Best Ways to Improve Your Team’s Customer Service
Be it a small business or a large setup, a service providing business or product providing business, a small restaurant, or a big think tank; they all have one thing in common- "Customers." Customers are the backbone of a business.
Keeping your customers happy and satisfied is of prime importance for any setup, but beware, it is not an easy task. You need to build the skills for it, take efforts, and keep improvising them.
Customer service should be in such a manner that it aims at not only keeping the customers happy but also proliferating your business. Bad customer service is an underlying cause of the deterioration of several companies. This often overseen skill is very important and beneficial.
Now that you have realized the kind of role your customer service plays in the progression of your business, it's important to adapt to precise ways to improve your customer service with the best call center software. The need to check on your skills of service from time to time means that the format of your customer service also changes with it.
The team should always be in connection with each other in regards to the fundamentals of the company and the outcome of their tasks. It is very important to orient your staff in one certain direction rather than aim at an outcome vaguely.
More the harmony amongst the team, the more the collective outcome of your business.
What should you be focused on?
Training: You can hold some periodic congregations with the team, be it monthly or every fortnight. As the desire and interest in the product changes in the market constantly, this leads to a very low chance of predicting the trends in the market. As the product cannot change accordingly, what needs to change is your approach. In these meetings, you can discuss your strategy to improve customer service until the next meeting. Make these meetings interesting by including interactive tasks and make them enjoyable. You can also make these meetings useful for a motivational briefing to the staff. These meetings will also allow you to check whether all of your teams and you are on the same page or not!
Accuracy: Keep a check on confusion amongst your customers due to your staff. Would you continue with a business that gives out mixed and unclear responses to your query? Taking this perspective of the customer into view, think accordingly, and make changes. This again requires checking if everyone is on the same page. It is very important to unite your team. Do this by establishing some foundation of your business and making your team realize and understand it so that all the messages that are passed out from anybody in the staff remain the same. It will also create a healthy and friendly bond between your staff and you.
Empathize: Think of it as a capability to fit in your customers' shoes and look at his perspective. Try to understand and feel how a certain problem must make a customer feel. Your ability to respond to your customer makes him trust you more. It can also reduce conflicts and make the experience more interesting. Use common grounds for communication, something that can make them feel connected to you; for example, Facetime.
Learn: Lata Mangeshkar didn't become a great singer in one day. It took her years of practice. She made her mind to learning. She realized that she will always have to keep learning. Similarly, is the arena of your skills in customer service. You need to know that you should always be ready to learn. Imagine if every team member showed this willingness to learn how beneficial it will prove for the business.
Improvement: So, now that you've concluded how important your speaking skills are, it's necessary to understand that your listening skills are equally important. Your speaking skills will help you stay clear with the customers and eliminate the possibility of your responses sounding robotic (It can lead the customer to think that he is not given importance and prove to be hazardous). Similarly, not possessing good listening skills can be harmful to the business as the customer might think he/she isn't taken seriously and that the staff is incapable of solving their problem. It is the last thing you want to happen as it makes a bad image of you in the market.
Feedback: Even though you and your team strategize how to improve your customer service during periodic checkups, you will also need a raincheck to see if your efforts are being put in the right direction and you are inching closer to your goal with them. To see how much you have succeeded, take feedback from your customers. There are various ways in which you can do this. They can be digitally taken or be in written format. This feedback should include questions on how fulfilling the services was to the customers, and also have suggestion inputs from the customers if they want any change. It will allow you to check off the problems efficiently.
Appreciation: For maintaining a healthy attitude towards persuasion of your goal, it is equally important to keep your team interested and motivated at work. Reward good work with an appreciation of any form. Maintaining a friendly bond with your teammates will ensure that everybody is working in the same direction. It will keep the team motivated. A happy team will make happy customers.
Additionally, some other measures can also be taken to improve customer service. It can be done by providing self-help content to your customers to save some time and money.
Customer service is a crucial part of the working of a business. It is a deciding factor for what happens to your company with the changing market.
Now that you know how important this skill is and how you can try to improve customer service, it’s time to take charge. Training, Accuracy, Empathize, Learn, Improvement, Feedback, Appreciation- this is your mantra!
