In the past, I had written a blog about how to NOT perform customer service and gave some examples of large companies that in my opinion didn’t have customer service perfected yet. Unfortunately many companies big and small struggle with proper customer service daily. There is a fine line between potentially hurting your business and offering top of the line customer service. You have to remember, your company must be in business to actually offer customer service so you can’t just give into everything. But that is not really what it is all about anyway, and typically most customers and businesses can have a great partnership and work together to solve any challenge. Here are 3 quick tips for achieving the best customer service your company can offer.
My Take on Proper Customer Service
- Training your customer service team to understand what you value as a company and how to best help your customers with empathy is the most important thing you can do. Entering and order and process returns should be the last thing you train them to do.
- Customer Service is a part of your sales / marketing success. They are the front line of your company and should never be viewed as just an administrative function. You can not be successful in growing your business or even maintaining your relationships with current business if your customer service is not up to par and handled correctly. Customers now hold the power in business and you must operate that way.
- You must view your customer service team, policies and department is part of your big picture future. You can not judge the department by single orders, returns or daily line items. You must give that department the ability and empowerment to think long term and big picture. What will it really hurt at the end of the day if you lose on a few orders here and there? Would you rather have happy loyal customers that will help with long-term large success or short term profit maximizing views that could put your future business in jeopardy?