Offering the best customer service you can is essential for any business that wants to succeed. However, it can seem that a lot of companies do struggle, and find it incredibly difficult to maintain high levels all the time.
But there are ways that you can make sure your service is great, and they don’t have to be especially large changes to your operations either. Things as simple as providing omnichannel customer service could make all the difference.
If you want more tips like this, keep reading and discover how you can avoid bad customer service in 2023!
Meet Expectations
It’s crucial that you meet the expectations that you set out for your customers. Otherwise, no matter how good the service ends up being when they eventually receive it, all they’ll remember is that you couldn’t get back to them when you said you would.
Make sure that if you give your customers a certain amount of time that you’ll contact them back, and do everything in your power to hit that deadline. This also means that if your SLA is unachievable, then you need to change it fast.
Don’t promise that you can respond within an hour if that’s physically impossible. Instead, manage their expectations and offer them a realistic SLA that you can meet. Your service levels will improve immensely, just by managing your customer’s expectations better.
Demonstrate Top Notch Data Security
In this day and age, data security is extremely important. Just about everything we do online requires our personal data, so it’s vital that businesses handle it with extreme care. Being able to demonstrate to your customers that you can protect their information, shows that you value and respect them as a people.
If you aren’t able to properly protect their data, your customers will soon notice, and you’ll be in for a whole long list of complaints. This also means you need to be careful when discussing things over the phone, email, or live chat.
Following security protocols easily demonstrates to the customer that you won’t just give out their information to anyone claiming to be you. So, make sure you protect their data effectively, and your customers will be a lot happier with the service you provide.
Enhanced Availability
You don’t have to be available 24/7, but expanding your hours is a great way to avoid bad customer service. If you’re only open on weekdays and during office hours, a lot of customers will find it impossible to contact you as they’ll be working too.
Offering inclusive contactable hours will really make all the difference to the level of service that you provide, and your customers will appreciate it a lot. It’s also a good idea to implement different ways of contacting you as well.
Only having a telephone number can mean you cut out a lot of potential contact with customers, causing them to feel excluded from the service you provide. Make sure you encourage all of your customers to contact you, and with enhanced availability, you’ll definitely avoid giving bad customer service.
Take Accountability
Something that’s incredibly important when trying to provide excellent customer service is accountability. Being able to show your customers that they can rely on you when they need to will really help improve your service. When a customer complains, don’t take it personally, and instead actively listen and work to ensure you resolve it.
Take ownership of the incident and admit if you were in the wrong. Being understanding can be just as important to your customers, so always make sure you see things from their point of view as well. There will be times when things do go wrong and it’s the business’s fault, but it’s how you deal with it that determines whether or not you provide good customer service or not.
Whenever you get something like that to come through, take accountability right away and show your customer how you’re working hard to fix it, and ensure it doesn’t happen again. You can’t avoid complaints, but how you process them will make all the difference.
Providing the best customer service you can doesn’t have to be an impossible dream that you feel your business can’t reach. With a little effort and understanding, it can actually be quite easy to achieve. Avoiding bad customer service is going to be one of your biggest priorities, as there’s nothing quite like it to bring a business to its knees. So, make sure you utilize these tips on a daily basis, and you’ll soon see an improvement in the service you provide.
