The Power of Professional Customer Service
Customer service today is more important than ever. The number of customer touchpoints have radically increased in the last decade or so. Customers are increasing expecting an Omnichannel experience. This puts immense pressure on customer service personnel since they always have to put their best foot forward. Brand loyalty can evaporate within no time if customer service cannot keep up with the incessant demands of the customers.
There is also good reason for brand promoters to rejoice those who are doing customer service the professional way. It garners instant customer delight and improves customer satisfaction turning those customers into brand influencers and advocates. The human touch in customer interactions is fast disappearing and that is where your brand can make a difference by providing the customer service representatives with the right training and equipping them with the right skill sets.
The “people skills” that your customer service personnel carry is invaluable. It portrays your organization in a conducive way, develops a certain rapport with your customers, gains their much-needed trust, enhances customer relationship and gives your brand a definitive competitive advantage. All this is possible when your customer service is professional and customer-centric.
In today’s increasingly competitive world it pays to devote as much attention to the customers as possible. How your customers are treated has a direct bearing on how your organization performs. The way customers are handled has a direct consequence on the top line of the company. Thus it pays to handle customer relationships in the utmost professional way, gaining their trust, respect, loyalty in order to improve customer relationships and grow your business.
Some of the points to cogitate when servicing the customers:
- Provide a service that is fast, of highest quality and resolves customer queries
- Improve customer credibility by delivering what you promised at the outset
- Handling stressful customer situations by thinking on the fly and providing innovative solutions
- Learning more about the customers beforehand in order to serve them better
- Providing the necessary inputs regarding who to approach, what is the time-frame for query resolution and so on
- Thinking from the customer’s point of view and excelling at servicing them better
- Having a pleasant, enthusiastic and helpful conduct and outlook when dealing with customers
- Having the knack to deal with fussy, irate and tough-to-please customers
- Responding to customer behavior positively to make them feel right at home
How you respond to customers and the kind of enthusiasm you carry can make a lot of difference to your customers. At the end of the day customers want real people to deal with their queries, anxieties and concerns. More users are happy when they actually interact with people since it puts a human angle to the whole interaction.
Key Takeaway: Regardless of how top-quality or highly affordable your product or service is, without the backing of a sound customer service it won’t amount to much. By 2020 customer service will triumph over all other factors and be the single most important deciding factor why customers would want to buy a certain product or service. So now would be a great time to invest in a sterling customer service process so that you can stay on top of customer needs at all times.
