During your entrepreneurship career, you’ve likely learned that offering stellar customer service drives traffic, purchases, and profits. But sometimes, you fall short of offering the best customer service possible. How can you improve customer service, especially when you’re a busy small business owner?
Tips to improve customer service
Without customers, you can’t afford to pay the business bills that pour in every month, week, or even day. And unless customers are happy with your business’s customer service, they may not stick around.
According to one survey, 67% of consumers who leave blame it on bad customer service experiences. If your customer service is subpar, consumers are going to notice. To avoid losing customers, improve customer service with these five tips.
Automate a little
A memorable, good customer service experience boils down to your relationship with the customer. How much effort have you put into getting to know your customers? With automation, you can improve customer service and save some time.
Customer relationship management (CRM) software is one type of automation you can use to give your customer service strategy a boost. CRM software lets you organize information about your customers in one, easy to access system. You can store information like customer names and buying habits. That way, you can personalize each customer’s shopping experience.
Using automated answering services for small businesses may help customers calling into your business get speedy replies. You can use an automated call answering service, call center, or live call answering service. Keep in mind, however, that 57% of consumers call businesses instead of reaching out online because they want to talk to a real person. When you use automation, keep it personal.
You can also use online chats to provide speedy, friendly, and professional customer service without holding you back from accomplishing other tasks.
Use email templates to save you time and let customers know you are thinking about them. Tailor the email to the customer by including their name and a little bit about their recent business experience or future business needs. But, you can use the same general template to speed the process along. You can also use templates to automate other processes in your small business, such as your marketing and sales email efforts.
Do some research
One survey found that 84% of consumers get frustrated when a business representative doesn’t have information. To provide an excellent customer service experience, you need to do some research on everything related to your business’s offerings.
As a small business owner, you likely know your company backward and forward. For the most part, you’ve done your research and can answer your customers’ questions. But every once in a while, a customer asks something out of left field.
If you don’t know the answer to something your customer asks, don’t shrug it off and tell them you don’t know. Give the customer a commitment that you will find the answer and let them know.
If applicable, your employees should also be knowledgeable about your business’s offerings. Provide ongoing training to employees so they can improve customer service, too.
Gather feedback from customers
To improve customer service, find out what your customers need and want. Gathering feedback can be as simple as distributing paper surveys at the point of sale, emailing surveys to customers, or collecting feedback over the phone.
When customers give you their feedback, you can find common pain points and work toward making improvements.
With feedback, you can find out exactly what you should do to improve customer service and make tailored improvements. You may end up with increased customer satisfaction and a lower churn rate.
Hire help
Bringing more hands on deck might be what you need to give customers more attention without sacrificing some of your other business owner responsibilities. When you hire an employee, you can delegate customer service tasks to them.
As an entrepreneur, you might not necessarily be an expert on providing customer service. But, you can hire an employee who has experience in customer service positions. The new hire may bring a fresh perspective and come up with specific ways to improve customer service in your business.
Make time
You know you need to prioritize customer service in your business, even if it means carving out time away from other tasks.
You can improve customer service by putting more energy into making your current and potential customers happy.