Techniques for Customer Service

Make the best product in the world. But if your customer service is unhelpful or unreliable, people will hear about it and you will lose your customers. That’s one of the big reasons why investing in customer service training is important for your long term business success. 

But what does it mean to actually provide great customer service and how can we make sure that that service is a great experience and in line with your company’s vision. We’ve identified several ways to put your customer service at the front of your mission. 

What is customer service? 

Great customer service means that you need to follow the best practices in valuing customers time having a great attitude and providing knowledgeable and resourceful products. But you may need to take things a step further. And it is all about expectations. 

Why is it important to provide a quality customer service? 

Well, customers today expect high quality customer service wherever they go and they’ll pay a lot more for providing proactive customer service is one of the best and inexpensive ways to reduce loss of clients and increases word of mouth referrals and ultimately increases our business’s bottom line. 

The interactions we have between our customer service frontline representatives and customers change the image of our overall brand.  The customer service and support that we offer is the initial encounter the client or prospect sees and has with our company as first impressions important it’s crucial to make sure that this is positive. 

According to a report by Oracle 86% of clients quit because the business itself has a bad experience. It is estimated that on average businesses in the USA lose more $62 billion dollars due to poor customer service.  The same percentage (the 86% of respondents) claim they’re more willing to pay money for a company that provides good support. This is approximately 7  out of 10 people, therefore great customer service is a great revenue generator. 

• Know your stuff.  

You’ve probably heard before that knowledge means power. The better your support team understands your product, the better they’re out helping others use it. It’s important as a customer service agent to troubleshoot for customers understand how the product actually works and how it can solve the customer’s pain points.  Ideally, you would want to believe in your product because again selling is a great way to have your clients being persuaded, and if you believe in your products, you will be more able to influence and sell these products.  It also helps your troubleshoot team to solve anything, that’s not working right. 

• Quick connect. 

Make sure you connect your customers quickly to other support representatives make sure they’re not sitting on hold for too long. 

If you do have to keep people on hold, Check back with them within 15 seconds.  Make sure that you’re not just having a sales pitch or an advertisement improve on your customers connections with your business, understand their needs, and find ways not to just mark it to them, but to solve issues. See if your customers looking for anything special. 

• Actively listen, summarise and repeat back to your customer. 

Listening closely to your customers problem isn’t important to find out how you can solve that issue.  If you can listen to your customer and then summarise and repeat the customer’s problem back to them and then shows the customer feels their issues understood.  It also helps the customer realise that you’re providing a solution.  The ability to adequately communicate what you’re doing at that time, can help people calm their nerves and become more informed and clear about the next steps they need to take for their issue to be solved. 

• Empathy techniques.

When it comes to customer service, there’s no better technique than showing empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand or even feel what another person is experiencing. 

When it comes to customer service showing this emotion and showing this experience with the customer can help build that relationship and connect you.  Jumping straight into the problem can make us appear unsympathetic.

Here are some tips on improving your own empathy :

Empathise with the customer how they feel in the moment, let them know that you understand.  Explain that you too once felt that way in the past and then tell the customer how you found the concern was actually incorrect or how you’re able to improve that situation. 

• Proactiveness

Proactiveness excellent customer service requires that you be proactive and you can sometimes solve the customer’s need before they realise what they are. 

When you can get ahead of issues, you can impress the customer.  You can also implement things to stay ahead to minimise the problems.  Create a self service knowledge base that customers can also help access as this might actually solve future issues without the need for support.

• Develop conversations. 

It is important to have clear and effective communication when it comes to speaking with your customers.  When looking at problems, It is important to have conversations and to talk to a person not a robot. Customers will want to discuss their issues and maybe develop the specifics more around the issue that they’re experiencing.  Its nice when a customer service agent can give a personal experience or size with the customer, letting them know that their choices and opinions are warranted. 

• Questioning techniques. 

It is important to be more strategic when you’re trying to problem solve with the customer. using different questioning techniques will help you not only probe but identify specific information. They can help you open up a conversation or they can help you close that conversation.  They can also help you motivate people using suggestive questions such as why don’t we. Or “why don’t I have a look for you?”  Questioning techniques are skills that everyone can learn and can help you guide a conversation. It’s very important for influence. A definite recommendation to learn more. 

• Take ownership or become accountable.

Customers become frustrated when no one is accountable or that passed the buck. It’s important not to blame other companies or other people within your organisation, take ownership and become accountable This will relieve the frustration that a customer may feel when trying to pass the issue to do your best to try and remedy the situation.  If you do have to transfer or escalate to the next level, Make sure that you do it professionally and also allow the customer to realise that the reason for escalation is greater authority in the process. 

• Be polite and show respect. 

This is usually something that many people think is a common skill.  Many people think they do this automatically. However, in today’s world, it is often the case that you don’t see people being polite or showing respect. Gratitude is something that helps customers understand that they’ve made a good choice in purchasing from your business.  If you give gratitude, and you say thank you to the customer, you’re rewarding them for their purchase. starting a conversation with a positive energy can help you beat any negativity surrounding anything you speak about. Encourage your agents to start with a warm greeting and smile even when they are dealing with a problem.  It may sound silly but smile can help people relax their own tone, and give the right impression. 

• Keep your word. 

Make sure that you follow through if you say you’re going to do something, if you promise a customer to get in contact with them within 24 hours. Make sure you do so. Deliver on anything that you promise. This is a basic of customer service excellence.  If a customer’s delivery goes wrong, ring them up and contact them let them know that there’s been a delay. Don’t wait for the customer to call you. Increase your customer loyalty by communicating with them effectively and letting them in on the loop. 

So there you have it. 10 major points to increase your customer service levels. These techniques above are quite simple, free to do and don’t take much training or effort. Help your employees realise the benefits of these small adjustments in their customer service support. You will improve your service levels and increase your ability to have loyal customers for many years to come.