52% of consumers say they have made an additional purchase from a company after a positive customer service experience. You know Customer Service Strategies are essential, but do you know what makes them remarkable?
That’s what I want to tell you here. First of all, a good customer service strategy implies having a satisfied client base. For that, you need to create a good relationship.
And what defines these relationships? It can be how you communicate, the information you make available on your pages, the means of payment, you offer, and more. Every interaction you have with a customer classifies as part of the customer service you offer.
It’s clear that there’s a big connection with customer experience, right? Moreover, I’ll still talk in more detail about:
- what is customer service
- what defines good customer service
- how offering good customer service will make your business thrive
- what does it take to create a good customer service strategy
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Here’s the definition of Customer Service
When we talk about customer service, we’re talking about the relationship between a brand and its consumers. Generally, people consider mostly communication as the most important factor, but services include much more.
That is, including the buying experience, how easy is it to go from the product page to the checkout cart, how fast the shipping is, the variety of payment options, etc.
The title “customer service” is pretty self-explanatory, but it’s still good to make it as clear as possible in order to create a better customer service strategy for your company.
After all, when you provide good customer service, you provide a good experience, thus you create a happy customer. That’s the ultimate goal for any business!
These are the characteristics that will establish good Customer Service Strategies
Provide easy communication channels
Overall, email and telephone were, and still are, two very popular ways for the customer to reach the company. But, recently, Live Chat is becoming the new favorite channel of consumers. That’s because it’s easy to use and it’s fast service, a combination everyone loves.
Companies that offer a Live Chat service are more likely to have comeback customers, so what are you waiting for? Go and install this feature on your eCommerce now!
Give fast responses
On the same note, and one of the reasons for the Live Chat success is that customers want to have their problems dealt with in real-time. I’ll paint a picture for you because the similarity is big:
You go in-store to ask an attendant about a discount that wasn’t consummated on your purchase and when you get there there’s a huge line! Are you happy to have to face that? Most likely not, right? Nobody is thrilled when that happens, people don’t want to wait to have their problems solved. They want to arrive, ask, get answers, and go home.
So, when customers go online, it’s the same feeling. If people don’t like to wait in person, why would they like it online? It just makes sense that you provide instant communication for your customers.
Offer high-quality service that actually solves a problem
Still on that matter, and adding in some praiseworthy information: it’s worth nothing to give fast responses and not resolve the customer’s problems. Did you know most people would rather wait a couple of minutes to have their questions answered than to have quick, shallow answers?
It’s okay if you say “just a minute, I’ll check that information” and take that minute to actually do something that will help the customer. Way better than giving a 7-second response saying that you can’t do anything about that problem, or giving a robotic answer followed by a “was that helpful?” question.
That being said, our next topic is highly related to this subject:
Work on personalization
There are a few things that make customers angry. For example: being thrown from agent to agent trying to solve a problem, taking too long to solve a problem, and being treated like just another person.
The truth is people want to feel close to the brand they buy from. So, if you put an effort into making communication (and the entire experience) more personalized, results will pay off. Of course, there must be a protocol or model answers to be followed, but giving that personal touch when sending these messages to the customers is crucial.
Know about the product
There are three main teams inside a company that are directly related to the customer: support, sales, and marketing. For that reason, all of them should know every little thing about the company’s product.
Let me explain each one a little bit better:
- The support team needs to be able to answers questions about problems happening with the product, as well as show benefits and use cases when required
- The marketing team needs to know the product to show the audience appealingly what they will be acquiring
- And the sales team needs to know the product to sell it and close more deals.
Do you see the importance of everyone knowing the company’s product or service in detail? Great! Let’s go to the next topic:
Stay positive & use creativity
In general, customers respond to the attendant’s tone of voice and feeling surpassed in the conversation. So if you keep a positive attitude even when a person starts a conversation angry or upset, it’s likely that things will turn out okay in the end.
Besides, attitude is highly related to the use of creativity. It’s not only the marketing sector that needs to use this trait to improve their work, but this is also a skill required for support and sales too.
This way, when you go out of your way to solve a problem for your consumer, they will reward you with loyalty and commitment.
Allow self-solving problems
What does “self-solving problems“mean? Well, many customers prefer and try to look for the answer to their problems on their own before contacting an agent. Because of this, you should make it easy for customers to do that whenever possible.
FAQs, most asked questions, mini-tutorials, and so on, all of these will help your customer to deal with their issues. So, allow them to find information within a few clicks and they will be more satisfied with your service.
Listen to the consumer
When you pay attention to what the customer is saying you will be able to know them thoroughly and start to anticipate their needs. It’s quite common that a person comes with a specific question, but they really want to know something entirely different.
So it’s essential to listen to the consumer and find the best way to be proactively helpful. That means, to help them before they even know they need help. Whether that is by sending a newsletter, a discount, or a small gift.
Deliver as promised
This is definitely of the top 3 most important rules of customer service strategy: deliver as promised. The bottom line is you can’t say you do or have something and then let down your public because that wasn’t true.
Have you ever gone to a restaurant, saw the perfect plate on the menu, and when you asked for it the waiter said they ran out of an ingredient and weren’t producing that dish for the moment? That’s a huge disappointment and I’m sure you’d think twice before going back to that restaurant again.
It’s because of these not-so-small details that are essential, of ultimate importance, that you deliver what you promise.
How offering good customer service makes an impact on your business
Loyal customers, longer lifetime value, increase in conversions, lower acquisition costs…is this enough for you, or do you still want more benefits for your company? I’m just naming some of the main advantages of improving your customer service strategy because let me tell you, THERE IS more to it.
For instance, people are always posting on social media about their likes and dislikes, and it’s easy to be noticed for either good or bad customer service. New customers will take into account what other people are saying about your brand, especially if they’re close friends, family, or influencers.
I’d also like to mention here that a bad experience is hard to come back from. If a customer gets poor service, he or she will talk about it and people will avoid buying from your brand. This way, the efforts you make to acquire new customers will most likely increase because of it.
Additionally, when you provide good customer service, you may be getting a great opportunity to increase your prices a little bit. In fact, most customers would rather pay more for better service, than to have lower prices and no help at all from the brand when they face a problem with the product.
Now, I could keep going and talk even more about the impacts on your business, but I’d still like to tell you more about what it takes to deliver the best customer service. So, carry on:
Everything you need to deliver great customer service
To know how to create an efficient customer service strategy, you need to first know what this is and what makes customer service stand out as excellence. So far, we have already got that covered for you so far. Then, you need to understand what attributes will help you provide in this matter.
For starters, you need to work with Customer Data, can’t get away from that these days. And why do you need it? To know who is your consumer. That’s another factor that you need to deliver the best customer service in the market.
When you know who you’re talking and selling to, it becomes easier to create content, offers, and promotions that will genuinely impact the customers.
One thing that will help you gather and organize customer data is the Customer Data Platform, it’s the most complete tool there is out there for this purpose. It gathers, selects, and stores all sorts of data. Even more, it can help you create a persona profile, segmentation groups, and so much more.
Finally, you need to hire a good Live Chat platform. As mentioned earlier, having this type of close and instant communication with the customer will give you lots of positive reviews. That way, you can hire the best Live Chat service around because there is no doubt it will give you a great return on investment.
Where to get the best tool, you ask?
Arena has thousands of clients all around the world that use our solutions, including companies like Fox Sports, Microsoft, and Sony Music.
We are offering a FREE TRIAL PERIOD for our Live Chat. Did I get your attention? Well, then start using our tool and see for yourself your new results!
