59%. That’s the percentage of customers and buyers who have higher expectations from customer service than what they had a year ago. It’s stats like these that make us label customer service as god, while customers remain the kings. But what exactly is a great customer service?

It’s simply the assistance and advice given by the company to people who are buying and using their products and services. Simple, isn’t it? Not exactly. The reason is the tremendous competition between companies to provide best-in-class customer service.

Companies and even conglomerates today are investing massively to improve the quality of service they provide to their customers, and they’re prioritizing great customer service over parameters like their product and pricing! But why is customer service so important? What strategy can I use for my business to deliver great customer service? We’ve answered all this and much more in this blog.
Just keep reading!

Why is Great Customer Service So Important For Every Business?

Before that, ask yourself this question: What does good customer service mean to you? 

And, when you find an answer, ask yourself again: What is good customer service? You’ll have the answer. Putting yourself in the shoes of your customers is the best strategy!

It’s important because great customer service generates revenue! Yes, when leaders in an organization understand that customer service is a lynchpin in the entire customer journey, they delight them with service that makes them happy. A happy customer will pay more and will enthusiastically spread the word about your products and service.

This would potentially bring new customers, hence more revenue. Plus, when you have great customer service, your customers remain loyal because more than the product, they’re a fan of your service and easy interactions. And the year 2020 showed exactly why loyal customers are necessary to build a thriving business.

Here’s a customer service questionnaire created using SurveySparrow…

To create similar customer service questionnaires or surveys, you can sign up for free on SurveySparrow.

Buffer, the social media scheduling software, follows this word-of-mouth strategy aggressively. So, instead of going out and telling everyone about how amazing they and their services are, they just let people and customers come to them with their problems or questions and answer them as fast as they can. People get happy with their service, and they go out saying good things about them. That’s the way Buffer is growing, and their rate of growth went further upward, which is exceptional!

Read More: High Touch Customer Service: A Guide to Exceptional Customer Experiences

How To Give Amazing Customer Service?

After reading everything we’ve discussed till now, you will have this question in your mind. Well, it’s the right thing to ask because based on experiences and examples, you want to bring changes to provide good customer service in your organization.

But the times ahead of us would be different because of how things changed. Yes, Covid brought a massive shift in how businesses operate and how customers respond to it. Providing stellar and great customer service is still of utmost importance, which is why we’re sharing the 7-step strategy to help you.

Let’s not keep you waiting anymore!

1. Embrace The Change

This is the first step towards providing the kind of service that mesmerizes your customers. You got to embrace the changes that took place in 2020. The entire world, including your customers and employees, started shifting towards the ‘WFH’ way of working.

Now after the pandemic, everyone is going back to their old routine. Change is inevitable and people are still adapting to it. Nobody knows how quickly they can do that. But this is where you have to think long-term and take small steps toward getting your customer service efforts streamlined again.

A good starting point would be to train your employees and teams on the enhanced importance of great customer service going forward. Why? Because 86% of buyers will pay more for getting great customer service!

You can command higher or even premium prices if your employees are giving customers the best possible service and support. Plus, when you train your employees to do their job well while working from home, they feel more involved which helps them grow and perform better. So, why won’t they keep the customers happy with their service and support?

2. Review The Old Process

If your company or the organization that you’re a part of, were following a customer service process in the recent past, then you must review the entire process to understand what you’ve already done for your customers. This way, you’ll understand what worked and what didn’t in the past. You will also get to know what process took the most time, and why. Here are some more answers you’ll get after this review:

• What was your customer’s feedback on your past strategy?
• How well did your team respond to it?
• What technology and software did your team require?
• Which team and how many employees were involved in it?
• What was the increase in the company’s financials after implementing this strategy?

Now, once you’re done with these questions, sit down with your teams and take their opinions on this past process. Ask them about the good and the bad. Once you document everything, you will know exactly what you have to do with your customer service strategy. And you would be on the right track toward building one that gives the right results.

3. Set The Right KPIs

Any strategy works best only when your customer service team is working towards some specified metrics. Otherwise, they would have no aim from all their interactions, and you won’t get anything definitive from it.

Organizations in the past have made mistakes by not setting the right KPIs for their customer service process, and we don’t want you to do the same. So, here are a few good customer service process KPIs that would allow you to get more out of the entire process.

• Number of tickets resolved
• Time taken to resolve queries
• Number of repeat queries
• Types of queries generated
• Number of queries resolved per concerned team member
• Number of customer complaints after receiving service
• Customer feedback post receiving service
• Month-on-month query increments
• Percentage of queries not serviced
• Net Promoter Score

These are the top KPIs that would make your customer service team’s life easier. Now, not each of these would apply to your business and you might even need to add a few more to this list. But the aim remains the same! You want to give the best customer service to your buyers, and KPIs would certainly help you do that.

