Your customer service skills can make or break your business. Good customer service keeps existing customers happy and attracts new ones. Unsatisfied customers, lost business, and a bad reputation can result from poor customer service.
Fortunately, providing excellent customer service isn’t difficult if you follow a few simple rules.
- Provide multiple support options
- Provide high-quality goods and services
- Respond to all feedback promptly
- Apologize quickly
- Go the extra mile
- Check for feedback
- Be kind and courteous
- Keep your word
- Never argue with a customer
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Provide multiple support options
Do not add to a person’s frustration by making them search for a way to contact you or get an answer. Include a phone number and email in the footer of your website, and consider adding a FAQ page, a chatbot, live chat, or an online help center.
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Provide high-quality goods and services
If you sell inferior goods or services, your customer service department will be overworked. Making people like a bad product is difficult, and if you can’t stand behind your brand’s quality, customer service can only do so much. Rather than relying too heavily on customer service, ensure your products and services meet their expectations.
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Respond to all feedback promptly
According to a recent SurveyMonkey study, 73% of US consumers value quick response times. Respond quickly to customers’ questions, comments, or complaints.
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Apologize quickly
Make no excuses or be defensive when your company has failed. A sincere, unqualified apology will help a lot. To avoid legal repercussions, you can always apologize for your customer’s bad experience, inconvenience, or frustration.
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Go the extra mile
Doing the bare minimum in customer service is all too common. Make yourself stand out by going above and beyond the initial reason for contact. Is there anything you can do to help the customer in the future? Is there anything you can do to make them feel better? Be proactive in nurturing customer loyalty—your customers will remember.
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Check for feedback
Your support line used to be the only way to reach your customer support team. Also available are dozens of third-party online review sites. A bad review can quickly go viral, so keep an eye out for negative feedback. Set up Google Alerts to notify you when your brand is mentioned online, and monitor your social media accounts for mentions.
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Be kind and courteous
If someone contacts your company for assistance, they are giving you the chance to resolve the issue rather than simply slandering your brand and never using your products or services. Extend them the courtesy they deserve by thanking them for alerting you to the issue and treating it with respect.
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Keep your word
Never make a promise you can’t keep just to please a customer. If you promise to act on their behalf, do so promptly and confirm your actions with them.
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Never argue with a customer
Some frustrated customers become argumentative or combative. Rather than arguing back, speak calmly, be polite, and try to steer the conversation toward possible solutions. Forget who is right, focus on how to solve the problem.