A Good customer service is the lifeblood of any business.You can offer promotions and slash prices to bring in as…
many new customers. A Good customer service is the lifeblood of any business. You can offer promotions and slash prices to bring in as many new customers as you want, but unless you can get some of those customers to come back, your business won’t be profitable for long.
Good customer service is all about bringing customers back.
And about sending them away happy – happy enough to pass positive feedback about your business along to others, who may then try the product or service you offer for themselves and in their turn become repeat customers. If you’re a good salesperson, you can sell anything to anyone once. But it will be your approach to customer service that determines whether or not you’ll ever be able to sell that person anything else. The essence of good customer service is forming a relationship with customers – a relationship that that individual customer feels that he would like to pursue.
How do you go about forming such a relationship?
By remembering the one true secret of good customer service and acting accordingly; “You will be judged by what you do, not what you say.”
I know this verges on the kind of statement that’s often seen on a sampler, but providing good customer service IS a simple thing. If you truly want to have good customer service, all you have to do is ensure that you and your teams consistently does these things:
8 Rules For Good Customer Service.
- Answer your phone.
- Get call forwarding Or an answering service. But make sure that someone is picking up the phone when someone calls your business. (Notice I say “someone”. People who call want to talk to a live person, not a fake “recorded robot”.)
- Don’t make promises unless you will keep them.
- Reliability is one of the keys to any good relationship, and good customer service is no exception. If you say, “Your new PoS terminal will be delivered on Tuesday?, make sure it is delivered on Tuesday. Otherwise, don’t say it. The same rule applies to client appointments, deadlines, etc.. Think before you give any promise – because nothing annoys customers more than a broken promise.
- Listen to your customers.
- Is there anything more exasperating than telling someone what you want or what your problem is and then discovering that that person hasn’t been paying attention and needs to have it explained again?From a customer’s point of view, I doubt it. Cut the sales pitches and the product babble. Let your customer talk and show him that you are listening by making the appropriate responses, such as suggesting how to solve the problem.
- Deal with complaints. No one likes hearing complaints, and many of us have developed a reflex shrug, saying, “You can’t please all the people all the time”. …………………… and Maybe not, but if you give the complaint your attention, you may be able to please this one person this one time – and position your business to reap the benefits of good customer service.
- Be helpful – even if there’s no immediate profit in it.
- The other day I popped into a local watch shop because I had lost one of the small pieces that clips the strap of my watch band together. When I explained the problem, the proprietor said that he thought he might have one such clip lying around. He took time & found it, attached it to my watch band – and charged me nothing! SO……………Where do you think I’ll go when I need a new watch band or even a new watch? And how many people do you think I’ve told this story to?
- Train your team members to be always helpful, courteous, and knowledgeable.
- Do this yourself or ask the Training Department to help. You must talk to your teams, about good customer service and what it is (and isn’t) regularly. Most importantly, ensure that you are giving every member of your staff enough information and power to make those small customer-pleasing decisions, so he never has to say, “I don’t know, but so-and-so will be back at… and will tell you about it”
- Take the extra step. For instance, if someone call you at Customer care asks you to help them find out something, don’t just say, “Call your RMU or ask your area sales person”. Lead the customer to the solution. Better yet, see if he has questions about it, or further needs. Whatever the extra step may be, if you want to provide good customer service, take it. They may not say Thank You to you at the end of the day, but people notice when people make an extra effort and will tell other people.
- Throw in something extra.
- Whether it’s a coupon for a recharge or any additional information on how to use the product, or a genuine thank you at the end of a call, the smile in your voice is what people love, when you give them this voice smile …they feel they have got more than they thought they were getting. And don’t think that a gesture has to be large to be effective.
- If you apply these eight simple rules consistently, Oxigen business will become known for its good customer service.