TOP CUSTOMER SERVICE TIPS FOR THE NEW FINANCIAL YEAR

To coincide with the start of a new financial year, global accounting body CPA Australia has released its top tips for businesses to improve their customer service.

David Jenkins, New Zealand County Manager for CPA Australia, says customer service can be an important differentiator for small businesses in particular.

“Attracting and retaining customers through great service is a critical aspect to any successful business. In a competitive market environment, customer service can be the difference between making that next sale or not, yet it is often overlooked or taken for granted.”

CPA Australia’s top tips to help improve customer service in your business:

Understand your customer

You can better understand your customers by identifying their characteristics, their location, and tracking their spending habits. An example of how to do this may be by implementing a loyalty card and engaging a research firm to conduct customer research.

Measure your customer service levels

You can measure customer service through mystery shoppers, customer surveys, comment cards, assessing online reviews of your business and analysing complaints. Mystery shopper campaigns can also help keep staff alert at all times.

Set customer service targets

Once you start measuring customer service levels, you can set measurable targets for improvement. Those targets should be incorporated into your business plan and the key performance indicators of staff. You should receive regular reports on how your business is performing against those targets.

Engage with your customers

To get meaningful feedback from customers that you can action, you need to identify specifically what you want to know. You should ask consistent questions of customers on a regular basis through observation, talking directly to customers, surveys, on social media and after-sales follow up. Remember to take feedback seriously and if necessary take immediate corrective action. To encourage feedback you may wish to offer incentives to your customers.

Invest in staff training

Staff training is essential to improving communication skills and product knowledge; essential elements of good customer service. Repeat the training regularly to reinforce service standards.

Create a customer service culture

To create and maintain such a culture, you should develop customer service standards, such as how to greet and serve customers. Business owners must lead by example and follow those standards. All new employees should be trained in those standards. You should also consider providing incentives for staff behaviour that meets or exceeds your requirements and take immediate corrective action where behaviour falls below standards.

Handle customer complaints well

You should have clear procedures for handling complaints and ensure those procedures are well understood by your staff, staff have the skills to resolve disputes, you listen to what customers have to say and ask for documentary evidence if necessary, and give staff some autonomy so they can handle unusual complaints.

Use social media

Social media can assist you in improving customer service, by providing you a public medium to communicate with some customers, monitor competitors, learn more about your current and potential customers, as well as receive and monitor customer feedback.

Meet regularly with your customers, particularly key customers

The importance of knowing your client cannot be understated. You should therefore seek to visit your key customers at regular intervals to better understand their requirements and identify opportunities.

Ensure there are processes in place to correct a situation where products or services are not provided as expected

Invest in a customer relationship management (CRM) system

A CRM system can collect the data you need to better analyse your customers and your interactions with them. Such a system could be a simple spreadsheet or dedicated CRM software. The decision on what is best for you depends on the size of your customer base, the nature of your business, the types of data you wish to collect, how such a system would integrate with your email system, cost and training needs.

Where an order or delivery is going to be delayed, communicate with the customer early and discuss alternative solutions

Make it as easy as possible for customers to work with your business

Ensure customers can make their purchase and get the information and assistance they require as efficiently and quickly as possible, whether online or face to face.