or an extra product, value can be added in a whole host of ways. Many companies use content creation to add value now-a-days, as a helpful, actionable blog post can make some serious impact when it comes to growing customer loyalty.
Ask For Feedback
Finally, customer service is something you have to continuously work to improve, and one of the best ways to do that is to ask your current customers for feedback.
How are you doing now? And what could you do to improve?
Those two questions are incredibly important to ask because not only can they help you improve your service, but they can also help to make your customers understand that they are heard and their opinion truly matters.
How do you provide exceptional customer service? Share your favourite tip in the comments below.
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Tae started out as a journalist before following the money into the corporate world. But it turns out that the grass isn’t always greener and now you can find her spending most of her time writing about all the things she loves. Namely, money, travel and business with a hefty dose of self-deprecating humor. She is a podcast fanatic, blogging aficionado and loves to find new ways to turn passions into cold hard cash!
