How to Improve Your Company's Customer Service
Whilst it takes time and consistent effort to build a reputation for providing excellent customer service, it can take a minute to break. Failure to do what you promise, rudeness and ignorance are the main causes of why your customers will leave your business for a competitor. You don't just need customers for your business to thrive, you need your customers to love you.
Here at Fortifi, we recognise the challenges associated with providing exceptional company wide customer service, so our team of experts have compiled the following solutions to help you delight your customers.
Provide round the clock support
Your customers must be able to contact your business at any time and for small businesses this can be tricky. Without 24 hour call centres, how can you achieve round the clock support that your clients expect? Luckily for you, customer support softwares provide you with the ability to remain in communication with your clients at all times.
Create autoresponders to automate welcome and thank you messages when your customers show interest in your product or service, giving you time to follow up when you return to the office the next day.
For example, you set up an autoresponder to welcome new customers and this is delivered to everyone who signs up for your product. You may then want to send a follow up a few days later with relevant content on what they have purchased... and so on.
These autoresponders will continue working even when you are not, so you can continue to welcome and establish relationships.
Set service level agreements (SLA's)
When customers send in an email to your business, they expect a reply within a certain amount of time. You can set SLA policies within your business to ensure your support staff communicate with your customers efficiently, in turn boosting productivity within your teams. These can be based on a variety of different rules such as the type of enquiry (finance and technical support), or by customer subscription package e.g. those on a premium support package.
Personalise your customer experience
A great customer experience can build customer loyalty and retention. Latest marketing automation techniques add both valued speed and efficiency across your entire communications strategy.
The first step is to recognise what your customer wants. Some customers can be difficult and others are a breeze, so training your sales and support team to mould their customer service around your customers' requirements will go a long way to increasing satisfaction. Knowing their personal preferences, previous purchases and previous communications with other members of your team will help increase this personal service.
Automation does not necessarily mean that you lose that personal touch that your customers crave so much. Email marketing in most businesses is the primary communication tool that staff utilise to promote their product or service. To avoid getting lost in the clutter of your customer's overloaded inbox, marketing teams need to balance highly engaging campaigns with great customer experiences. Simple tasks such as using the customer's name instead of 'dear sir/madam', will win you instant brownie points. This alone, however, will not be enough to make you stand out in a crowded inbox and you will need to provide personalisation on segmented properties such as gender, age group, subscription type, purchase history and interactions with your previous email campaigns as just a few.
In this day and age, email personalisation is no longer an option.
Ask for feedback
So you have implemented all of the above recommendations into your customer service strategy and you have a clear goal of increasing your customer satisfaction. But how can you be sure that your efforts are bringing in your desired results?
Asking for customer feedback is the cheapest and most powerful management tool that you can use to boost your customer satisfaction levels. Their opinion is a resource for adjusting your current actions to their needs. This information can be collected in the form of surveys that you send directly to your customers, or you can gather and find reviews that are posted online. Collecting feedback shows that you value your customers opinions and this resonates well as you are involving them in the shaping of your business, creating a stronger relationship between the both of you.
When you provide exceptional customer service it often comes at a surprise to your client and will help you raise loyal customers who are willing to refer you to friends, family and colleagues.
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If you like this post and want to see more exciting content from us, follow us on Twitter @fortificloud, like us on Facebook @fortifcloud or follow us on LinkedIn @Fortifi.
About Us:
Fortifi gives you the power to manage all elements of your business, in an all-inclusive solution for startups and mature business alike.
Streamline your business like never before and take unprecedented control over your sales, marketing, billing and support, allowing you more time to focus on the more important things. Build stronger relationships, create better customer experiences and work together as one team with Fortifi.
Getting up to speed on your customers is just a click away.
Here at Fortifi, we recognise the challenges associated with providing exceptional company wide customer service, so our team of experts have compiled the following solutions to help you delight your customers.
Provide round the clock support
Your customers must be able to contact your business at any time and for small businesses this can be tricky. Without 24 hour call centres, how can you achieve round the clock support that your clients expect? Luckily for you, customer support softwares provide you with the ability to remain in communication with your clients at all times.
Create autoresponders to automate welcome and thank you messages when your customers show interest in your product or service, giving you time to follow up when you return to the office the next day.
For example, you set up an autoresponder to welcome new customers and this is delivered to everyone who signs up for your product. You may then want to send a follow up a few days later with relevant content on what they have purchased... and so on.
These autoresponders will continue working even when you are not, so you can continue to welcome and establish relationships.
Set service level agreements (SLA's)
When customers send in an email to your business, they expect a reply within a certain amount of time. You can set SLA policies within your business to ensure your support staff communicate with your customers efficiently, in turn boosting productivity within your teams. These can be based on a variety of different rules such as the type of enquiry (finance and technical support), or by customer subscription package e.g. those on a premium support package.Personalise your customer experience
A great customer experience can build customer loyalty and retention. Latest marketing automation techniques add both valued speed and efficiency across your entire communications strategy.
The first step is to recognise what your customer wants. Some customers can be difficult and others are a breeze, so training your sales and support team to mould their customer service around your customers' requirements will go a long way to increasing satisfaction. Knowing their personal preferences, previous purchases and previous communications with other members of your team will help increase this personal service.
Automation does not necessarily mean that you lose that personal touch that your customers crave so much. Email marketing in most businesses is the primary communication tool that staff utilise to promote their product or service. To avoid getting lost in the clutter of your customer's overloaded inbox, marketing teams need to balance highly engaging campaigns with great customer experiences. Simple tasks such as using the customer's name instead of 'dear sir/madam', will win you instant brownie points. This alone, however, will not be enough to make you stand out in a crowded inbox and you will need to provide personalisation on segmented properties such as gender, age group, subscription type, purchase history and interactions with your previous email campaigns as just a few.
In this day and age, email personalisation is no longer an option.
Ask for feedback
So you have implemented all of the above recommendations into your customer service strategy and you have a clear goal of increasing your customer satisfaction. But how can you be sure that your efforts are bringing in your desired results?
Asking for customer feedback is the cheapest and most powerful management tool that you can use to boost your customer satisfaction levels. Their opinion is a resource for adjusting your current actions to their needs. This information can be collected in the form of surveys that you send directly to your customers, or you can gather and find reviews that are posted online. Collecting feedback shows that you value your customers opinions and this resonates well as you are involving them in the shaping of your business, creating a stronger relationship between the both of you.
When you provide exceptional customer service it often comes at a surprise to your client and will help you raise loyal customers who are willing to refer you to friends, family and colleagues.
--
If you like this post and want to see more exciting content from us, follow us on Twitter @fortificloud, like us on Facebook @fortifcloud or follow us on LinkedIn @Fortifi.
About Us:
Fortifi gives you the power to manage all elements of your business, in an all-inclusive solution for startups and mature business alike.
Streamline your business like never before and take unprecedented control over your sales, marketing, billing and support, allowing you more time to focus on the more important things. Build stronger relationships, create better customer experiences and work together as one team with Fortifi.
Getting up to speed on your customers is just a click away.
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