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One of the most unlucky the reason why customers may leave your organization (“churn”) is lapses in customer service and customer experience that discourage and drive customers away.
These customer service deficiencies are often exacerbated during times of rapid company growth. Providing improbable service is quite easy if you simply have a few customers. However, when a company’s customer base begins to grow, the attention and attention given to each customer tends to decrease.
Employees now not sign their thanks cards in person. Instead of contacting VIP or long-term clients directly, managers were confined to their offices, burdened with increasing amounts of paperwork. Phone calls are answered slowly and inconsistently, leading to longer than expected customer response times. When answers do come, they are often abrupt and impersonal. Additionally, recruitment standards were lowered and notes in the customer relationship management (CRM) system lost some of their original detail and complexity. Managers are often unable to resolve conflicts with customers because they are just too busy.
Is this lowering the standards of something that can’t be avoided? Absolutely not – so long as you refocus your attention and resolutely maintain your commitment to offering exceptional customer service. The tenet is this: if you do something for your first customer, you would like to find a way to proceed doing it for your 10,000th customer, without rushing, without cutting corners, and without doing anything that may persuade the customer that your organization doesn’t value them.
Generally speaking, a growing company is more like a supplier of products than it appears. If you wish to keep your online business from ending up in the trash bin where you are seen as completely interchangeable with other suppliers, you would like to make it a priority to offer excellent customer service in every customer interaction.
Here are five key actions to assist you get back on track.
1. Look for any violations of customer service standards
How quickly do you answer calls? Your standard must be three rings. Why? According to research by the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, after the fourth ring, guests will begin to worry that you simply won’t answer at all or that you simply won’t be polite if you do.
How quickly do you respond to emails? In today’s society, the “within 24 hours” requirement is unacceptable; this equates to 36 years of time spent online. Instead, commit to answering each query that very same morning or afternoon. Do you receive inquiries on your website? You could also be surprised to discover that they often go unanswered. They should receive the same attention as emails.
2. Create a company lexicon
This lexicon (phrasebook) must be stuffed with the preferred customer service language that employees should use, in addition to phrases they need to avoid. Some phrases that may immediately turn off your customers may include: “No problem”, “Let me agree”, “I won’t argue with you”, (*5*) and “Calm down.” Employees should all the time use polite phrases akin to “You’re welcome” and “My pleasure.”
3. Develop your situational empathy skills
Improving and maintaining high levels of customer service requires training in situational empathy. Also called “customer service empathy,” it allows an worker to engage with consumers repeatedly through phone calls and emails.
4. Adapt service training to the specificity of the market in which your organization operates
For example, if your clients are high-net-worth individuals, some transformational concepts and practices are unique to them. Similarly, patient experience training can save lives in the medical field.
Understanding the unique needs and expectations of those customers can significantly improve service delivery and foster long-term relationships.
5. Meet them at their current location
When your customer base is growing rapidly, you wish to make every effort to provide convenient communication that permits customers to select the channel and switch it at any time when they need. They should have the ability to easily and conveniently text you in the morning, tweet you in the evening, and call you when needed.
If you communicate with customers across different platforms, consumers shouldn’t have to repeat information they’ve already provided on one other channel. They actually hate doing it. Choosing the right CRM (customer relationship management system) can assist you avoid the dreaded query: “Could you tell me your credit card number again?” charade. Some CRM solutions are “conversational”, meaning they’ll proceed the conversation when the customer goes from X to Y.