What is Great Customer Service?
Great customer service is much more than answering customer questions. It’s more about creating memorable and personalized experiences for your customers.
When you offer great customer service, you’re not simply going big on creating wonderful experiences for your customers. This is something people tend to not understand well about customer services. They give priority to creating these experiences while only a few people benefit from them.
Focus on consistency. Focus on personalization and that makes customers happy.
74% of customers call customer experience to be a top factor to make purchase decisions. But only 50% of customers say companies offer great customer service experience.
That means, despite all of this competition, companies that offer great customer service can still stand out.
Providing good customer service is often about taking care of the basics. Respect customers’ time, showcase your expertise, be responsive to messages, and customize your experience.
There are different ways to do this properly. Great customer service always offers surprises.
Sometimes you need to put customers on hold when they call you. But there’s no reason why you can’t make the experience better for them while they wait.
Steps for Great Customer service
- Be Customer Focused
Companies that create great experiences are generally customer focused. They’re obsessed with their customers.
More than 66% of marketers say their brands focus mostly on customer experience. Here’s your chance to step up and become customer-focused.
You also need to prioritize customer needs, wishes, and wants above what is generally the norm. Align every person with the goal. Go the extra mile for customer loyalty and create customer happiness.
Customers aren’t shy of switching to another brand if you don’t meet their needs well. 32% of customers won’t think twice about walking away from their loved brands after a single instance of a bad customer service experience.
In addition, you can post comparison articles and other FAQs that help people understand what you do better.
For example, when Glossier got an email from the to-be bride asking about a highlighter, they replied it was out of stock. The customer service representative asked the team to see if they had an unopened package they could send to the caller.
The bride-to-be got her favorite highlighter and delivered a great result for the customer.
- Respond Quickly
Customers don’t want to keep waiting for days to get a response. Get a great customer experience by replying as soon as you can. One of the best solutions for customer service is implementing an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system that allows your customers to get redirected to the right customer service rep when answering simple questions via the phone.
However, don’t compromise quality.
Delays can be frustrating if a customer needs something essential like utilities or financial products.
Research shows that 42$ of customers can consider up to a 3-minute delay to speak to customers. Only 31% of customers can wait longer than 5 minutes to speak to somebody.
Customer service tech like Freddy AI can speed up resolutions too.
Tesla for instance reached out and repaired a flat tire for a customer in 40 minutes.
- Be Proactive
In that spirit, you don’t always have to wait for customers to reach out. Analyze customer behavior patterns to understand problems and offer solutions even before they start to reach out.
To be better at customer service, offer timely and relevant help. Offer help through websites, social media, and email.
Conclusion
In short, be available at all places your customer is available.
