Keeping your customers happy is essential to running a successful business, but many entrepreneurs forget to factor customer service into their day-to-day workload. Falling behind on looking after your customers’ needs and failing to resolve their problems can be really detrimental in the long run. From bad reviews to fewer conversions, there’s no telling how poor customer service could negatively impact your venture.
If you’ve been looking for ways to improve your customer service, this article has some top tips you can use to make sure every visitor to your business is as happy as possible.
Efficient payments
Whether customers are paying in-person or online, it’s important to provide them with a quick and easy way to complete their transactions. Now that card payments are increasingly becoming the norm, having something like this bluetooth card reader will help customers to make purchases much more easily. The last thing you want is to be turning customers away because they just don’t have any cash on them. If you also have a website where you’re selling products or services then you’ll want to set up a secure payment portal to make sure personal details are protected.
Listen to feedback
It’s tempting to disregard negative feedback, but if you’ve been receiving a lot of negative reviews or messages with valid comments and complaints, it’s important to listen. For example, if parcels are arriving much later than you said they would, it’s time to take a look at whether your shipping provider is doing its job. Customers might also be finding it hard to navigate certain pages of your website, or maybe your app is crashing every few minutes. Whatever the complaints are, it’s always worth responding and looking into the issue to maintain a positive customer experience.
Collect data
Collecting customer data will really help you to deliver higher-quality service. Sometimes customers might not take the time to write a review or let you know what they thought of their shopping experience, which is why it’s important to do some legwork yourself. This could mean monitoring email open rates or even sending around surveys. Sometimes prompting customers to leave a star rating after making a payment can give you insight into how easy your site is to use.
Communicate
The key to having fewer complaints is effective communication. While customer service is often seen as reactive, you can also serve your audience with preventative measures. Try to make your website as clear as possible, clearly listing delivery times and costs and making any terms and conditions easy to find. Customers will often reach out when they’re struggling to find the information they need or when they misunderstand what’s on your website. While you might think trying to conceal the fact that your delivery times are very slow will help to drive sales, it will actually breed dissatisfaction once customers realise what’s going on.
Once you get the hang of it, customer service will feel like second nature, so get started with these tips today.
