How to Improve Customer Service

Customer service is one of the most important departments of any business because it deals directly with its public, a company’s main asset.

For this reason, many entrepreneurs constantly look for ways to improve customer service through new strategies or using tools with this goal in mind.

Would you like to know how to improve customer service and how to improve customer satisfaction in your business? Check out the 7 tips we’ve listed below:

1. Invest in team training

Quality service demands solid work from the staff involved in the sector. Therefore, it is essential to train and make the customer service team aware of its own importance to the success of the entire business, both when making a sale and in after-sales scenarios.

Customer service employees should be well-trained. They should know that their roles have the power to dramatically increase conversion rates, which ensures growth in sales and an increase in profits.

A team unprepared to deal with the public can result in an array of negative consequences, such as complaints, loss of profits, and other serious problems.

Solution: You can provide customer service tips to your employees directly or via a customer service training platform. Ensure employees understand the consequences of poor customer service, and make sure they receive actionable ways to improve customer service with each provided tip or interaction.

2. Provide service promptly and efficiently

There’s nothing worse for consumers than slow, inefficient, and problematic service.

The image of phone plan providers, for example, has a blemished history due to overall poor service.

Thus, improving customer service means finding faster and more accurate solutions, quickly identifying the problem and providing information that will solve it.

Service as a support tool is sensitive regarding this point because consumers already feel vulnerable and impatient about the issues that affect them.

Solution: Ensure your employees have a clear idea about your key differentiators when it comes to customer service, especially when you educate them on how to improve customer service. What makes your customer service better than other companies’ customer service in the same field? Measure, educate, and market those differences, and you’ll find even more ways to improve customer service at every level.

3. Stay calm and be patient

As we explained in the previous tip, support services usually take place in situations where customers are feeling uncomfortable and looking for help to solve a problem.

In this sense, it’s quite common for staff responsible for direct interaction with the public to face situations where flexibility and patience is crucial.

Thus, knowing how to use psychological techniques to convey calmness and serenity to customers can help clarify the situation, speeding up the professional’s understanding so they can find a quick solution.

Creating conflict with a customer is an extremely unpleasant situation that must be avoided at all costs. It can only result in loss for a business. A customer’s criticism will tarnish the company’s name, especially in online forums and platforms specialized in complaints, such as Yelp.

Solution: Encourage your sales and marketing teams to create a list including your most commonly received customer service complaints. Then, create employee education, providing customer service tips on how to prevent and address these concerns. If these complaints reflect problems with your products or services, make plans to correct these issues, and empower your employees to disclose that information to your customers whenever possible.

This is one of the most transparent ways to improve customer service, and customers love it!

4. Create new communication channels

Traditional customer support conducted over the phone is still one of the most widely used channels for various types of businesses around the world.

However, this logic has been changing rapidly.

Phone calls are being replaced with internet solutions, such as messaging apps, chatbots, and social media.

In this sense, improving customer service is a task that requires updating the communication channels your business uses with your audience.

Nowadays, a brand not having at least a website and a Facebook or Instagram profile is considered inadequate.

These platforms work as an exclusive customer service channel, allowing greater flexibility and convenience for the audience, especially when a short delay in consumer service may result in great dissatisfaction.

Solution: Get organized. Make sure you log every employee-to-customer interaction, whether through phone, snail mail, email, chatbot, or social media. You need to be organized to engage customer service on multiple platforms, and customers expect interaction wherever possible. If you’re not on a social media channel like Facebook, dissatisfied customers will tell the story for you.

Use a social media monitoring service to ensure you don’t miss any negative (or positive!) remarks about your business. Negative comments can reveal how to improve customer satisfaction and ways to improve customer service.

5. Show confidence

When serving customers, professionals need to demonstrate confidence regarding their knowledge because consumers will perceive them as authorities. That’s very important to avoid customer service failures.

This means that it’s essential to convey, in the information and speech patterns, an attitude that is capable of solving, without hesitation, any type of problem that customers might have.

A confident support professional that is dedicated to providing the necessary assistance to customers is capable of winning their attention and even their admiration.

Besides these characteristics, being nice and helpful is a trait that professionals can work on to keep improving their service.

Solution: Make a content plan. With an actual content strategy that involves customer service, your customer service reps on the front line can help generate free content ideas that will then serve as customer education opportunities. If a customer can Google the answer or find it in your FAQ, you’ve discovered one of the most efficient ways to improve customer service.

6. Be sincere and transparent

The last thing customers want to feel is that they are being “jerked around.”

Nowadays, everyone knows or at least has a good idea of the fact that the work performed by customer service professionals follows a manual that addresses most of the questions asked by the audience.

Therefore, whenever customer service is about a subject that goes beyond what is covered in the manual, the professional must be sincere and transparent with customers, asking them to be patient so that the issue can be solved by someone who specializes in the subject.

Learning how to improve customer service has a lot to do with admitting your lack of knowledge sometimes. If the issue cannot be solved instantly, the support professional can adopt the same attitude and promise to contact the customer soon.

This attitude can and should be used in situations in which a customer’s explanation isn’t clear. Thus, if necessary, it’s essential to ask them to explain the situation again and provide as many details as possible.

Confirming all information about the problem in question is essential before proceeding with the customer service protocols.

Solution: Get your entire customer service team on the same page! One of the best customer service tips involves making sure all of your customer service representatives have clear, accurate information, so they can provide a roadmap and solution to the customer.

7. Focus on customer satisfaction

It isn’t always possible to meet customer requests as fast and effectively as they want. In many instances, the problems posed require a solution that takes longer, which may create initial dissatisfaction.

However, whenever possible, it is very important to make everything clear for customers regarding their requests, making them aware of the processes and steps to be taken next, and consequently, allowing for a better understanding by both parties.

Thus, as difficult as the situation might seem, this type of attitude strengthens customer satisfaction, which must always be the focus of the customer service relationship. This results in positive evaluations and a better positioning of your business regarding the audience’s perception.

Solution: You can’t improve customer satisfaction if you’re not measuring it. Survey your customers and remain open to their feedback.

8. Invest in team training

Your team is the cornerstone of a quality customer service experience.

Invest in your team, and support them with the training they need to bolster their customer service skills. Training will also allow you to provide clear customer service expectations.

Create a customer service skills list, and teach content (formally or informally) surrounding those customer service skills.

Don’t forget to ask your customer service team what they need or what they feel is missing; just like your customers, they’ll have pain points you should address.

Solution: Create a plan and timeline for customer service training. Decide on a customer service skills list and create an impactful way to help your customer service team improve customer service skills. Implement your plan — don’t just talk about it.

The knowledge you need to improve customer service

Learning how to improve customer service involves many aspects, as you’ve seen above, including good relationship skills.

However, you’ll notice that it isn’t always possible to satisfy all customers. But don’t think that one slip-up is the end of your business. You can always use a bad experience to improve.

Aren’t sure how to do this? We’ve listed 13 tips to help you deal with dissatisfied customers. Make sure you read it!