Best Customer Service Practices to Give Your Customer the Perfect Treatment

Today, customers are ruling the roost in the digital market. This makes the bar for customer service always set higher than before. 

Your customers want to be treated uniquely. They can either sing your praises on social media or give stern feedback for your services.

Best practices for customer service are necessary. This is because customers base their loyalty to companies on the experience they get. It is not tied to your product or service.

90% of customers trust brands that have a high customer satisfaction rating. Thus customer experience has fast become a top priority for businesses. Below we explore the whys and hows of best practices for customer service. You can adopt them for your business for success.

What is good customer service?

Excellent customer service is what handles the success or failure of your business. It is more than a concept. 

Your business may provide a fantastic product. It may have every intention of making the lives of your customer better. 

But, without, best practices customer service you cannot consistently achieve business success. You need to constantly improve your services to get favourable results. 

Good customer service includes a complete package of features. 

It could be anything from a quick response time to customer queries or requests. It could also mean accepting all types of customer feedback. It could be positive or negative, but what matters is your response to your customers. 

Good customer service includes helping customers find their own solutions to service issues. This could be in place with an insightful knowledge base. 

You could also provide a database of self-service help documents. Above all, good customer service defines the best way for getting in touch with you.

Investing in customer service best practices is crucial. It applies to your business, no matter what its size or niche is. It will form the foundation of long-term business success. 

Why best practices customer service are important? 

You can create a positive experience for your customers with good customer service. If you can keep up with the changing demands of your customers with time, they will stick to you. 

Here is why you should follow best practices for customer service:

Add value to your product or service

89% of customers are likely to buy your product after a positive customer service experience with you. 

78% of customers will get back to you again even after a mistake if you offer excellent customer service.

(Source: Salesforce Research)

So, you see, statistics in favour of good customer service are strong. It is obvious that it adds value to what you offer in the market to your customers.

Creates a positive brand image

A CX report by Qualtrics XM Institute shows an important fact. 

94% of consumers, who give your company a top CX rating, are likely to recommend your product.

You can follow best practices for customer service to take care of your customers’ needs. It will lead to referrals and repeat business. This can significantly impact your product recommendations. 

The result will be a healthy brand reputation. 

Increases customer retention 

A Zendesk survey shows interesting statistics. 

It says about 61% of customers prefer a brand switch if they have a bad experience with an existing one. 

Bad customer service increases the chances of your customers sailing away. They can start doing business with your competitors. 

You can have your customers coming back to you by providing good customer service. It is also more effective than advertising and marketing to people who don’t know about your product.

Builds customer trust and loyalty

Good customer service is an obvious solution. Your customers will trust and be loyal to your company when they are happy with the service they receive. 

Good customer service focuses on bringing your customers back. You may offer attractive discounts and promotional offers to bring in new customers. But, unless your customer service is good, most of those customers will not get back to you. 

Happy customers are more likely to refer your product or service to others. And your level of customer service provided plays a crucial role here. 

Encourages word-of-mouth marketing

One of the best ways of advertising is positive word-of-mouth reviews. Happy customers are likely to recommend your product to their friends and family. This can help increase your sales and generate more profits.

With good customer service, you encourage word-of-mouth marketing. This is among the easiest and yet the best forms of advertising. It encourages your customers to tell their friends about your product.

Boosts your employee morale 

Proper employee training to offer best practices customer services is necessary. 

Only then can they offer expert level solutions to even the most complex customer issues. They will know how to calm down a displeased customer or convey bad news to an angry customer.

To be in control boosts your employees’ morale and love the job they are doing. This, in turn, reduces turnover, which can be time-consuming and expensive.

Gives you the cutting edge

We live in a highly competitive world where many alternatives exist for a single product. Customers are spoilt for choice and it is too easy to switch brands for them.

Good customer service keeps your customers stay with you. If you value them, they will value your service. This holds good even if your competitors offer better deals or lower prices. 

Now that you know the reasons why good customer service is important, it is time to take action. 

How to deliver best practices customer service?

Remember, even a single bad customer service experience can be dangerous. It can tarnish his opinion of your product indefinitely. It is thus essential to train your employees. They should make it a habit to offer top-notch customer service.

Know your product 

Your employees should have a thorough knowledge of what your company offers. They should be aware of its features, USPs, pros and cons. At the same time, they should know how to convey the same to the customers. 

Your team should be able to discuss the product use cases in an insightful way. It should show your customers the probable benefits of the product. If something is not working right, they should be able to troubleshoot it.

Make your customers feel they will get the most out of their purchase with your product. They should feel they have got true value for their money. Let your team know the product inside out. Thus, they can give product recommendations in case of new features and services.

