5 Tips for a Winning Customer Service Experience

Many businesses want to be customer focused, but get stuck when it comes to implementing a memorable customer service experience. A strong customer experience starts with the right training. And, many companies are turning to Learning Management Systems to ensure that service teams are trained to deliver repeatable customer service experience. Let’s face it, customer service goes a long way and could be the winning formula for repeat business, positive reviews, and increased referrals no matter what industry you’re in.

Here are 5 tips to deliver a customer service experience that’ll keep your customers coming back:

1. Know your clients needs

Before you can rush to the finish line you must prepare for the race! Companies often focus on quantity and numbers, but they sometimes fail to realize that each customer represents an opportunity to improve and leave a positive lasting impression. A recent Forbe’s article reports that more and more, customers expect companies to continually improve their customer service experience. Build rapport with your clients, get to know what they need, and how you can help them. Don’t get too caught up on the numbers. Instead, take the opportunity to offer an exceptional experience. An excellent way to achieve this goal is to conduct a pre-service inventory, filling out data on the client’s history, completing background assessments etc. Once you know the needs of your clients, you can develop a roadmap to for success and kick off a great experience starting on day one.

2. Practice active listening

Active listening begins with listening with your ears, eyes, and your heart. It takes great self awareness and practice. When you are a good listener, you create opportunities for others to be heard, to increase understanding and to establish a lasting connection. Adding this personal touch can certainly help to strengthen the customer relationship.

3. Develop an action plan

Work with the customer to create an action plan that is tailored towards achieving specific goals. When the customer is involved in the process you have a greater probability of a positive outcome. Clear communication is an essential step to ensure that everyone is on the same page concerning services offered and client expectations.

4. Team up and collaborate

Your customer experience is not only up to your the customer success or account management teams. Team work is the key to executing a cohesive customer experience. Keep track of the clients initial challenges and objectives. Why did they hire you in the first place? This should be well documented included in your success metrics for managing the account. From sales to customer service, every person who engages with the client should be able to reference the notes and understand the status of the account. Keeping all parties in the loop is the best way to ensure that you are meeting your client’s needs and creating an exceptional customer service experience.

5. Get feedback and follow-up

This is one of the most crucial steps in a good customer service experience. Despite what others might assume, no news is not always good news. When people have a negative or poor customer experience, you might not hear anything until you read a negative review online. People are not always comfortable with confrontation and may never tell you they’re unhappy. But, they’ll never return to your business and will definitely never refer others. Getting feedback is not easy, but it will give you an idea of what areas need improvement. If you receive a negative review, talk to the customer, conduct an investigation, review current policies, and address the issues. The key to regaining trust in your clients is to follow-up once the issues and areas have been identified and make recommendations towards change. Another way to engage previous clients is to offer incentives to reengage.

Conclusion

Mindflash is very focused on creating amazing customer service experiences. Our goal is to help every customer be successful. We regularly track feedback on review sites like Capterra and routinely check in with customers to make sure we’re exceeding expectations. And, we’re still working on it! Hopefully, these tips help you on your way to making your clients happy and productive. Then, repeat business and customer referrals are sure to follow.

Keisha Stoute is a content curator with 11 years of business experience in a number of industries. She is also an adjunct professor, empowerment writer, well respected professional mediator and principal trainer at Stoute Communications.

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