Stepping Up Customer Service in a Slow Economy

It doesn’t matter whether your business sells products or provides services; customer service is essential. Unfortunately, all it takes is a quick one minute trip around the Internet to see consumers complaining about a lack of customer service or receiving terrible customer service from businesses large and small. With review websites and social media being popular outlets for consumers to vent on, it’s pretty easy to see which companies are providing great customer service these days and which ones could use a little work.

Why is Customer Service Important?

There’s a business myth out there that leads some businesses into believing that consumers will only buy a product or service from the company who offers it at the lowest price, however this is not always true. Consumers are looking to get the most value for their money even if that means paying a little bit more.

The Internet has changed the way in which companies need to deal with customer service issues. Make a mistake and all it takes is a few keystrokes for your business to have a reputation for providing bad customer service – a reputation that may be seen by hundreds, thousands or even millions of Internet users and potential customers. Consumers are also calling on companies to be more transparent with their customer service online.

How to Step Up Customer Service to Stand Out

If your business can provide top level customer service and do it better than other companies in your industry; consumers will remember. Here are a few tips to help get you started:

• Make sure that customer service is consistent across the board. It’s very frustrating for consumers and clients when they are given different answers or are given different levels of treatment.
• Provide training opportunities to your customer service staff so that they are up to date on their skills.
• Make sure that customer service staff are fluent in the technology that they are required to use for their job. This may mean providing email training, social media training and/or computer training.
• Look at complaints that either your own company has received or that your competitors have received regarding customer service issues to figure out what the consumer wants and how to improve.
• Research how customers have been contacting you. For example, if most of your customers make contact via email, it’s important to put time and effort into making sure that there are good policies in place for how to respond and response times.

Customer service is a part of business where it’s very easy to become complacent and fall into a rut. The customer service team has a stressful job to do, especially when customers feel as though they were not treated fairly. By providing proper training, making sure that the staff know how to use the technology that’s in place and researching how your customers want to receive customer service, you’ll have the information needed to help you improve your customer service to set your business apart.