Customer service is one of the most powerful and yet most underrated parts of owning a business. If used right, it can boost your business acquisition and retention significantly. It increases the loyalty of your customers and generates an ambassadorship, that means more than any of your marketing efforts.
Who do you trust more? Your best friend who is crazy about this new beauty brand they just found, or random Instagram advertisement?
Next to a good reputation, good customer service can also impact the amount of money and how often they spend it. If you think about it, here is where all the other departments come together. No matter where the customer's problem lies in the purchasing process, customer service needs to know and reach out to that specific department.
If done right, customer service is the Batman of your business: knowing all about your processes, daily scenarios with customers and fighting against evil problems.
Even though you might not be a billionaire like Bruce Wayne, your customer service can still be your businesses superhero, with these 5 simple tips.
1. Improve your team communication
If you want the communication with customers to work, you need to check the internal communication first. Teams need to communicate effectively and consistently with one another to avoid having silos. Everybody being an expert in their specific department is a good thing to have. If the communication between team members doesn't work, how is the customer service team supposed to find out where the problem is and what to do?
Having a functioning team communication allows you to react to problems and stop them before they snowball. With fewer errors, you automatically have fewer complaints and happier customers. If a problem appears, solving it will be way easier knowing who of your teammates you must ask about it.
2. Listen to your customers
This one seems obvious. What a lot of people forget is that there is a difference between listening and hearing. Take in what customers tell you, ask for feedback, and look at how you can improve the things customers would like to be different. Having a customer profile further helps to put your valuable customers against the feedback you get. When you know your valuable customer, you can ask them specifically for feedback, so you tailor your store and your customer service more to the customers that you really want to attract. What grows your business is to match your customer's expectations better than your competitors do.
3. Engage with your customers
It has never been so easy to engage with your customers as it is in the age of the internet. Not only do you have multiple opportunities to advertise and reach out to your customers, but you can also find new ways to find new ones.
One possibility is a "tag a friend" contest on social media. To participate, people must tag others on your post. Not only does it push the engagement with current customers, but it also pushes the visibility for new possible customers that follow you afterwards. If you share pictures of your items on sale, urgent changes, or opening hours, they get more and more lured in to become a follower and a customer who again tags more people in the following "tag a friend" campaign. Gain followers in a heartbeat.
Looking at social media from a customer service point of view, it has another significant advantage.
You can reach out and answer questions directly. Combined with a VIP club that gets early access to products or services and gets more insight into your business, maybe even voucher codes, you can ensure that your interaction and the feedback you get from your customers is from your most valuable customers. This helps you to further customise your store for the target group you want to attract. You get a better insight and your most valuable customers feel flattered to give you more insight and be more vocal about your business with friends, colleagues and family.
Adding your social media channels to your branded tracking page helps you get a head start with customers who already love your business. They are happy with your service and with just one click, they can follow you on your socials, instead of having to google your company's name.
4. Make your small business an adventure
Instead of thinking, "how can I improve my customer service despite being a small business", ask yourself "how can I improve my customer service and capitalise on being a small business"?
Your business might be top-rated in a particular niche, or you have a product no one else has to offer.
One thing all small businesses have in common that separates them from big corporations is that they can interact personally. While you must stay on hold for 5 minutes and get redirected 6 times before you talk to a customer service representative from the department that knows about your problem, a small business can often help on a way more personal level. It can help with out of the box solutions.
5. Introduce self serving solutions
Every solution to make life easier for your customers automatically makes life easier for you as well. So, thinking about what could help customers find the correct answers can impact your customer satisfaction and your time management. Long calls, for example, can be expendable by just having an updated FAQ page. Having an FAQ page is the easiest, straightforward, and most common way of implementing self-serving solutions to optimise your customer service.
After customer questions, delivery updates can also take a lot of time and resources from your customer service team. Instead, give your customers a tracking link. This way, they can quickly check their tracking whenever they want without phone someone or waiting in a queue.
With Siid’s branded tracking page, you can go one step further. Let your customers track their orders and offer them a branded tracking experience. Let them remember what company they got the best customer service from whenever they check their order tracking.
Book a demo today and provide your customers with a branded tracking experience they will never forget.
