Tips for Improving Customer Service and Retaining Customers

Customer service is all about putting customers first. Their needs come first and your needs come second. If a customer expects a response from you in 24 hours, and you respond in 48 hours, you’re putting your needs first. Customers want consistency and dependability. If you say you will respond within 24 hours and you do it, they will turn to you with confidence the next time they need a response within 24 hours.

Customers like to feel special. Feeling special is a wonderful feeling you can give your customers by over-delivering in every area. Exceed their expectations! Imagine sending an e-mail with a question to a retailer and expecting a response the next day, only to receive one with half an hour. Would you feel special?

Another way to make customers feel special is to stay in touch with them. With your mailing list on computer, this is easy. You can send online holiday and even birthday greetings without the expense of supplies and postage. You can include helpful advice on various topics or offer something for free that they would appreciate. If you do, make sure the quality of the product is at least equal to the quality of your products, including the presentation or packaging. You always want to appear to be putting their needs ahead of yours.

Follow-up service after the sale should be just as good as or better than the service provided before the sale. Have you received excellent service before a sale then been put on hold for an hour when there was a problem with your purchase? Or got a customer service representative that obviously wanted to get you off the line as soon as possible? How did this make you feel about doing further business with the company? What if they had responded to your problem with the same excellent service they had given you in selling you the product? Would it make you want to be a loyal customer?

Honesty is a major component of a successful business. Few things are more infuriating than to invest in a product only to find out that you didn’t get what was promised. You should always project honesty about the quality, use, and benefits of your products. If enough customers get angry about false promises, they can put a company out of business. Honesty can be viewed as a major component in good customer service that builds trust and consequent repeat business.

Customer service personnel should be well trained. Having well-trained sales and marketing employees is only half the job. Sales people get customers, but customer service representatives keep customers. Consumers dislike a company that has well-trained sales people and poorly trained or untrained customer service representatives. Bad publicity travels fast and reverses marketing efforts. You should spend as much time training your customer service representatives as you do your sales team.

The quality of your customer service should be at least as good as that of your competition or you won't keep customers long term. Reputable companies develop the trust of consumers and have the least trouble selling their products and services. The marketplace admires how they operate and treat their customers. One of the tenets of a reputable company is its commitment to providing excellent customer service. When a company has great customer service even the most difficult customer will leave feeling better.

Customer service should be of a consistent quality. You can walk into any McDonalds in the world and know what you will get. The food is prepared everywhere the same way. What if you walked into a McDonalds and got well-prepared french fries one day and badly prepared french fries the next day? The lack of consistency would discourage you from coming back. Consumers seek the same consistency from the companies they do business with that franchisees are known for providing.

What about customers who lie? Even when you think a customer is lying, it’s wise to give him the benefit of the doubt. Only a very few customers will actually take advantage of you. Procter and Gamble once received a complaint about a bad diaper, and the company sent her several cartons of diapers in response. The company sure got good word-of-mouth advertising by that action instead of bad publicity. Any amends made to customers can be considered a cost of doing business.

If you create, project, and maintain a positive image of your company, the competition will have to work hard to steal your regular and prospective customers. Developing brands work on projecting images. Sony and Lexus, for example, both project the image of quality products and superior customer care. If two products or services are of equal quality and one sells better than another, especially at a higher price, image is the reason.

These tips will help improve any company that applies them. By improving customer service, they will improve the retention rate.



 

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