6 Keys to Improving Your Team’s Customer Service Skills

Service

What is the most important thing you can do to improve relationships with your customers? The answer is as obvious as it is overlooked: improve customer service. No matter how great your product is or how talented your staff is, one of the things that customers are most likely to remember is the direct interaction they have with your company.

Bottom line, your customer service team is often the face of your company, and customers’ experiences will be defined by the skill and quality of the support they receive.

If you are not constantly on the lookout for opportunities to improve your customer service, then your relationships will stagnate.

 

Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.”Donald Porter

 

How will you get better and better at it?

1. Strengthen your customer service skills

Make sure that your customer service team has the right skills for your managing customers’ needs. But what skills should you be looking for in a customer service rep?

  • Empathy, patience and consistency.
  • Adaptability.
  • Clear communication.
  • Work ethic.
  • Knowledge.
  • Thick skin.

2. Look at every touchpoint

A bad customer experience at any point in the customer lifecycle can ruin your relationship. In addition to making sure the right skills are demonstrated, you need to be sure they’re being demonstrated consistently. Pay the most attention to key touchpoints, but make sure you have a full view of the customer experience, or you risk lapses in service that can really hurt business.

3. Improve your customer interactions

If your staff has the necessary skill set, that’s a good start. But they still need to relate to your customers. Here are some tips for making sure customer service is both thorough and well received:

  • Ask reps to try to identify a common ground with the people they help.
  • Practice active listening so your customers feel heard.
  • Admit your mistakes, even if you discover them before your customers do.
  • Follow-up after a problem is solved.

 

You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied.” -Jerry Fritz

 

4. Enhance your customer service strategy

Your staff may have the skills and know-how to interact with your customers. But what organizational strategies can you employ to please customers? Practice proactive customer service by making your customers happy before they come to you with problems. Here’s how:

  • Be available. Make sure you are fully meeting your customers’ needs.
  • Create communities. Your customers will feel even more valued if you treat them as important members of a community.

5. Make sure your reps are engaged

Improving employee engagement is another way to make sure customers have a great experience. Consider an anonymous suggestion box or an employee engagement survey to see what makes your employees tick.

You’ll want to know how your customer service team feels about working conditions and compensation, opportunities for career advancement, training and their peers.

6. Give your customers a way to provide feedback

To make sure you learn about the good, the bad, and the ugly experience your customers have, create an easily accessible way for customers to give feedback.

Whether it’s a phone survey at the end of a service call, an email survey sent directly from your CRM tool, or a form on your website, creating a means for customers to give feedback makes it easier for you to learn what needs improvement. It also helps keep unhappy customers from voicing their displeasure on highly visible places like your social media pages.

Whatever steps you choose to take, remember feedback’s importance to customer satisfaction.

 

Here is a simple but powerful rule: always give people more than what they expect to get.”Nelson Boswell

Unsure what your strengths and weaknesses are? Don’t know why the numbers are dipping? Make an effort to get closer both to your customers and your reps.

Not only will you discover touch-points and skills that need improvement, but your customers will see that are dedicated to providing top-notch, proactive customer service.

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