Lifestyle: Business - 10 Best Practices of Customer Service Management

Without question, there are certain practices that companies with great customer servicing have in common with one another. We recommend Customer Experience Measurement (CEM) to help you find out the state of your business’ customer service and know exactly how to improve it. We want to help you get started by giving you these best practices, so you can make some initial improvements as soon as possible.

1. Keep a profile or record of your customers

Find out more about your customers. Know their face, birthdays, contact information, and preferences and use them to make them feel more comfortable. Greet them by their names upon seeing them, let them know when a product they like is available, greet them on their birthdays, and offer them products or services that are suitable to their needs.

2. Have a checklist on FAQs and questions that should be asked to customers

This is a perfect and fail-safe training tool that you can arm your staff with. By knowing what to tell customers immediately, your staff will be able to calmly and effectively handle questions without having to make the customers wait. Giving them questions to ask the clients also helps standardize customer service for your staff.

3. Support off-peak hours and weekends

One of the most frustrating situations that customers can go through is for things to go wrong and you are not there to help them. Give them a way to contact you or, at least, give them any kind of support that you can give during these off-peak times. Being able to give them a response whenever they need it is a big plus to them which will help with customer loyalty and word-of-mouth.

4. Ensure timely responses
Just as the previous point states, timely responses are very crucial to proper customer servicing. Given this, you should ensure that replies to questions, whether online or face-to-face are given as quickly as possible. For face-to-face interactions, don’t pass the customer around when they’re asking you a question. As much as possible, try to be able to answer all of their concerns. The last thing they want is to explain their situation again to another person and wait even more for their query to be answered. For online, let the people know that you’re attentive. Don’t make them feel they aren’t important to you because it’s taking you forever to respond or, worse, because you decided to ignore them completely.

5. Align with your staff on what excellent customer service is

It’s important for you to not just tell your staff what needs to be done, but you also have to share with them WHY it’s important. It’s only when everyone is aligned with the bigger picture that your customer servicing gets carried out as a business-wide standard. Give them examples on how to deal with various situations. Set them all on the right direction and help them see and understand the path you want to take.

6. Reward exceptional behaviour in your staff

Don’t just punish negative behaviour. Always remember to take time to reward positive ones, especially those that are EXCEPTIONAL. Make the reward significant and known to everyone so that people know what behaviour to follow and what attitudes to keep.

7. Master the Follow-Up

Follow-ups shouldn’t just come from the customer but from the staff as well. Follow-up with customers to show them that you were truly interested in what they were doing or what they’re dealing with. For example, if they called you to ask for help with a certain problem, be sure to give them a call back to ask if things were resolved.

8. Show genuine love for your customers

First of all, if your love for your customers isn’t genuine, reality will reveal itself one way or another. So don’t think of how annoying the customer is or how demanding they are because that emotion will manifest itself in one of your unguarded moments. Also, in everything you do, always think of how things could be easier for the customer and if you can make them even more comfortable. Lastly, figure out ways on how to make them feel important.

9. Be accessible

Be where the customer needs you to be. Make sure that there is always someone attending to your customer in-store. If it’s online, make sure that you are easily searchable and that ways to contact you are there as well.

10. Don’t forget the MANAGEMENT in Customer Service Management

Be sure to take an active role in managing the quality of your customer service. You need to set guidelines and goals for your staff and the business as a whole. Make sure that the goals you set are measureable. Most important of all, make sure that training for this is constant.

Should you need more information, you may leave a comment below. :)