4 Secrets of Great Customer Service

I’ve written about customer service in the past but it’s worth revisiting here and now because frankly, customer service is the single most important ingredient to the success of a business. I mean, yes, obviously good products are important and decent prices attract people too. However, what keeps customers coming back over and over again is when they feel as if you as a company actually cares about them.
So I’ve been spending some time reading up on some of the most innovative customer service techniques being used by leaders in their industries in order to find out how you can improve your own customer’s experiences. Here are four ways to make it happen:

Tell the World

Are you familiar with the new Discover Card commercials where they have people who play customer service agents on the Discover card line? They have conversations with an alter ego of themselves and the tagline is, “Discover – we treat you, like you’d treat you.” In other words, Discover card, which obviously is not as popular as Visa/MC or even American Express is showing off their customer service instead.
Of course, that’s just one way of showing off how good your customer service is. Many companies actually get ratings for their customer service from independent third party organizations which take polls to find out who the most respected companies in a given field are. So, take the time to share with the world how great your customer service is.

If your company offers personalized service, don’t be bashful about it – trade on that and tell people that’s why they should choose you. Of course, then it does mean that you need to follow through on that..

Use Video

Video has become incredibly popular today and there’s a good reason for that – we live in the age of the soundbite. People tend to think in short bursts of information rather than in longer form and as such, video is all the rage. In fact, YouTube is the second most popular search engine after parent Google’s own search engine.
Why not put the concept to good use and respond to customer queries by creating videos which they can use to see answers to the questions they have about your product? By offering this kind of a creative approach to answering customer questions, you are in effect pandering to what they want. Plus, it builds up a stable of videos which can then be shared on YouTube to further expose your company and make your customer service work for you.

Ditch the Form Letter

Don’t you just hate when you get some kind of a stale form letter from a company that you wrote to with a question? Wouldn’t it be nice to get something personal from them, even if it’s just one or two lines which tell you that they actually appreciated what you had to say? Well guess what? Your customers feel the same way that you do.
Take the time to write back to customers individually, even if it’s just to tell them thank you for writing to you and to point them to the FAQ where their answer is posted. Yes, it take a tad longer to actually respond as a real human being but it will make a world of difference in getting your customers to recommend you to their friends and family.

Don’t Be Too Proud to Answer Phones

We mostly deal with small businesses here at Quantum SEO Labs. However, even smaller businesses end up needing to hire support staff before long. However, if you really want to impress your customers and make them happy, don’t be too proud to answer the phone yourself instead of fobbing it off onto some poorly paid worker in a third world country. It will make a big difference, even if you only participate occasionally.