Delight Your Customers And Boost Your Business!
Business success is not only about the product that you offer. It is also about how you treat those that interact and buy from you, your customers, potential or otherwise.
Indeed, things are most definitely moving towards a more customer-focused experience in all areas of business. Although, none so directly impact the customer as customer service. To that end, customer service needs to be a priority of every business, small or large. That means making sure that you go above and beyond what is expected and do all you can to delight your customers is vital. The good news is you can find out all about how to do this below.
Delight your customers, and boost your image
Customers are human beings, and as such, they make mistakes. However, it is vital that when it comes to mistakes, instead of setting your business up in conflict with the customer, you use them as an opportunity to show how valued they are, and further delight them with brilliant customer service.
What that means is going above and beyond to solve the customer’s problem and make sure they received an entirely satisfactory solution. Also, you will want to consider the impact on your business’s image that the solution you offer will have.
For example, you may receive a review on Trustpilot or another site like them where a customer details the disappointment at receiving an order that they placed wrongly. Yes, the temptation may be to point out their mistake and demonstrate the righteousness of your business in this situation.
However, it is worth remembering that other potential customers will be able to view this interaction before making their decision to shop with you. Therefore it is in your business’s interest to come up with a solution that will please your disgruntled customer and show others how you will go above and beyond for your clients. For this example, offering a free return, exchange, or even sending replacement products at no extra charge will be the best course of action.
Provide a variety of support options
In terms of customer service, you may find that different people will respond to different assistance options. Some folks will like the option of being able to help or find the answer to their queries themselves. Indeed, if they save them time or reassures them, self-help options can be a valuable tool.
The most obvious way of offering options for customers to help themselves with service is to provide an FAQ page. Of course, for it to be effective, it needs to be as detailed as possible. You will also need to complete some detailed research into what the most common issues are, and write clear guidance on how to resolve them.
In particular, providing short informational video can work wonders here. After all, it’s always so much easier to be guided in doing something when you can see someone doing it along with you.
However, others will prefer an approach with more direct connection, and in that case, you should also offer a live chat service to your customers. The benefit of this is that such services can help to provide you, customers, with the support they need, as fast as possible. Also, when using a chatbot, you get the added benefit of being able to interact with a customer, something that is a precious opportunity to provide stellar customer service and build trust.
The excellent news is offering live chat couldn’t be more simple. Indeed, you can make things infinitely easier for your business by finding the right chat software provider for your business. Fortunately, you can check out the main features of Click4Assistance live chat software provider, as well as a variety of others online. Something that means finding just the right live chat solution for your business is well within your grasp.
Get personal
Generic communications are all well and good, but they can feel a little alienating for the customer. Instead, personalising your messages and replies to those that sign up with your services or buy your products can be a very valuable tactic.
Indeed, experts suggest that personalised emails convert more often, are opened more often and have a much higher click rate than generic ones. Therefore, the great news is that as well as providing a better level of customer service in this way, you can also not boost the success of your business.
It’s pretty easy to personalise emails and other communications as well. The best way of doing this is to use the customer’s name in any full communication. If you have an automated marketing system setup, it should be able to do this for you.
Additionally, the email address that your communication comes from matters as well. For example, it is much better to make sure it looks as if it has come from a real person rather than a general business address. That is, an email address such as sue@Google.com is better than info@Google.com.
Provide a trial period
You can also improve the customer service you provide your clients by offering them a free trial of your product before you buy. This is because being able to use a product at no cost for a limited amount of time and Abel’s customers to see all the benefits that they will gain stop something that the purchase itself includes much less anxiety.
Of course, there is a right way and a wrong way to offer a free trial, especially online. Indeed it is vital to make it a smooth process from the point of view of the customer experience. What that means is to allow customers to use their social media accounts to register for trials.
It’s also wise to hold back on asking them for their card details too. The reason for this is that people are much less likely to sign up if they believe they will be charged because they forgot to cancel.
Finally, be sure to allow customers access to all of the features of your product. After all, the point is to convince them to go forward and purchase the full product, and they cannot do this without getting a real sense of what it is like.
Free shipping & returns
When it comes to customer service, free shipping and returns can be a deal-breaker. Is it true that these services will have an economic cost to your business. However, the goodwill they will also gain you over the longer-term is well worth the outlay.
Indeed experts suggest that free shipping and returns help to foster the relationship between you and your customers, and also encourages them to decide to buy online.
Ask for feedback
The experience that you provide to your customers should be one of the central pillars which you build your business around. To that end, it is vital that you collect as much feedback from your customers as possible, both positive and negative.
Use reliable platforms to collect feedback data, which you can use for improving your company. Customer feedback should always be given much consideration. This is because without consumers, your company won’t have a purpose.
Most companies will value customer feedback because it helps them improve their products and services. After buying and using a product, a customer will identify its strengths and weaknesses. Through this, a company can make adjustments where necessary and improve the product.
By receiving feedback, a company can gauge the level of customer satisfaction. It will know whether the new product was able to fulfill customer wants. Collecting feedback and making adjustments also show that you value your customers, which can help you retain and expand your market audience.
Additionally, customer feedback can act as an indirect marketing tool. Customers will post feedback on your various online platforms. This way, other people can read and know about your products which convert to more sales. It is advisable to use 1800 numbers for inbound calls as they have innovative ways that enhance customer-business connections.
Indeed while you may not want negative feedback to be displayed publicly, it is the most valuable type because it shows you precisely where you are going wrong and provides you with an opportunity to fix it.
With that in mind, it is crucial to prompt customers for feedback rather than just waiting for them to volunteer it. Also, there is an issue with using only customer feedback that has been volunteered.
It is that those responses that are more likely to leave feedback are also more likely to have an extreme experience either positively or negatively. This means that by collecting and acting only on this information, you will be missing out on vast amounts of data from those whose experience falls in between.
Use old-fashioned tactics
In today’s world, most businesses tend towards taking actions that can be easily automated and scaled. After all, no one wants to be taken by surprise if their business takes off and end up not being able to fulfil the needs of their customers.
This means there is a value in offering things that fall outside of scalability and automation boundaries. What we mean here is to use things like snail mail, handwritten thank you cards and even additional telephone support for your best customers.
In essence, what we are talking about here is the ‘personal touch’. However, it goes far behind just using a customer’s name in an international or email. It’s all about showing that the customer is worth investing effort and time in, which in today’s automated market, are valuable commodities indeed.
Final thoughts
There are many things you can do to delight your customers. These range from simple strategies, such as using their names in communications and emails, to going out of your way to provide them with the most positive experience possible. (Even when it is the customer that has made a mistake and not your business.)
Of course, making sure that you prompt customers for as much feedback as possible is also essential. Indeed, it is this information that will allow your business to continue to evolve and improve the service that it offers to customers. Something that should help not only to make sure your customers are delighted but that your business will be as successful as possible as well.
