How to deliver consistent good customer service

No matter how professional you are, how much technical knowledge you have, how long you have been with your company or how long your company have ever existed, if your customer service is unhelpful, unreliable, or just plain hard to get in touch with, you’ll lose customers over and over.

The success of any organization is not measured by its revenue or turnover but by its customers retention.

This is why, investing in customer service is very important for long-term business success.

But what does it mean to provide good customer service, and how can you ensure that every customer has a great experience with your company when they reach out for help? We’ve identified several ways to put your customer service at the top of the game in your industry.

What is good customer service?

Good customer service means?consistently meeting customers' expectations. Good customer service is quick, easy, personalized, and empathetic. Companies that deliver excellent customer service take the time needed to understand the needs of their unique customer base.

As a company that aim to deliver good customer service and retain clients you should:

1.?????Have Empathy

You really have to be able to relate to a customer to provide a great experience. That starts with empathy, which means putting the customer at the center of everything you do and being driven to help them—not seeing them as an annoyance to handle. It’s a crucial customer service skill.

2.????Personalize your service

In order to create a connection, you need to use data to personalize the customer experience. The truth is, most customers today expect a highly tailored experience: They want a company to know who they are, what they have purchased in the past, and even what their preferences are. They also expect you to remember all this information—they don’t want to have to repeat themselves.

3.????Help customers help themselves

Customers don’t always want to ask someone for help. Sometimes, excellent customer service means letting people help themselves. Sixty-nine percent of customers want to resolve as many problems as possible on their own, and 63 percent always or almost always start with a search on a company’s website.

Sometimes, excellent customer service means letting people help themselves.

By building out an easy way for customers to self-help, you’ll relieve pressure on your support team and create happy customers.

4.????Be proactively helpful

When things don’t go as planned, your customer might let you hear about it. And now one issue has become two: fixing the original problem and trying to turn an angry customer into a happy one.

Excellent customer service often means anticipating your?customers’ needs?before they even have to tell you.

Proactive customer service is what happens when a business takes the initiative to help a customer before the customer contacts them for help. It means trying to resolve problems at the first sign of trouble.

Principles of good customer service

Use these needs as principles to help you deliver the best customer service.

Friendliness:?The most basic customer need that’s associated with things like courtesy and politeness.

Empathy:?Customers need to know the organization understands and appreciates their needs and circumstances.

Fairness:?Customers must feel like they’re getting adequate attention and fair and reasonable answers.

Control:?Customers want to feel like they have an influence on the outcome.

Alternatives:?Customers want choice and flexibility from customer service; they want to know there is a range of options available to satisfy them.

Information:?Customers want to know about products and services in a pertinent and time-sensitive manner; too much information and selling can be off-putting.

Time:?Customers’ time is valuable, and organizations need to treat it as such. Put customer context at agents’ fingertips so customers don’t have to wait on hold while the agent looks up the details, for example.