Tips for Providing Excellent Customer Services, Part One

Based on research, 75% of consumers prefer to spend more money on a brand that provides a brilliant customer experience. This is excellent news for small business owners. While you may not always beat larger competitors in terms of price, you can outperform them in the realm of service. With suitable systems and effective advertising, you can train your team to deliver excellent services to customer, making your business stand out in a competitive market. In this text, I will share some tips on engaging your team in providing excellent customer service.

Make Customer Services Everyone’s Responsibility

Regardless of the size of your small business, you may have a specific customer service department. However, customer service is not just a department; it’s a culture. It’s everyone’s responsibility, from the CEO to your part-time virtual assistant. Everyone should instill a sense of value in your customers in any way possible. Creating a culture of providing excellent customer services involves understanding what your customers expect and ensuring that these expectations are met at the forefront of everyone’s mind.

Invest in Training and Development

Exceptional customer service skills are not something you can expect employees to know on their first day of a new job. Even if they have experience in customer service, they may have adopted some bad habits and practices along the way. Therefore, you need to specifically educate them about the meaning of customer service for your business. Some training techniques to consider include:

• Creating a knowledge base for employee training, including employee handbooks and written/video tutorials.
• Establishing a mentoring or buddy system so that new employees can learn from experienced team members.
• Conducting presentation sessions on crucial topics related to providing excellent customer service, either one-on-one or in a group setting.
• Role-playing common customer service scenarios, including conflict resolution exercises.

Consider Customer Services Channels

To provide excellent customer services, it’s also important that your employees are aware of all the different customer service channels you use and the best practices for each channel. Face-to-face communication is very different from connecting via email or social media. Therefore, offer specialized training for in-person customer support, phone support, email communication, live chat, social media interactions, reviews, etc. Specify which channels you want them to use to engage customers. For small business owners, retaining customers is more effective than acquiring new ones through effective advertising.

Empower Employees to Solve Problems Themselves

Your employees should have the authority to provide excellent customer service independently. This allows them to deliver outstanding service to customers autonomously, without needing to refer to you for every confirmation. This requires a high level of trust in the individuals you hire so that you can make the right decisions. By providing training and tools, they will have what they need to help customers quickly. Regular feedback and support will boost their confidence and help them take ownership of their roles.

In the next section of this text, we will explore more recent and additional tips that are crucial for small business owners regarding customer relations, such as effective advertising.