4. Get in Touch With Your Customers

This is where the real work begins because your team starts interacting with the customers to address their queries, confusion, and pain points regarding your services and products.

You can, and you should have an omnichannel presence to give better and quicker services to your customers. In fact, in their 2020 report, PWC found that the number of companies investing in the omnichannel experience has jumped from 20% to over 80%. Even the customers and buyers want the same, as nearly 50% of them expect a response to social media questions or complaints within an hour, and 18% of them expect an immediate response.

After you get in touch with your customers through the different touchpoints, it’s important to get their feedback and do the analysis.

Why?

According to Gartner’s research, companies that successfully implement customer experience projects begin by focusing on how they collect and analyze customer feedback. SurveySparrow’s NPS software does a wonderful job of providing rich insights about your customers based on the feedback collected. The platform also lets you create a no-code chatbot exclusive to your website.

You should definitely check it out.

5. Develop Customer Personas

Do you know what’s the biggest stumbling block in providing great customer service? The different types of customers! It’s impossible for your customer service representative and team to hear from customers of the same type throughout the day. However, there are some similarities among them, which can separate them under different buyer personas.

What are buyer personas?

These are audience coalescence boiled down to a single person who is often fictional. You use this person to represent a portion of your audience, predicting their future behavior based on real data.

Once you’re done separating different customers under different behavioral personas, search for their demographics and other important information before finally compiling this information in a series of personas.

A copy of this compiled personas would then be given to everyone on your customer service team, so they can anticipate customer questions and deliver excellent responses to solve their queries.

With the massive importance that buyers are giving to proper customer service, this step would increase the efficiency of the process and save tremendous amounts of time for your team. And you want that, don’t you?

6. Don’t Overpromise

The pandemic brought a massive change for everyone, and the change happened quickly. One day, your employees were closing raised tickets from your customers, but the very next day, they were working from home and didn’t have the data and information to reply quickly.

A lot of mistakes happened during this transition. You must have lost some customers along the way, but those who are still there understand your situation very well. They know how you and your teams are giving their best to give them good customer service in these unprecedented times, which means you can be absolutely honest with them.

Yes, you don’t need to say what you can’t do. It is better to not set a delivery date and deliver tomorrow than assuring to deliver tomorrow and then not doing it.

So, as a leader, ask your customer service teams to be honest and transparent with the customers. Your customers would appreciate that wholeheartedly because they’re the loyal ones, who understand that your team is only human!

7. Appreciate Your Employees

This goes without saying, right? A genuine appreciation is all that your customer service team needs from you. We’re not asking you to go out of your way for this but to genuinely show your employees that you’re grateful for how well they’re doing their jobs.

Mental health and wellness have been a topic of discussion throughout the pandemic. 42% of employees reported that their stress levels were very high because of events, personal finances, and job responsibilities. This can happen again.

In such tough times, this small and genuine appreciation would go a long way in keeping your employees mentally happy and sound. And a happy employee would keep your customers happy with his great customer service. That’s the aim, right?

Let’s Give You 5 Ready-to-Use Customer Service Email Templates

Emails are a quite common communication channel used by customer service representatives every day, and they get it wrong a lot of the time! And that sends a wrong message to the customers, who might spread their negative sentiments about you and hurt your brand.

But don’t worry, we’ve covered 5 different customer service email templates here, that can be directly used to mail your buyers. So, have a read, use it, and thank us later!

1. Replying to a Customer Complaint

This is often the hardest thing to do, as you have to humbly accept the problem, be apologetic about it, and make them feel valued. Here’s what you can use.

2. Providing The Answer to a Query

The tone should be positive here, as you’re providing good news, after all. Here’s what you can use.

3. The Follow-Up Email

Following up with your customers is as important as providing solutions to their problems because it shows that you care about them, and want them to have no complaints from your side. Here’s what you can use.

4. Asking Your Customer For Feedback on a Purchase

This is one of the most common emails where organizations make mistakes. They start sounding sales-focused promoting more of their products when they just have to come out positive and friendly. Here’s what you can use.

5. Thanking a Customer For Positive Feedback

This email is to reply to the positive feedback you receive from your customers. Respond to their feedback enthusiastically. Here’s what you can use.

Wrapping it up…

The 7-step strategy and these customer service email templates would set you on the right track toward delivering good if not great customer service. Now, use this strategy and change it as per your organization’s need and according to the demographics you’re operating in.

Your customers don’t want to just be another account for you. They want to be treated with respect and as someone who has immense value. So, whatever strategy you finalize, make sure your teams are giving each one of them the service they deserve. And don’t forget to let us know how it’s working or worked out for you. We’d love to know about your experience. Keep delivering value!

Kate Williams

Content Marketer at SurveySparrow