How To Improve Customer Service: 10 Proven Strategies for Success

Poor support hurts more than a poor product because companies lack or have a disorganized customer service strategy. No customer service strategy is complete without metrics, KPIs and continuous measurement. Organizations must have the right key performance indicators (KPIs) for customer satisfaction and must track them regularly. For example, customer service now takes place in an omnichannel environment where they may need to triage conversations occurring on multiple channels. Organizations can improve the time-to-response by deploying chatbots to understand a customer’s general requests. Today, customers are more likely to switch to different products or cancel a membership than any other time in recent memory.

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The benefits of efficient customer service

By implementing feedback loops, businesses create a continuous improvement cycle, ensuring that customer suggestions and concerns are addressed promptly. The real magic happens when businesses use this feedback to drive meaningful improvements in their products, services, and processes via business analytics. By investing in a queuing solution, small businesses can significantly improve customer service, creating a smoother and more enjoyable experience for everyone involved.

• For example, if someone reaches out with a question about your open hours, you can create a chatbot that sends an automated response so they don’t have to wait for a live agent.
• While every customer interaction is different, organizations that want to improve customer retention and grow their customer base must create an effective customer service strategy.
• You can later use these points to get rewards from Sephora’s online store.

To do this, empower support to pull in whomever they need from the organization, and ensure that support has a seat at the table when it comes to discussing company metrics. 💰 You can also use this calculator to see roughly how much your business could save by using RingCentral to support your team’s communication with each other—and clients. For a business that runs on effective communications, the right technology makes a big difference. Theralent is a small recruiting firm with only a few employees—which means they value efficiency not only for their customers, but for their own team as well.

Listen and respond to customer reviews.

Beyond all of this, having great customer service also shows you know how modern customers think. Today’s customers bounce from one touch point to another and head back and forth around channels at the drop of a hat. If you can be there for them no matter how chaotic that omnichannel journey may be, you’ll demonstrate that you know how they tick, and that will drive customer satisfaction.

Speaking of how customers like to communicate with support, another way to provide great customer service is to provide options tailored to customer needs—and be respectful of their valuable time. At a small company, it might be easy enough to encourage communication between the sales and support teams. In the past, these mediums wouldn’t even be considered as customer service options. However, as social media continues to open up new outlets for customer reviews, companies will be forced to engage with these consumers on their own online turf. To personalize your training, you’ll need to survey your team before, during, and after each exercise.

This also helps your human reps focus on and respond quickly to more pressing issues. However, customer service software neither magically makes problems disappear nor improves customer service on its own. So, you need to make sure your team adopts your customer service platform and rely on it in their everyday processes. Standardizing communication between rep and customer can be accomplished by implementing answer templates on AI. For example, they once sent a best man free shoes the night before the wedding after his order was sent to the wrong location due to a mistake by the delivery company. Zappos solved a problem and exemplified excellent customer service — they won a customer for life and gave the man a story that he couldn’t wait to share.

“We were able to integrate [RingCentral Contact Center] with our case management platform to automatically direct an existing client to the attorneys or support staff handling that specific case,” Lee said. Just ask the team at Thompson Law, an injury law firm with a speciality in auto accidents, workplace injuries, medical malpractice, product liabilities, and other injuries. When word got out about their 90% success rate at getting clients a cash reward, the calls started coming in. These features might not seem like a priority, but even seemingly little things like automated call-backs allow a small team to manage an influx of calls without inconveniencing customers and keep them happy. That also means that these service providers can offer quick responses and be flexible if they have to adjust their schedules on the fly.

Customer service agents form the front line for complaints, but they are rarely the fundamental cause of them. Problems often start in other departments or even with external vendors, whether that’s because of a faulty product or a service problem. Any misstep along the way can lead to the problem or defect that sparked the inquiry. Also, be sure to communicate hold times if you put them on hold while you pull up their account or talk to your manager.

The best support pros know how to watch and listen for subtle clues about a customer’s current mood, patience level, personality, etc., which goes a long way in keeping customer interactions positive. On the one hand, it’s good to be patient and spend a little extra time with customers to understand their problems and needs. On the other hand, there is a limit to the amount of time you can dedicate to each customer, so your team needs to be concerned with getting customers what they want in an efficient manner. All new Help Scout employees, for example, are trained on customer support during their first or second week on the job; it’s a critical component of our employee onboarding process.

Key Customer Service Skills (and How to Develop Them)

If they ask for more details, you can share, but most people want their issues resolved quickly. Always end each conversation with the question, “is there anything else I can do for you today? ” so they have one more opportunity to ask another question and you know you’ve done everything you can to resolve the issue. The ability to clearly communicate, both verbally and in writing, is essential in excellent customer service, especially if you are speaking to someone who has a different native language. Answers to your questions should be clear, concise, and in your natural tone of voice. Customer satisfaction can be directly affected by how long it takes for customers to receive a reply to a question.

• Customers will know exactly what to expect from you and that they can reach out to you for help if needed, as opposed to wondering which direction they should go in to get help.
• You can even use integrations or task automation platforms to have that customer information automatically pop up when they call in, saving a ton of time.
• And when your customers are also investors, you don’t want to leave them waiting on hold.
• 81% of decision makers say they’re making significant investments in training — up from 79% in 2020 and 77% in 2018.
• Remember, exceptional customer service isn’t just a one-time effort; it’s an ongoing commitment.

Sending them a small gift “just because,” or giving them a rare promotional code, will speak to your customers’ egos and demonstrate your genuine appreciation of their business. Personalization is crucial – addressing customers by name and tailoring recommendations based on their preferences. This is especially important for small businesses, where every customer interaction counts. As the industry evolves, technologies rise in popularity and significantly impact customer service innovation.