Delivering good customer service is one of the most important parts of running a business. Whether your business is in the hospitality industry or the financial industry, it is so crucial that you continue to provide excellent customer service to everyone who uses your business. Good customer service is the key to building a loyal customer base, so if you want your business to succeed, you must ensure you are delivering the best customer service possible.
In this article, we will go over some top tips that can help you improve customer service within your business. If you have found that customer feedback has not been positive lately, or you simply want to improve on your already good customer service, then this article could be useful for you and your business. Follow along to find out our top customer service tips.
Identify Problem Areas
Before you can start making improvements to your customer service, you first need to identify what the problem areas are. There is no way you can make changes without first knowing what your problems are, so it would be beneficial to spend some time going through customer feedback and reviews and seeing if there are any common problem areas. It could be that people think your website is too slow or it could be that your staff are not providing adequate help to customers.
Reviewing customer feedback is a great way of understanding which areas in your business need the most improvement. While there may be a few reviews from customers who were simply just having a bad day, it is still important that you take all reviews seriously. Identifying the problem areas within your business should be something that all of your staff participate in, as everyone is responsible for delivering good customer service. Once you have a full idea of which areas your business needs to improve on, you can then start thinking about what things you can do to eliminate those issues. If you find that there are quite a few problem areas, then perhaps start by improving a couple of issues, before moving onto the rest.
Utilise Modern Technology
One way that you can improve customer service within your business is by utilising modern technology. Within any modern business, technology is used to improve productivity and speed up everyday tasks, but it can also be used to improve how you deliver customer service. For example, when a customer is navigating your website and looking for support, you should have an option where they can speak directly to a staff member via instant messaging. Trying to have a conversation with customers via email is not always effective as it can take a while for the emails to be sent back at forth. Additionally, emails can sometimes be a little too formal, so it would be beneficial if you had a more casual messaging service, so that customers and staff members can have a more informal back and forth conversation.
Having a live chat option just means that customers are able to communicate with a business quickly and efficiently, which ultimately means that their issue will be resolved sooner. If you don’t already have a live chat integrated into your website, then this is something that could massively improve your customer service. However, if you do already have a live chat and you are still experiencing customer service issues, then perhaps you need to switch to a different live chat software or alter the way your staff deliver their customer service.
Consider Getting Outside Support
Getting outside support is another thing you can do to improve customer service within your business. If your business has been operating in the same way for a long time, it can often be difficult to fully recognise where you are going wrong. Following the same structure can be limiting to a business, and it also makes it tricky to switch to a new type of structure. This is why it can be beneficial to get some support from someone outside of your business, as they can look at your business with a fresh perspective, meaning they can identify issues you may not even be aware of.
1ovmany is a company that works with businesses to improve business strategy and change the way business deliver their services. They focus on OKR consultancy, which can help businesses achieve the objectives and key results that are set out. It could be beneficial for your business to get support from a company like 1ovmany as they have expertise in business transformation and reaching organisational roles. An outside company will be able to help you identify which areas of your business need the most improvement, and they will work with you to ensure those areas are improved and that your business goals are met.
Offer Regular Staff Training
Another great way of improving the customer service within your business is by training your staff more regularly. Ultimately, your staff are the ones who are delivering the customer service, so it is important that they are trained and no what they are doing. Of course, your staff would have been trained when they first started working for your business, but over time people can forget the training they received, which can lead to a slip in standards. Therefore, it would be beneficial if you offered staff training on a more regular basis, so that your staff can get a refresher course on how to deliver excellent customer service.
Before each staff training session, you could send out a message to all of your staff and ask them which aspects they feel they need training on. This is a good idea as it will mean that your training session will deliver the training your staff actually need, instead of just relaying information they already know. Training sessions should be a group effort for the whole team, so make sure you encourage everyone to get involved. Furthermore, you should make sure that the training sessions are fun! Instead of just getting your staff to watch a long presentation, you should ensure that the training sessions are practical, as this will help your staff engage more with the session.
Ask For Customer Feedback (And Actually Listen!)
Ultimately, one of the best ways to improve customer service in your business is to ask and listen to customer feedback. It is all very well asking staff members where they think they need to improve, but you should also be taking into account the opinions of your customers. After all, customers are the ones who are on the receiving end of your business, so they are the ones who will know where you need to improve. It would be beneficial if you asked for customer feedback every time a customer has used your services, as this will mean you can get feedback instantly.
There is no point in sending out an email asking for feedback days after they have used your business, as there’s a chance, they may not remember whether the service was good or bad. Instead, you should have an automated system that asks the customers for feedback as soon as they are finished talking to a member of staff. This will allow you to instantly identify if there are any problem areas, which means you can start resolving those issues straight away. Furthermore, asking for feedback and actually listening will show customers that you value their opinions, which can be great for retaining a loyal customer base.
