As a small business, you’ve got a lot of work to do in order to build a solid customer base! You need to be more flexible, you need to be more efficient, and you need to offer more, in order to cement your place in the current market. And one of the main areas in which you need to go from strength to strength is your customer service.

Let’s face it – your customer service is better than any of your competitors, isn’t it? Because you’ve worked long and hard to ensure you give the best customer service experience that’s possible in the modern day and age. Don’t worry if you don’t quite fit the bill here – there’s a lot you can do to make improvements.

So, if you are in the process of building up your business, or expanding, or heading back to the drawing board to think about where you are going wrong as a small business, it is time to go through some of the best ways to set yourself apart from anyone else in the customer service department.

You Pay Attention

Paying attention is the number one skill for ensuring you are offering the best customer service experience you can. It’s all about listening, which is a soft skill that’s essential to any and all jobs out there, but especially in any retail sector and everyone it serves. Because when you can listen, and listen well, the customers see it, and it ensures you can arrive at a satisfactory conclusion much quicker.

Keep track of where the conversation is going, and try to stay on track at all times. Similarly, encourage your staff or freelancers to take notes, if they are the ones on the desk that day. Listening helps to keep the issue at the center of your dialogue, and helps you to come across as much more efficient and professional. What could be better for your customer service experience?

However, listening goes both ways of course, and when a pushy and impatient person comes through the door and wants everyone to know about their problem, what do you do? Accelerate the issue, and ensure the right people are on your team to deal with the commotion. Obviously this also applies to online customers too. Doesn’t it sometimes feel as though these difficult customers are right in front of you when they are being loud and clear with their complaints on your social media. Don’t let it turn into a free for all. Deal with them quickly and privately where possible.

You Have the Right People

So, following on from the point above, you are going to need to handpick the right people for your customer service team, or make sure you train up whoever is manning the customer service desk on a daily basis. When you have got skilled and experienced people to take the helm, not only will it impress your customers a lot more, but it will also ensure your staff take on no unnecessary stress when they’re just trying to do their job.

Training is invaluable when it comes to customer service. You’re going to need to train people in a variety of areas, including their levels of patience, compassion, and how well they can communicate with others. Whilst all being described as soft skills, they’re incredibly transferable, and will serve your employees very well in the long run.

Most of all, you need your customer service team to be confident and self-possessed – people who can take some initiative from time to time, and know the handbook from cover to cover. Being trained in these areas allows a person to be more positive, and speak with a lot more energy, and that’s something a customer wants to find in a customer service representative.

You Connect Via Video

Connecting via video is something you may think is unnecessary, in order to provide a good customer service experience to anyone who has a problem or a query. However, if you are the only one doing it in a market over saturated with efforts to create the best customer service experience possible, you are going to be offering something new and novel!

Not to mention just how easier it is to connect with someone, and build a bit of a rapport, and even a long term consumer relationship, when you can actually see, hear, and speak to them normally. Making use of a service such as Click4Assistance could go a long way to helping you implement such a system, as live video chatting is up and coming on the market right now, and you’re going to want to get in early here.

All in all, connecting with customers via video, especially if you’re a home business or if you’re working remotely right now, can be a great way to bring back a sense of normalcy between you and your customers. They can see you, you can see them, and there’s far less suspicion surrounding the legitimacy of your customer service.

You’re Fast And Efficient

If you are going to craft a better customer service experience than anyone else you share a market or even just a street front with, you are going to need to be fast and efficient. Because efficiency ensures you’re always moving at a good pace, and never needing to back around or double over, and that’s something customers appreciate the most. Don’t be wasting their time, and as a result, you won’t waste yours either!

But how do you ensure your customer service is fast and efficient? You make good use of rules and regulations, and come up with a guidebook that anyone manning the desk could make good use of. At the same time, allow your team members to take initiative, and cut corners where it’s appropriate too. For example, if there’s more than one form to fill out when submitting a request, or making a query on a customer’s behalf, maybe it’s time to rewrite?

Your customer service can be made better than any other business in the market with you, simply by offering more unique and novel ways to connect with the people who shop for your products or services. So, the next time a customer has a query to bring to you, make sure you’re using methods like those above to ensure they leave with the right impression, the right solution, and something good to say about your company.

How I Make A Living Online

I make my living online, through Affiliate marketing and I have learnt everything I needed to know about building such a business through Wealthy Affiliate.

Wealthy Affiliate is a comprehensive training platform for anyone wanting to either start an online business or build upon an existing one.

If you want to check it out for free with no credit card required click on the link below.

 

Final Thoughts

Customers are the life force behind all businesses. If you don’t look after them right from the start you will be continuously trying to find new ones and that’s a lot harder and costly to do than keeping repeat customers. So take a real hard look at how you are currently doing and improve wherever you can.

If you have found this post useful then please do me a favour and give it a share on your favourite social media platform. Sharing is Caring.

As ever if you have any questions or want to share your own thoughts or experiences, please leave a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

With Grace and Gratitude

Karen

Please be aware that this post may contain affiliate links which means that if you click on one and then make a purchase, I will earn a commission but it will not cost you any more.

I hope that you have found this article helpful, and will use this advice to make sure that your business has everything it needs to succeed.