A high level of customer satisfaction is a goal for many businesses and is a key indicator for business success. If you are currently reading this article, it probably means that you agree with that statement and are looking for ways to achieve this! We have put together some tips on improving your customer service, based on our own experience as a business.
Why is customer service important?
Customer service is one of the most important things to consider for businesses, alongside product and staff. It goes without saying that customers who receive high quality customer service are more likely to be loyal and stick around. Not only this, but they are more likely to recommend you to other businesses if they feel that the service exceeds their expectations. Although this applies to all businesses, it is especially crucial for businesses where the customer is potentially staying with you for a long period of time and those that have made a considered commitment to being part of your customer base.
Though it may sound simple, this isn’t an entirely easy feat. To achieve truly exceptional service levels, customer service must run through the veins of your business. Below are our top tips to achieving good customer service.
Be experts in your field
This may sound obvious, but it is incredibly important to live and breathe your product – and this applies to all your staff. If customers believe that you are experts in your field, they will feel more comfortable and trusting during their experience with you. Get to know the complete ins and outs of what you can offer your customers and ensure that this filters throughout the business too. Showcase your industry knowledge through your website and social media channels. Not only will your customers see this, but also any potential prospects who are researching for their desired product or service. Showing your audiences that you know what you’re talking about can really make a world of difference in their confidence and satisfaction levels.
Make your customers feel like something bigger
The customer journey is something that has become increasingly important over the years, and this applies to both B2C and B2B businesses. The customer journey begins the minute that a prospective customer comes across your brand and follows with every interaction they have with you after that. Therefore, it’s so important to ensure that your process with your customers is positive, easy and helpful. For businesses that have customers with them for a long duration, ensuring that their experience with you is positive needs to be consistent and endless. Make your customers feel like more than just a customer by communicating with them, sharing news about your business, and treating them like part of your business community, rather just a customer number.
Feedback is key
One way to ensure you are providing good customer service is to frequently collect customer feedback. Achieving this alone is just the first step. Acting upon this feedback is what will really get you the results you want. Collect honest and detailed feedback from your customers on a regular basis, whether this is done as part of your daily/weekly customer interactions or as a larger and in-depth survey. Conducting research into your customer satisfaction levels can be a very fruitful task. This could be a half year or annual survey, where your customers are invited to give honest and open feedback into your service and what improvements can be made.
Make things as quick and easy as possible
One more straightforward way to improve customer service is to streamline your processes and/or services. Making the customer experience easy, quick and simple is a great way to improve customer satisfaction. If customers find it difficult to use your company, it can really affect their experience with you, and they may think twice about using your brand in the future. Streamlining your customer experience can include the improvement of your website navigation, improved contacting process or quicker delivery methods. These are all things to bear in mind when improving your customers’ experience.
Clear and consistent communication
As touched on earlier in this article, communicating with your customers can be vital in achieving high standards of service. This could be achieved through monthly or quarterly newsletter which inform your customers about what’s happening in the business, or it could be as simple as keeping your website and social pages up to date with newsworthy content. Consider sharing content about your staff, as well as case studies about your other customers and how the service has been for them. Keep your customers informed about any changes to your products/services, especially if you have new products to shout about.
Focus on client satisfaction and care
This may sound like an obvious one, but customer service means more than just providing a good product to your customers. It also comes down to how you treat individual people, especially if your business is one that has client longevity. Try focusing your service on customer care and really thinking about how you want to be perceived by your customers. Do you want to be seen as a more efficient and process-driven business or one that has close relationships with its customer? You could even be both! Every business is different and therefore their goals will be different too.
Our stance on customer service
At Skipton Business Finance, customer service is at the heart of everything we do. We like to create personal experiences for our clients alongside our flexible products. We believe that this is why we received a 98% customer satisfaction score in our latest client survey!
Want to find out more about how we treat our clients? Get in touch on 0800 085150 or at info@skiptonbf.co.uk.