Excellent customer service is the key to any successful and profitable business.
However, many businesses still struggle with finding ways to improve it, whether due to how much it evolved in the last years or due to its greater focus on social media.
If your company’s customer service isn’t your prime focus, but you want to stand out from the crowd, you need to start prioritizing client experience quickly.
There’s no time to waste because poor reviews and lack of clear mission or goals can bring down even the most prosperous business in no time.
That’s why, besides turning your attention to social media, you should also focus on training your customer-facing teams to provide quick responses and take advantage of the feedback they receive.
In that way, you can find effective ways to increase revenue from your existing customers and win revenue from potential and new ones.
The article below will help you gain more insight into what you can do to improve your customer service and increase sales performance at the same moment. Don’t wait any longer and read on!
Make It Easy for Customers to Contact You
If you have a large number of customers, it’s crucial to create multiple channels where they can contact you easily.
Not only is this a convenient way for them to reach out to you, but it also shows them that your company is responsive and cares about their feedback.
Plus, if you provide your customers with a convenient way to contact you, they will be more likely to do it, increasing your chances of receiving more recommendations and positive reviews.
Therefore, providing your clients with the ability to contact you only through social media might not be enough.
Some people might not even have a Facebook or Instagram account, so make sure that your company’s email address and a phone number for customer requests can be easily found on the website.
Tools like Weave Communications offer you a whole set of features that will help you gather customer feedback, and keep all the necessary information about them in one place to improve your services, customer satisfaction, and smoothen every step of the sales process.
Use Social Media
If you want to improve your customer service and increase sales performance, social media is a must since many of today’s consumers rely on it heavily while making their purchasing decisions.
That’s why it’s essential to make sure that you have profiles on all the major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram so that clients can see what you have to offer and get in touch with you if needed.
Be responsive to comments and queries on social media by assigning someone or a special team to monitor and respond to your followers. You can also invest in social media tools to receive alerts whenever your page receives a new comment or any follower interaction.
Create a FAQ Page
You don’t want to waste your customers’ time, which is why an FAQ page is a great tool that can help you achieve this goal.
Not only will it save them time by providing answers to some of the most commonly asked questions, but it will also convey information in a way that’s much easier to understand for your clients.
In addition, the page should include key details about your brand’s policies and practices.
As an example, College Hunks is a capital-based moving service that not only provides their clients moving in Washington D.C. with a comprehensive city guide but also has an extensive FAQ page with all the questions regarding their services, policies, and pricing answered.
By doing this, you will provide your prospective customers with all the necessary information they need to make educated decisions, so they’ll see you as a trustworthy company.
Be Transparent with Your Customers
Transparency is one of the most important things for customer service because it allows customers to gain some insight into what’s going on behind the scenes.
Being transparent with your customers will not only encourage them to continue doing business with you but also increase customer loyalty.
You can do this by keeping your clients updated about delays or other issues related to their orders.
If there are any issues or delays, you should never try to hide them or leave your customers hanging without any information and just hope that everything will resolve on its own. It’s your responsibility to take action.
Learn From Your Customers
No matter how hard you work to ensure your customers are satisfied, there’s always room for improvement.
That’s why it’s important to ask for feedback from both current and past clients so that you can find out what you’re doing right and what could be done better.
In addition, you should take measures to respond quickly and effectively when your clients voice their concerns or complaints.
For instance, make your phone lines more accessible by offering a toll-free customer service line and reducing voice prompts in your interaction voice recording (IVR).
Answer emails within 24 hours and invest in automated email software to automatically send responses and notifications to reduce customer frustration.
Furthermore, people have different ideas about what constitutes good customer service, so no matter how hard you try, there will always be some issues related to this topic that need resolving.
That’s why it’s crucial to try and find a personalized solution for each individual customer’s request.
Offer Discounts or Promotions
If your business is new and your customer base is small, offering discounts or promotions is a great way to entice potential customers and turn them into repeat customers.
On the other hand, if your company already has a large client base and lots of positive reviews, you could offer deals to existing clients and encourage them to tell others about their experience with your brand.
Either way, offering promotions and discounts can help you stand out from the crowd and improve your sales performance at the same time.
You can offer manufacturer and store discounts, allowing customers to stack vouchers to save more money.
Incorporate discounts and brand promotions in your social media by giving them as contest prizes and exclusive deals for your email marketing campaign.
Provide Customer Service Training
No matter what kind of business you run, providing good customer service training to all your employees is essential if you want to stand out from the crowd and, therefore, generate more sales.
After all, all employees are on the front lines between your business and your clients, so they need to understand how important it is to provide good customer service.
In addition, they should be able to do this independently by using different approaches and techniques based on the situation they find themselves in at any given moment.
For instance, your top employees can share their best practices in a peer-to-peer discussion, or you can hire a guest speaker to provide fresh customer service insights to your employees.
Online learning is another option, wherein you can ask your employees to attend short courses about customer service and sales to remarkably improve overall performance.
Conclusion
To become successful, every business needs to have good customer service, and for this reason, it’s essential for businesses of all sizes to constantly focus on improving it as much as possible.
Not only will this help them stand out from the crowd, but it will also serve them as priceless aid on their way to achieving better sales performance.
However, it’s not enough just to focus on improving your current customer service.
Instead, you should take steps to ensure that you can improve it further in the future so that you don’t lose your competitive advantage.
The tips above are a great starting point, so don’t wait any longer and start applying them in your business as soon as possible.