How to deliver quality customer service

Distinguishing between excellent, mediocre, and poor companies often hinges on the quality of customer service. Effective customer service plays a pivotal role in establishing strong connections with clients. This means it’s crucial to ensure that customers depart with a positive impression. This not only fosters a sense of appreciation and value but also cultivates a likelihood of future business transactions. Indeed, customers who experience outstanding customer service are more inclined to return regularly and spend more. Consequently, through word-of-mouth recommendations, satisfied customers become advocates. This then helps attract new clients who can be retained by maintaining consistently high-quality customer service.

With customer service evolving so quickly, a key question for managers and business owners is: What is quality customer service these days? A simple good customer service definition will help answer this and act as a guide on how to manage customer interactions.

Quality customer service is about providing an efficient, quick, friendly service to customers and building strong relationships with them. It also entails responding to customer issues in time and handling any complaints swiftly. This means understanding and meeting customer needs, ensuring quality solutions, and offering customers several options for getting in touch.

To make sure that effective customer service contributes to the long-term success of the business, managers and executives should make it a critical part of company culture. All employees should understand what quality customer service means and have the attitude, communication and sales skills to deliver it.

Why is good customer service important?

Three in four US consumers say they have spent more money doing business with a company that delivers great service. This shows how important good customer service is to building business relationships. Studies show that it’s more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep a current one. Here are some reasons why quality customer service is so important. It:

• Provides value-effective customer service programmes: These emphasise treating customers well, answering questions, responding to complaints and exceeding expectations. This approach keeps customers engaged and fosters strong relationships.
• Reduces employee turnover: Employees like to work for an employers who treat customers fairly and recognise the contributions of their staff. When a company delivers great service, employees will be more engaged in their work and are more likely to stay through challenging times.
• Retains customers: Customers who are appreciated are likely to be loyal to the company. Once the business comes across as trustworthy, there is a good chance existing customers will keep on coming back to make new purchases.
• Creates endorsements: Loyal customers will keep on doing business with the company and will also help strengthen the brand through online reviews and private endorsements. Companies that provide quality customer service often get more new customers from recommendations than from advertising messages.
• Increases profits – One of the main goals of any business is to make a profit. Quality customer services help retain existing customers and attract new ones, contributing to higher revenue and a rise in profits.

Once companies understand the benefits of good customer service, they should also learn the difference between great and sub-par customer service. While in the latter case, companies do the minimum to keep customers satisfied, the first case involves going beyond keeping them satisfied to retain their loyalty. In the end, 51% of customers will not do business with a company after one negative experience.

Examples of good customer service

The term “customer experience” is all the rage these days. As a result, there are countless good customer service examples and good customer service stories. Check out the following examples of good customer service stories and scenarios in everyday situations.

Examples of good customer service in retail

Sometimes, you may run into a situation where the customer is actually the problem. Handling these types of problems in retail requires good customer service skills. For instance, imagine you own a shop with a 10-day returns policy that is clearly printed on the receipt, and the customer wants to bring a shirt back 15 days after their purchase. To resolve the problem, you can explain the policy and accept the return if it can be resold and is unworn. Then you will be able to welcome the customer’s future business. In the end, the customer gets what they want and you don’t lose out because you can actually resell the shirt. In situations like this, you are able to provide the customer with the best customer service experience, which is a win-win situation.

Examples of good customer service in a restaurant

In a restaurant, promptness is everything. However, being prompt doesn’t mean hovering or rushing. It does mean giving the customers what they need when they need it. When you provide good customer service experience examples, your customers will always return to your restaurant for a pleasurable experience. Good customer service in the restaurant industry also means a welcoming, friendly service as well as being available. When the customers can see hosts, managers and waiters, it can improve their experience because they know you’re always available to help.

How to improve customer service in the workplace

Customer service is one of the keys to any successful business. This means that companies that do not have it should make it a priority and find ways of improving customer service. However, customer service has evolved over the years, making it important to identify effective customer service strategies to help keep customers satisfied and improve business performance. Here are a few tips to help improve customer service at your organisation.

Create customer service standards for the team to follow

Once the leadership understands the importance of customer service standards, they’ll be in a position to define them for their organisation. Creating customer service standards will allow the team to know what’s expected of them, enabling them to make necessary adjustments. In order to make sure that the practice is continuous and sustainable, it has to become part of your company culture so that it forms one of the values that guide employee conduct and business operations.

Improve good customer service skills with dedicated practice

Embracing habits that promote improved customer service can take time. And effective customer service skills can only be developed and strengthened through continuous and dedicated practice. An example of good customer service skills is effective communication. By communicating effectively, agents can clearly answer questions, provide accurate information and address complaints calmly. Instead of waiting for agents to talk to customers in real time, give them a safe space to practice applying their communication skills in difficult scenarios. This will give them the chance to hone their skills and gain confidence in their abilities before speaking to customers.

Train reps on key procedures, processes and other important knowledge

Before agents can improve their customer service skills, they need to have training on key procedures, processes and other important company knowledge. In order to meet your customers’ needs, your agents should know how to handle a wide range of situations. Training will help them stay up to date with emerging customer service trends, which will help place your company ahead of the competition.

Look at every customer touchpoint

It’s also critical that companies know and understand their customers in order to deliver superior service. Looking at every customer touchpoint will not only help to personalise messages but also respond using the right channel. With the numerous communication channels that technology has brought us, businesses should have agents who are familiar with each platform.

Enhance your customer service strategy

Any business looking to improve customer service must have a clear strategy to help achieve set goals. Effective customer service techniques will not only serve your customers better but deliver the results you want. Managers can talk to experts in this field to come up with strategies that will ensure return on investment.

Better customer service starts with Seismic

Great customer service requires effective training and enablement. Support teams across the globe use Seismic Learning (formerly Lessonly) to decrease onboarding time for new agents, practice essential skills and deliver training at scale. Read how one customer decreases new agent ramp time by 34% while earning a CSAT score of 90%. Or, get a demo to see Seismic Learning in action.