5 Strategies to Help Improve Your Customer Service Standards

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Happy customers are integral to any business. In fact, they’re more important than informed purchasers. According to Harvard professor Gerald Xaltman, 95% of our buying decisions are made by our subconscious emotions, and most buyers will spend more for better customer service.  A decent custom software company can create a perfect app for your business, but a high customer satisfaction rate is not only about software.  To improve your customer service standards, follow these 5 bulletproof strategies.

1. Encourage Customer Feedback

If you don’t know what your customers want, you’ll have a difficult time making them happy.

Although receiving feedback can be intimidating, it’s better to know what’s wrong than to take shots in the dark. To get an understanding of how each agent performs, set up a customer survey at the end of each call, chatbox, or email conversation along with an incentive. Your customers will love providing feedback if they receive a small gift for their troubles.

2. Use the Right Email Management Software

A whopping 57% of customers prefer email over other digital service channels, making it the most preferred way to speak with your agents. At the same time, your buyers have higher expectations for customer service today than they did even a year ago, so you must keep turnaround times low even when you’re handling a large volume of emails.

Email management software can help improve your customer service standards greatly because it allows for accountability, better inbox management, and automated solutions. Plus, you can hand out customer satisfaction surveys with greater ease!

3. Hire or Train the Right Customer Service Professionals

The best customer service agents are appropriately trained and have a personality suited for the role. Your workforce must include people who have the following qualities and skills:

• Patience: Your customers may have difficulty explaining why they’re confused, angry, or annoyed with a product or service. A great agent can ask the right questions and get to the bottom of why there’s a problem without getting angry themselves.
• Communication Skills: All customer service agents should speak confidently, directly, and try their best to ensure every customer is satisfied before hanging up.
• Empathy: The people you hire need to be empathic with the customers’ situation. That doesn’t mean they have to endure abuse, but their communication skills need to accompany kind words, sincere thoughts, and an active go-getter mindset.
• Product Knowledge: While your agents don’t have to know every solution to every problem, they do need to have complete knowledge of what you’re selling.

4. Offer a Customer Loyalty Program

New customer relationships can be strengthened by offering a loyalty program. Even something as simple as a percentage discount for cumulative spending can persuade customers to give you another try or spend more than they intended.

Loyalty cards are a favorite for many establishments because your customer will instantly understand how many more purchases they need to make until they earn a free item.

5. Use Customer Care Incentives to Increase Sales

It’s less expensive to keep your existing clients, so it’s worth taking a few steps that keep them satisfied with the service they receive. Your customers already have a degree of trust in you, and they likely want to buy from you again. Just try not to come off as too salesy while using the following techniques, or your relationship with them could turn sour.

1. Answering FAQs on your social media or website
2. Offering a complimentary customer service hotline
3. Providing free products or services that extend the shelflife of their purchases
4. Offering discounts, coupons, or incentives to loyal customers
5. Calling customers after they make a purchase to ensure they’re happy

Satisfied customers will contribute to your business in the long term, so try and focus on how you can build a lasting relationship that doesn’t focus on a quick profit. If you start to harass your customers, your review scores will suffer right along with their loyalty.

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In the modern Digital Age, advances in technology and communication, combined with the explosive growth in data information, have given rise to a more empowered global customer. Recent economic and political events highlight the need for organizations to understand how consumers view the world and the most important attributes for their purchasing decisions.

Thus, increasingly more organizations are seeking to invest and focus on Customer-centric Design. A clear understanding of customer needs and behaviors across the organization will help drive profitable growth strategies and provide the confidence to invest in opportunities at a time when staying within budget can be extremely difficult.

Learn about our Customer-Centric Design (CCD) Best Practice Frameworks here.