Photo Credit Courtesy Of Eco Photography
Over the long weekend I have gone over my site http://www.GetContentResults.com with a fine tooth comb. I’ve looked at every single page, and finally created a shopping cart to serve my clients better.
In a business world which is getting more competitive each and every day, there’s one thing which will keep your customers coming back again and again – a valuable customer experience. Your customer experience begins and ends with spectacular customer service.
What Is Customer Service?
It’s being there for your customer from the moment they meet you, whether it is online, on the phone or they walk through the front door of your establishment. It’s being there to prevent any potential problems and it’s being there to resolve any issues that come up. Finally, customer service is about being proactive and engaging your current customers so they always feel valuable and appreciated.
For many businesses, and you’re sure to have had this experience as a customer, customer service is an afterthought. It’s when the problem solvers step in and attempt to appease you. While this is certainly part of customer service if this is your approach you’re going to spend a whole lot of time solving problems.
Spectacular customer service means being in communication with your customers to make sure they’re happy, to find out what they need and want and to meet those needs with innovative products and services.
How To Provide Spectacular Customer Service
Be transparent and available 24/7. This doesn’t mean you have to answer the phone at all hours but it does mean providing all the information possible for your customers to have easy access to. An FAQ page, a Contact Page you can hire a customer service company to answer phones, address problems, and even have a presence on your website in a pop up customer service chat screen. I even created a support ticket system for Small Business Branding here as well.
However as mentioned earlier customer service is about more than answering questions and solving problems. It’s about creating strategies to solve problems before they occur, to embrace your customers’ needs and wants before they know what they are and solve them.
This can be accomplished with regular communication, surveys and polls, special offers for your loyal customers only and regular tracking and analytics. Data is a valuable asset to providing an ideal customer experience.
For me, the one I use most of these is communication. I love to hear what clients are saying and what their needs are right from them. I love to get on the phone and chat with clients but for the most part, just watching closely with the questions they ask works best for me.
Think about your last shopping experience at your favorite store. Chances are your satisfaction with the outing was influenced by the sales representatives you encountered but also by the layout of the store – how easy it was to find things – and how easy it was to check out. Online or off these little experiences add up to a spectacular customer service experience.
The happier and more satisfied your customers are the more they’ll come back and the more they’ll talk about you to your friends. It means a bigger and better business and more profits. Focus on your customer experience and you’ll be building the kind of success which lasts. 🙂
HI, great post – I installed a FAQ page on one of my sites some time ago and it really helped me in managing my time (not so many emails to answer) and give more timely (intant compared to email) feedback to my audience.
For questions that were not covered by the FAQ, I installed a small survey script at the bottom of the FAQ so they can send me new questions that I will answer on an updated FAQ page.
This is a hot topic for me as more and more I get bad customer service all over the place and I just wonder what has happened to the concept in the US, it is upsetting when you go somewhere and get treated badly, it is just unacceptable.
Thanks Vera for posting on the topic.
JR
JLT – FAQ’s are great pages to also use to sell your services in a non “salesy” way. I have alot more to ad to my FAQ page myself, it’s very basic at the moment.
IM – Yes, it’s true about service, sometimes you just don’t get it. I won’t say I haven’t made mistakes with my service but at least I do my best to rectify the situation quickly and then fix things.