Power to the People: Ten Important Elements Customers Expect to Get From Customer Service
In the world of business and commerce, the image and reputation of a company is often determined by their customer service and how they are able to accommodate the needs or issues of their clientele. It’s something that businesses everywhere strive to perfect considering that they rely heavily on the continuing patronage of their customers, and one wrong move could potentially destroy the relationship they’ve worked so hard to build with their clients. In essence, companies live and die by their level of customer service.
Regardless of the size, scale, and the type of industry that a particular company belongs to, a business must always be conscious of how they deal with customers so that they could find ways to improve their products or services. Companies cannot hope to succeed and attain their goals if they merely depend on the strength of their assets; they should also consider the influence of their consumers since they are the ones who control the purchasing power, and losing that power means they’ll be facing certain failure.
That being said, a lot of companies often struggle with getting their customer service right since they are often bombarded with a combined deluge of customer inquiries, complaints, and compliments on a daily basis. So if you’re an entrepreneur looking to fine-tune the nitty-gritty of your customer service, then you need to take some key points to heart. There are several elements that customers expect from businesses if they have to deal with customer service, so look to the helpful information featured below for more details.
Competence
Nothing upsets customers more than hearing that a customer service representative does not know what they’re doing. Whenever people call or email someone for help, they expect that the person who’ll be giving them the answers they need is someone who is competent and qualified to address their myriad concerns.
As such, you should train your customer service staff to be fully prepared for whatever issues they may be asked to resolve. Always bear in mind that it’s easy to lose customers while it’s equally hard to keep them, so make the effort to really work hard and ensure that your employees can competently handle your customers with confidence and skill.
Reliability
Customers won’t stay with a company or a business unless they are able to provide reliable service on a consistent basis. People don’t like it when they purchase something that’s being advertised in one way but end up getting something else in reality. That kind of deception can easily shatter trust, and customers will really sound off on that issue.
No company is ever perfect despite their best efforts, so whenever mistakes pop up and your customers point that out, you have to ensure that the solutions you provide should be reliable enough that they won’t have to keep coming back to complain about the same thing over and over. Doing this will guarantee that your clients will be satisfied.
Professionalism
The patronage of customers forms the very lifeblood of any business, and they deserve all the respect from your end. Even when a customer is unreasonably angry or hysterical when confronting your staff with their complaints, you must remember to never lose sight of maintaining the level of respect, and being professional is a surefire way of doing that.
No matter what kind of insulting or other hurtful things customers may throw your way, you should remember that this is part of the job and that you should never take such negative words personally. Always remain calm and composed in the face of turmoil so that clients will eventually see that you are listening to them and that you care about their problems.
Immediacy
Whenever a problem is being raised by a customer, they expect to have results delivered at the soonest possible time. From their perspective, any sort of delay is unacceptable information. Thefefore, you should make it a point to have customer issues resolved at a reasonable timeframe that will appease your clients and avoid earning their ire.
Since you have full knowledge of how your business operates, it is your duty to inform customers on how long it would take to resolve a variety of concerns depending on their level of severity or urgency. Whenever possible, always placate clients if they are not agreeable to the timeframe and attempt to reach a suitable compromise.
Access
People like it when they are able to make businesses aware of their grievances without having to jump through a lot of hoops in order to make their voices heard. By that logic, you’ll be setting yourself up for failure if you are unable to provide your clients with a direct line of access to your customer service team to help with their various concerns.
In this modern day and age where technology is constantly evolving at a rapid rate, you have no excuse to offer your customers a broad range of options on reaching your customer service representatives. Use whatever means necessary—i.e. phone, email, chat support, social media—to ensure that your clients can easily reach you with no problems.
Clarity
Customers don’t like it when they are bombarded with so much jargon in order to resolve their problems. Keeping things simple and clear is the only way that you’ll be able to help your clients without them getting even more frustrated in the process. Whenever you’re able to relay information in layman’s terms, clients will thank you dearly for your efforts.
It’s essential to teach your customer service team on how to provide instructions or information that isn’t too technical so that the details will be easily understood by the average customer. You should never expect that all customers are able to understand things on the first try, so always keep things simple and clear when communicating.
Transparency
If there’s one thing that customers really hate when dealing with customer service, it’s that they don’t like being lied to whenever they demand answers to a pressing problem on their hands. This is why a company must always implement a considerable level of transparency in order to ensure that their clients will feel like their issues are being taken seriously.
Things can get pretty awkward and ugly really fast if a business is caught hiding things from their clients, especially if those things are integral to solving important problems. To avoid this unfortunate situation, you must always take preemptive measures by telling your customers what you know and that you’ll keep them updated for further developments.
Legitimacy
Part of the reason why you need to be attentive with your customer service is because this helps augment the credibility of your business to wary consumers. Customer service isn’t just about helping people with their problems, but it’s also a chance for businesses to aid curious individuals about letting them know what they are and what they can offer to them.
When you’re able to provide an impressive level of satisfaction to customers in need of your assistance, then that only serves to boost your reputation in a positive light. And that’s another thing that you have to bear in mind at the end of the day: people are more likely to show their support to businesses when their reputation is shown to be strong and positive.
Security
People are sometimes uncomfortable dealing with customer service because part of the process involves identity verification which entails the disclosure of private and personal information. As the customer service provider, it is your responsibility to reassure your customers that everything they tell you is strictly kept confidential and tightly secured.
Remember that your clients are putting their faith and trust in your business by providing you with their personal details, so you should reciprocate by ensuring that whatever information you have on your clients will not be divulged to others. The assurance of security is something that will help you improve your committment to customer service.
Tangibility
Part of delivering desired results to disgruntled clients is showing them that you can make good on your promises with tangible proof. Most people are not inclined to believe your assurances unless they are able to see the solution with their own eyes. And make no mistake: customers really do pay attention to details like this, so you need to be careful.
For instance: if you say that you are going to replace a defective product and have it delivered to a customer’s home address within a specified timeframe, then you have to do everything in your power to ensure that the replacement will arrive safe and sound and on time. Customers will surely give you a positive rating if you are able to walk your talk.
