How to Improve Your Business's Customer Service

Stellar customer service is vital to success. Learn how to enhance your customers' experience with Click4Assistance's live chat for small businesses.

In the era of the experience economy, customer service is more important than ever. Today, businesses in the UK lose over £37 billion a year due to poor customer service, and just under 30% of consumers report leaving a brand if they are unhappy about how their complaint or query was handled. However, today, over 60% of companies compete on customer experience, always finding new ways to win over customers' loyalty.

So, if your business is just entering the competition, it can seem overwhelming to find new and unexplored ways to make the customer experience you offer stand out from the noise. At Click4Assistance, we leverage over 15 years of experience in automated, AI-powered communication to help you find the right customer service strategy for your organisation. Here are some tips for implementing today.

Train Your Talents

As the owner, you have poured your heart and soul into ensuring that your business can thrive. As a result, you are likely to know your product, service, and audience inside out, and you always know how to fix an issue when it arises.

But as your audience grows, you won't be able to keep putting out fires - you will need to focus on driving your business forward! So, you will need a customer service team that you can trust.

And, since your customers are likely to approach your business for support when they have an issue, your team must be ready to provide knowledge and solutions. For this, they must know the product as well as you do. So, invest in providing training sessions, workshops, mentoring programmes, and internal opportunities to allow your talents to develop their skills and knowledge. Remember, a customer looking for help will be after a direct, clear answer to their problem!

Integrate Your Systems

Just under 70% of Millennial consumers today expect a business's customer service to be seamless, integrated, and multichannel. From social media to in-app chats, chatbots, and live video streaming, ensure that the data you collect is accessible by the right teams.

This allows your employees to continue a conversation with the customers no matter where it started.

Be Consistent Throughout Your Touchpoints

Your customer service won't be delivered through a single channel. From the first moment a user notices your brand and starts to build awareness, they will undergo several touchpoints that need to be consistent. These can include emails; messages exchanged on a live chat, phone calls, and even social media interaction. To streamline these touchpoints, you need to establish a brand voice and stick to it.

When doing so, your customer service team needs to know that a customer will be looking to find support in a person who understands their issues and can empathise with them.

Each Customer Is Different

Not two customers will react in the same way to the help or instructions you provide. For some, a concise answer is everything that's needed. However, others might need more help and support.

Additionally, not all customers will approach your business with the same mindset, and it is important for your staff not to take a conversation personally. After all, a customer might be angry, frustrated, or annoyed - but they are not so against a customer service operator! Understanding their issues and dealing with them with empathy and patience are vital aspects of customer service. Finally, don't forget to lead by example!

Listen to Them

Listening to your customers is not only about asking them whether their issue was resolved. That is why having a strategy to capture the Voice of Customer (VoC) is vital to understand more of what they expect, desire, prefer and don't like. And, the feedback does not have to necessarily come through as a survey at the end of your interaction!

You can train your staff to ask more about your customers' experience and even implement an area on your website dedicated to learning more about what your customers want. Suggestion boxes and spaces where your users can suggest what they would like to see next on your site are great ways to understand more of your audience's expectations.

Open Several Channels of Communication

Not all customers will be willing to use the same communication channels - make sure not to close any door they might be using! Some demographics might feel at ease getting in touch through your social media channels, direct messages, and comments. However, others might still prefer more formal communication channels such as emails.

And, as mobile traffic increases and overtakes the traffic coming from laptops or tablets, ensure that your communication channels are accessible from mobiles. Features such as a live chat for small businesses and live-video streaming solutions can be valid alternatives.

Don't Let Them Wait for an Answer.

Information is becoming increasingly fast and accessible - don't miss out on the chance to provide great customer service and win over the loyalty of yet another customer! Letting someone wait for help, or an answer will reflect negatively on your brand. It might even encourage your users to click off your site and look for answers somewhere else. And, this is likely to translate into a lost customer!

Ensure you have enough employees in your customer service team to provide the service you wish to offer - or automate your customer communication!

Introduce Online Communication Tools

AI-powered online communication tools such as live chat for small businesses, live-video chats, and chatbots allow you to connect with your customers in real-time. As a result, your business won't only benefit from streamlined and consistent customer service, but it will also help you gather vital data about your audience.

Thanks to automated features, you can be sure that any query from your customers is processed immediately and from anywhere in the world. So regardless of your business's mission and growth goals, you can trust in a reliable, scalable, and user-friendly tool that helps you establish long-lasting relationships with your customers.

Deliver a Stellar Customer Service With Click4Assistance

Here at Click4Assistance, our team of researchers and developers have more than 15 years of experience in the field of online communication. Thanks to this experience, we can provide bespoke, entirely integrated, and fully featured online communication solutions for any business in any industry. Learn more about enhancing your customer service by getting in touch at 0845 123 5871. Alternatively, book a demo or sign up for a free trial today and enhance your customer experience with a bespoke online communication solution.