10 Tips for Improving Your Customer Service
Virtually everyone who has a business, online or physical, deals with customers every day, but have you ever stopped to think about the effectiveness of your customer service?
Take a break and think: What are the most important things you can do in customer support that will really affect your profitability and keep your entire team healthy and productive?
Customer Service: 10 Key Techniques for Attracting and Retaining Consumers
Believe it or not, Brazil, a country known for its friendly, cheerful people, was second to last in a ranking on customer service that started with a smile.
A survey by Swedish company Better Business World Wide, entitled “Smiling Report“, has revealed alarming data on the quality of customer service in Brazil.
With 1.7 million evaluations made in 69 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America, it was found that the Brazilian seller is one of the least friendly in the world,behind only Japan.
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But let’s face it, not only Brazil has this problem. It’s quite common to see bad mood people behind counters.
To change that, you need to consider the cumulative experience your customers have when they visit your store or website, what they think and feel, and what you can do to make this experience the best it can be.
Check out 10 simple to implement guidelines that can take your customer service to the next level.
1. Automate processes
Customer service providers know one thing: questions are constantly being repeated.
Most of the time, your customers come to you with a problem or question you’ve heard before and will probably hear again .. and again … and again …
Let’s say your support team spends four hours a week on repetitive tasks (probably more, but we don’t want to scare anyone).
By spending a few hours setting up automation in the support process and eliminating these tasks, you can save each person on your team more than 200 hours a year.
For a team of three agents, this is more than an extra 600 hours a year. That’s 600 hours your support team can spend on specific cases, improving and building meaningful relationships with customers.
The top three automations that can save you time, money and your sanity are:
- FAQ
- Sending Automated Responses to Common Questions
- Product / Service Use Guide
Setting up these three things can be hard work, but once done, they can eliminate many repetitive tasks in your support process.
However, when it comes to automation, there is something very important to keep in mind: In customer service, you should only automate processes, not relationships.
Relationships are a deeply human thing, and trying to automate this part of your customer service can easily cause people to lose interest in your business.
Automate possible processes and let your team spend valuable time building a better relationship with your customers.
2. Personalization is everything
A personalized service aims to make your customer feel as if he is doing business with a real human being, not a faceless company.
Why is it important?
Because when your customers feel they are being listened to and considered, they become better customers, which is a win for both sides.
There are many ways to make customer service more personal, such as:
- Using names (theirs and yours);
- Send personalized “thank you” gestures;
- Know the client record with your company.
Offering “personal service” is an important and valuable concept that can help you increase retention and grow your business.
Delivering personalized support is not very difficult and can mean very positive results for your company.
– 5 Steps to Building a Loyalty Customer Program
3. Keep an eye on ROI and Support Metrics
There are two things you should always be paying attention to: your support metrics and the actual ROI of your support processes.
Metrics help you get a clear picture of how you’re really doing and make sure you have all the information you need to react quickly if things start to go wrong.
It’s also very important to measure return on investment (ROI) in support for two main reasons:
- Positive customer experience drives sales, so if you figure out how you can improve it, your sales are likely to increase.
- Customer service is often overlooked and overwhelmed, and proving the value in investing in it can change that.
It can be challenging to establish strict support service metrics for the first time. However, what is measured improves.
– Learn how to use NPS to evaluate your online course performance
4. Use positive language
Positive language is a great way to avoid accidental conflicts generated by miscommunication. While the change is subtle, the effects are drastic.
Let’s say the launch of the new module of your online course will be delayed by one month and you need to pass this information on to students who have already purchased the course. Consider the following answers:
- Negative language: “The new module will not be released this month. There is no precise date for its release, I will give you more information soon.”
- Positive language: “The new module will be available soon. I am working hard to deliver the best material possible. Wait for something very good to come! ”.
– To do list to create online courses
Redirecting communication from negative to positive places, focus the convrsation on the solution.
When the result is the star of the conversation, it reduces the chances of customers getting upset.
– How to improve communication with students
5. Proactivity is crucial
The time when offering a decent price was enough to differentiate your business from the competition it’s definitely gone.
Now, in addition to a great product at an affordable price, the consumer also demands excellent customer service.
A big part of this excellence is putting out fires before they even start. Smart companies are ahead of problems by providing customer service proactive, rather than reactive.
