Is Your Business is Providing Awesome Customer Service?

October 22, 2015

The key to success for any client facing business is to keep your clients happy. That means that awesome customer service is pivotal to your operations. Whilst providing great customer service might seem intuitive, there are many ways you improve further upon this. Use some of the following tips to make sure that your business is not falling down in this area.
Online
Live Chat
Some people don’t have the time to phone in to sort out a query. Many people will go to your website whilst they are at work and try to find a solution that way. If you have a live chat feature, they can talk to you about their problem quickly and easily. They won’t have to take time out of their day to sit in a virtual queue on the phone. They can get on with other tasks all whilst keeping the live chat running in the background
Email
Many customers will send queries via emails and expect a prompt reply. You want to find a way to be able to answer all of their questions as quickly as possible in order to show that you value them. Many businesses are using a saas help desk to help them answer questions quickly. Saas stands for “software as a service”. It means that you can access software online through a web browser instead of having to download a programme. With your saas help desk you can allow it to sync up to your emails to help your team collaborate on answering them.
Offer easy returns
When you shop online, people are a lot more hesitant about making a purchase. If you are buying something, usually you like to see it in the flesh beforehand so you know what to expect. This is a problem for online retailers as they may lose customers this way. A great way to combat this and to show your commitment to excellent customer service is to offer a good returns policy. ASOS, for instance, allow customers to buy as many clothes as they like and return them for free with no questions asked if they aren’t satisfied. If they didn’t offer this service, they may find customers being more reluctant to buy something. After all no one wants to spend a lot of money on something only to find it doesn’t fit.
Over the phone
Remember to be polite
This is a pretty intuitive one. The last thing your customer wants to be faced with is a surly phone operator. Remind your staff to be patient and listen carefully to what the customer is saying. If the customer gets angry, remember it isn’t a personal attack on you. It is about bad service. Show them that it was a one off and earn their trust with a friendly and positive reply.
Reduce hold time
There’s nothing we hate more than being put on hold for thirty minutes. If you find that your phone lines are being inundated with call after call, it might be time to think about getting more staff and more phone lines. This will show your customers that they can reach you whenever they have a problem.

Mark Asquith

That British podcast guy, Mark is co-founder of Captivate.fm, the world's only growth-oriented podcast host. A Harvard, TEDx, Podcast Movement and Podfest speaker (amongst many more!), he's a wildly approachable Brit and Star Wars/DC Comics geek.

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