ExecutiveChronicles | What Does It Mean To Have Good Customer Service? | Providing high-quality service to your customers and clients plays an important role in making your business a success. Offering an efficient, tailored approach will result in many happy customers and an increase in positive word of mouth. You can enlist the help of a customer service consultancy uk to ensure you’re implementing the most effective methods to help your customers, they can also give you direction on how to transform your communication and problem-solving skills for the better.
What do we mean by customer service?
By definition, customer service is ‘the assistance and advice provided by a company to people who buy its products or use its service’. High-quality customer service is all about providing solutions to your customers, and ensuring your product or service is meeting their needs in the best way possible. Understanding your customer’s needs and having a deep knowledge of your product and service is essential so that you can provide solutions to any queries quickly and easily.
Why is it so important?
If you work in a customer-facing role within a company, you are the first person that your customer will come to for help, so being able to interact with your customers in a way that reflects your company’s values, and portrays knowledge and empathy is key. The way you treat your customers has a direct impact on what they think of the business, so being able to provide them with what they need is important.
Customer service contributes directly to word of mouth. If one of your customers receives great service, not only are they likely to return in the future, but they are also likely to tell their friends – word of mouth can result in loyal as well as new customers, and increased profit.
Customer service skills
There are a few skills that employees should have if they work in a customer-facing role to ensure they can meet the needs of your customers, some of these skills include:
- Communication skills: Employees should be able to adapt their language and tone of voice to reflect the company, as well as to suit the customer they are communicating with. For example, a more friendly attitude towards a loyal, happy customer may come across as personalised service, which may be received well, but they should be able to detect when a customer is unhappy and switch to a more formal, empathetic tone.
- Responsibility: Employing someone that can take responsibility for their customers is advantageous – they should go out of their way to keep their customers happy and solve their problems.
- Resourcefulness: Working in customer service means you need to be willing to try and solve a customer’s queries as best possible, so being resourceful is essential when it comes to finding new ways of solving an issue.
Help and solutions
High-quality customer service is based on providing customers with the help they need, whether you provide a service or a product. If employees don’t have the right attitude or skills to provide help, you’ll likely end up with a disgruntled customer. To avoid this, there are a few things that you can do when it comes to providing solutions. Knowing your product inside out means that you can provide a confident and knowledgeable solution to your customer’s issues. This instils trust within the customer and reassures them that you know what you’re talking about, and you are dedicated to helping them. It also saves time – speedy resolutions are a good way of providing a quality experience, it shows resourcefulness and organisation.
Another factor that is helpful when it comes to providing solutions is to tailor your tone of voice and show empathy to your customer. If someone comes to you with an issue with your product or service, you must try to see the issue from a customer’s point of view – being defensive will only create more friction! Training on how to best manage conflict could be advantageous.
Feedback and reviews
Businesses should encourage feedback from their customers as a way of improving service. You can encourage your customers to leave reviews online or on your social media, you could also send out a digital survey via email for more private and honest results. You could ask your customers for feedback face-to-face too, so you can find out how they found the service you provided and if they think you need to make any changes.
You may be worried about receiving negative reviews; however, they are a great place to start when it comes to tailoring your approach to your audience and making changes to your service to improve. You could also ask your employees to think about the issues that are most often brought up to them, so you can make a note of what you need to address.
