5 Unexpected Ways to Improve Customer Service

If you don?t have a good way to track your customers, you can?t expect to have good customer service. Manage your small business? customers with the help of a free simple CRM like Base.

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Trying to continuously improve should expand past improving your sales numbers, boosting your margin, and taking out your competitors. Part of your improvement strategy should include constantly improving customer service. Good customer service equals customer satisfaction and customer satisfaction equals repeat business and referrals.? Thinking outside the box is a good idea. If you surprise and delight your customers, they?re more likely to notice and to talk about you to others.

Here are some unexpected ways to improve your customer service:

1. Give them a person to talk to.

Answer the phone! In this day and age we keep striving to make everything automated. Many people comment that it?s difficult to get to a human being when they call a company they are doing business with.? Making it easy for your customers to connect with a customer service rep makes a big difference. If someone has spent a few minutes navigating your voicemail system they may be frustrated by the time they reach a human.? If you have repeat customers you may even want to give them a dedicated hotline to call that gets priority and /or a dedicated rep.

2. Follow up with customers to see if they are happy with their purchase.

Many people never hear from a company again after they buy. Or, when they do, it?s just so that company can try to sell them something else. Show that you offer post-sales support and are committed to extending excellent customer service to customers. Don?t just use this as a chance to sell them something else. People see through sales spiels and are typically waiting for the pitch line when they get a phone call. Well trained staff that can deal with issues or problems and follow-up promptly if there is something the customer is unhappy about make a difference.

3. Answer customer surveys personally.

Many companies leverage surveys to gather customer feedback. But many companies don?t ever follow up directly with an individual who made a thoughtful comment or complaint or who take the time out to make suggestions or share some praise. Surprise and delight people by thanking them for their feedback and by giving them an opportunity to discuss their concerns further with you.

4. Reward and retain your top-performing employees.

If you reward front line employees who have high customer satisfaction rates, you?ll continually boost that customer satisfaction rate.? By doing this, you?ll keep your employees motivated (and maybe even create some healthy competition) and you?ll create an extremely customer centric culture at your business. Employees with happy customers have repeat and referring customers.? And good employees who serve your customers well need to be retained. Your taking the time to reward a job well done will increase your employee retention rate substantially.

5. Show your appreciation for the customer well after the sale.

You can do this through holiday cards, a birthday card, thank you card with a special offer, special offers that have value, promotional corporate gifts (your customers love free corporate swag!) or freebies. Customers appreciate being appreciated ? especially when it?s a genuine show of thanks rather than a transparent attempt to gain another sale. (Don?t be afraid to try to make another sale, of course, but a separate effort to show appreciation will get noticed.)

Above all, always over-deliver and give people more than they expect. Surprising your customers with great customer service from the moment they call you or land on your website until well after they?ve received their purchase is the best way to get them coming back and to get them to tell others about you.

Dana Prince writes for Future Simple?s Growth University. Dana blends her passion for entrepreneurship with experience in software licensing sales, product management, online marketing, and SEO writing to run Dana Prince Writing, a web writing agency that creates optimized content that helps websites succeed.

Source: http://www.futuresimple.com/blog/5-unexpected-ways-to-improve-customer-service/

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