Tips and Tricks of Great Customer Service

How much time, effort and resources does your business need to acquire a customer? Multiply that by all the customers you have and all the customers you plan to have, and you will gain a clear snapshot of the value of your customer service strategy. Why? Because the cost of losing a customer is greater than the acquisition cost.

You worked hard to build your business to where it is. We understand that and know you want to keep growing. At QCSS, our focus is about embracing communication and innovation to transform the human element of your customer care into powerful, passionate customer experiences and nurturing relationships. 

If growing your business and impact are your priorities, these tips and tricks will help you make small but meaningful pivots to take your customer service from good to great. 

3 Reasons Why Customers Will Leave You

Think about your smartphone and where you’d be without it. Once upon a time, cellular customer service was known to be one of the worst customer service experiences. It still can be, for many people. How much time would you lose if it were you having major phone issues? If you needed help and didn’t get it, or did but felt worse, how would you approach the next bill? What could you have done with the time and energy lost?

With that in mind, let’s explore three fundamental reasons why customers leave a brand or company instead of staying loyal and investing more:

1. The product isn’t serving its purpose
2. The customer service doesn’t produce the right results
3. The solution is right, but the customer service experience makes them feel worse

To explore what you can do about it today, let’s examine each one:

The Product isn’t Serving its Purpose

A customer in Hawaii switched her phone service to a popular and promising cellular company. The cell service turned out to be better than the first, but with a few new problems. The customer tried everything she could, but could not overcome the issue of actual cell coverage. She eventually switched companies after she called for customer service, who would not and perhaps, could not, care to even pretend to help. 

Even if your company has a great product with plenty of value for the audience you service, there are still many variables that can cause a product to fail. Worse, everything could be fine except for the customer’s perception. That customer will look for help to align the solution she already purchased with her very real needs. The customer, at this moment, still feels empowered to get things going correctly. The fastest step for them is to get that product or service working right. If they can’t do it online or on their own, who are they going to call? 

Tip #1 here is to make sure your customer service agents listen, care and listen some more. The trick is to be so good at listening that customers feel like the solution comes easily. 

The Customer Service Doesn’t Produce The Right Results

A customer bought a new laptop from a famous, well-resourced American computer company. When that laptop failed soon after purchase, she called customer service. The computer repair person instructed her to ship the laptop to the UK for repairs - after she spent $1500 on the machine plus $400 for the international service and repair plan. She followed their directions. The process took two international flights and four months to get the laptop fixed. In the meantime, she had to buy a second, cheaper laptop from a different company and pay to transfer her data just to be able to keep working. In the end, she had a working laptop but was mad as hell. Do you think she, or anyone she ever talks to, will buy that brand again?

Tip #2 is about not just making it feel easy, but to truly be easy because your team is so flexible. The trick is to take as much work off the customer’s plate as possible, show up as a partner, and really help. Be flexible. Innovate. Strive to make the problem go away in the simplest, fastest, most delightful way.

The customer service experience makes them feel worse

Two words: postal service. The US Postal Service is so famous for its customer service, that even when everything goes well, people still feel disgruntled. An entire nation uses a service they don’t like and switches to DHS or UPS or Fedex whenever possible. Obviously you aren’t likely to ever have that kind of reputation. It’s an extreme example. 

In a more relatable example, a certain low-cost airline is known for having problems but still gets people from place to place. One customer can’t even talk about her customer service experiences from her travel, saying that the memory of it raises her blood pressure. 

In both of these examples, the solution is all about culture and connection.

Tip #3 is to make customers feel like a million dollars even if he just lost a million dollars. The trick is to build respect and gratitude into your customer service standard operating procedures, as well as technical knowledge of course. Imagine your agents literally lowering your customer’s blood pressure at the beginning of the call, during the customer service experience, and afterward as they get back to using your company’s product or service. 

The job from here on out is to be a company that provides the best service because you think in terms of customers.

What will you do next?

Earlier, we said that losing a customer is greater than the cost of acquisition.

Implement the tips and tricks and you’ll be able to lose fewer customers by pivoting from good to great customer service. Your company will be able to retain more customers while you have more time to do what you do best - lead and grow your business.

We are QCSS. We empower sales teams, accelerate go-to-market tactics through lead generation, appointment setting, inside sales and maximize efficiencies to create better customer experiences through our inbound customer service. As a result, we have helped thousands of firms since 1991 to increase revenues and reduce costs as we become "the secret sauce" to sales & marketing success. Our outsource model of process, people, performance and results allows our partners to grow to the next level with high return on investment.