A proactive support service anticipates the needs of its customers and maintains regular communication with them to identify any emerging issues.
A vital component of proactive customer service is the willingness to ask for feedback; not only when you are solving a problem, but also when positive interactions occur.
6. Know how to end a conversation
Every time you are finishing a call, think of the following: You are not closing a sale, you are ending the conversation with a customer.
Leaving an issue unresolved creates unnecessary problems.
Surveys show that only 4% of dissatisfied customers will speak up. That is, not everyone will communicate what is bothering them and it happens often because you have not made it clear that you care.
Your willingness to close a conversation correctly shows the customer three important things:
- You worry about getting it right.
- You are willing to continue until you get it right.
- You want the customer to feel satisfied.
“Is there anything else I can do for you today? I’m happy to help! “Always look for small opportunities like this.
Train your team so that everyone always strives to get to the point where the customer says, “Yes, that’s ok!”.
7. Ask for feedback
When it comes to feedback, we’re not talking about bug reports, which is nothing more than a customer saying “this product or service I’m paying for isn’t working.”
This is not feedback, it’s an emergency that needs to be fixed.
Here we are talking about the kind of feedback that will help you develop your product to its fullest, we’re talking about feature requests.
If you create online courses, you’ve probably been through this, like some students asking for extra material, a video lesson, things like that. God knows that here at Coursify.me our support team gets daily the most diverse requirements.
In general, a feature request is when a client contacts you asking to create a new feature that he would very much like to use.
Of course it’s not always possible to fulfill all requests, some can be really mind-boggling, but make a list of what’s feasible to do and respond to your customers by thanking them for the suggestion, explaining that it will be considered by the development team, and once you have more solid position, you will get in touch.
If you start looking at trends in these requests, you can make your product or service exactly what your customers want.
– How to get more Reviews to sell Online Courses
8. Turn mistakes into opportunities
Delivering good customer service does not mean that you will be able to eliminate all errors.
Unforeseen failures will still happen, but you can take the opportunity created by a mistake to improve the customer relationship.
Disney, known for its excellent customer support, has a great approach to service recovery.
It’s a five-step process, easily remembered with the acronym HEARD:
- Hear
- Empathize
- Apologize
- Resolve
- Diagnose
Following all these steps will help you turn a mistake into a new opportunity to win a client.
It’s easy to let angry consumers out the door and sometimes they’ll leave anyway, no matter what you do to try to keep them.
But successful companies know that recovery services is one of the most important elements in customer retention.
9. Put your efforts on the channels that work for you
Companies that offer excellent customer service do so on the channels where their customers are.
If your audience is a regular email user, you’ll need to provide great email support to keep them happy.
– How to Use MailChimp to Create Email Campaigns
If they are more active on Twitter, you will need to be accessible there.
The same goes for all channels, whether social or personal, such as email and phone.
There are probably more ways to communicate and relate to the consumer than you think. What you need to do is find out which channels work for your audience.
10. “Fire” bad customers
The overwhelming majority of customers are polite and have genuine questions, or point out problems that you really need to solve.
These customers drive the work and when they succeed with your product or service, you feel the victory is yours too.
But among them there are always some rotten apples.
Those who constantly come up with huge and completely unreasonable requests, abuse your staff, ask for discounts every five seconds, and try to blackmail you with negative reviews.
These customers are eroding your team, costing time and money, ruining your reputation and disrupting the satisfaction of your good buyers.
There is a way to deal with these people: End the call, you don’t have to put up with it.
Politely inform that you do not have the solution they are looking for, on the terms they are looking for and therefore can no longer help them.
This will give you peace and time to focus on who really deserves attention and can positively impact your business.
Engaging customers and helping them make the most of your product will give them a reason to come back and tell others why they love your business.
So, focus on customer service, build rapport with your potential leads and who is already your student, and slowly see your online school grow and solidify.
Complete eLearning platform, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for anyone who wants to create, sell and advertise courses on the internet without having to invest to start their own business.
Serving businesses and professionals in more than 60 countries, Coursify.me is a dynamic and customizable Learning Management System (LMS).
– Learning Management System: What is it?
Coursify.me offers three plan options for you to decide which best suits your needs and the good news is that the Beginner Plan is free!
To learn more, visit our website, test the platform and understand why we are the best choice for your online course.