Consolto video chat plug-in can be one step in this direction. It gives your employees a chance to video chat directly from your website. Give them all the information they need. Consolto makes this possible with a simple video chat platform with easy connectivity. 

Offer quick response

Customer service is all about quick response to your customer queries. No one likes to keep waiting in queues without getting a solution.

Your team should know how to attend to customers and raise timely tickets. They should not be in a rush to get customers off the phone or close the ticket with unresolved issues. 

Also, the time taken to resolve the issue should be minimum.

Your customer service team should develop a smooth workflow for different support functions. You need to focus on efficiency. For this, you can consider adopting a help desk tool to automate various service tasks.

Consider the robust back-office support provided by Consolto. It offers an all-in-one solution for personal customer communication. This is especially suitable for sales professionals and consultants. What you get is an easier way to provide remote services to your clients.

You can find all the advanced features. These include video conferencing, live chat, appointment scheduling, and even two-way screen sharing. You can add many agents to the same page and have simultaneous, one-on-one chats.

Find all your customer data at your fingertips. This way your team can handle incoming requests efficiently. 

Omni-Channel Support

Today, information can flow from any channel, whether online or offline. Your company should make it easy for your customers to contact your support team. This should not depend on the channel they use to contact. 

Customers can contact you via phone, email, or live chat. They can even contact you through social media or any other communication channel. 

You should train your team to respond to incoming customer requests from any medium. They should be able to offer a true omnichannel experience. It makes your team more accessible to deliver an enhanced customer experience.

Consolto offers social messaging features as well. You can have WhatsApp and Facebook messenger embedded in your website. You can even let customers leave voice messages from your website. It offers two-way audio and video conferencing and real-time chat.

What’s more, it supports 12 languages! So, your agents can chat in these languages:

· Dutch

· English, 

· French,

· German, 

· Hebrew, 

· Italian, 

· Japanese, 

· Portuguese, 

· Russian

Pro-active Problem Solving

The prime role of your customer service team is to solve their customers' problems. 

Your team should thus be passionate about problem-solving. They should be tenacious to come up with creative yet practical solutions. They should try to solve the customer problems to the best of their abilities.

Your agents need to help their customers achieve their goals. Sometimes, excellent customer service means finding out-of-the-box solutions. But, they should still adhere to the company protocol.

Consolto offers an exclusive 3D-Sense feature to wow your customers. You can now showcase your product in 3D during video conferences and live chats. 

This is similar to a live demonstration. You can take up probable customer queries then and there. This is what you would do in real life.

This can be of great help to car dealers or agents, doctors, real estate agents or medical device vendors. 

Car dealers can now provide live, 360-degree views of cars. Doctors can use Consolto for visual presentations. They can present views of their patients' organ systems from anywhere.

Give Self-Service Options 

Your customers will not always want to talk to someone directly for a resolution. Research shows that 81% of customers first try to resolve the matter themselves. Then they will reach out to a customer service representative. 

This shows that providing a robust self-service system is essential. It should be part of a solid plan to delight your customers. It is easy, self-sufficient and doesn’t cost you much. 

You can always start with a knowledge base to assist customers in solving their issues on their own. You can put step-by-step instructions for self-testing and analysis in your knowledge base. 

This can help customers find answers on their own for common issues or FAQs. It also eliminates the need to open too many customer service tickets. 

You can use robust chatbot software powered by knowledge base software for this. 

Your agents can then answer all support questions of your customers. They can also give more information to customers for product explanation.

Use customer data to empower your employees

You may have powerful chatbots or self-service mechanisms for your customers. But, that will not reduce the need for live, resourceful customer service employees. 

A mere team of well-trained agents may not be adequate for managing your customer service centre. You also need to properly equip, up skill, and empower your employees. 

They should have the ability and power to make decisions. They should be able to resolve issues without going through complicated company protocols.

There is the best way to gauge this empowerment. It is the collection and analysis of critical customer data. Your service agents should have timely access to customer records and references. 

Only then can they refer to specific case studies and customer reviews. It will help them analyze customer experiences. This will also help improve your best practices customer service. 

Consolto provides a bird-eye view of your website and customer interactions. Your agents can track important business metrics and check performance. 

A live dashboard provides vital information. This includes call stats, chat stats, and site visitors.

You can access important data related to performance. It will also provide data about your agent stats and how your customers interact with you. This will help you skillfully manage your online business. 

Final Thoughts

Good customer service comes by following customer service best practices to the dot. You need to redefine your company’s standards of customer service. Go ahead and create procedures and make rules that best suit your customers’ needs. 

Providing phenomenal customer service to every customer should be the goal. Then, your team should provide it again and again. Keep your employees updated by training them frequently. Keep them happy by rewarding them for consistently good work. Rest assured that they will keep your customers happy.

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