What is Exceptional Customer Service and How to Provide It
What is exceptional customer service? And does your company provide it? Check out our tips for delivering superior customer service.
As a business owner, you have so many things to focus on.
It’s no surprise that for business owners, the whole idea of customer service just fades into the background. It’s something that we only think about every now and again.
However, you need to know what is exceptional customer service in order to see your customers and the service that you provide at the epicenter of your business.
After all, your customers are the people that pay you money and they’re the people that keep you in business. Furthermore, by focusing more on the customer and even at times stepping into their shoes, you’ll be able to do a whole bunch of things.
What is Exceptional Customer Service?
Customer service is the backbone of your staffing business.
Customers are your internal staff members, your temporary and contracted workers, and most definitely your wonderful clients who help you make work happen.
Superior customer service starts with the people who provide it. Exceptional customer service is the support that you provide your customers who purchase a product or a service from an organization.
Customer service is pretty basic; just making somebody feel comfortable and helping them resolve any questions they have or concerns.
It is helping anyone that walks into an establishment with whatever their questions are and their needs.
Why You Need Exceptional Customer Service
First, you’ll be able to create greater levels of rapport and that’s the basis of all successful relationships. You’ll be remembered by your customers, which will, of course, lead to more word-of-mouth referrals.
You’ll be able to make better decisions because you’ll instead focus on giving your customers only what they want. You’ll uncover more opportunities for cross-selling and upselling that you might at first overlook.
Finally, you’ll be able to charge premium prices which would lead to even greater profits.
Friendly customer service has huge rewards.
How to Achieve Exceptional Customer Service
Here are five powerful principles to get your customer service back on track and how you can achieve your business goals even faster.
Be Present
As a small business owner, so often you’re thinking about either the past or about the future. Your head is constantly swirling with all the things that you need to do.
However, the first step to great customer service is to be present.
That is to think not about what you’ve just done or what you’re going to be doing next but instead, focus on only the person that’s in front of you and how you can create an exceptional experience.
By doing so, you’ll make people feel acknowledged and appreciated, which people will love you for.
Ask Questions
One of the biggest criticisms about salespeople is that they talk too much. When a salesperson gets an inkling that you might be interested in something, they proceed to tell you as much as they possibly can about their product.
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. And the best way to show people that you care is to ask them questions.
Exceptional customer service questions include: what made you come into our store? What type of coffee table are you looking for? Where’s it going to go or do you prefer round or square?
There’s no set formula here. The bottom line is to be genuinely interested in the other person.
Ask questions from the heart and then once you have that information, then and only then can you offer people the right advice.
Match Energy
Some people say that in order to be effective, you have to be really enthusiastic and excited all the time.
Now that might work for some people, but for others, it’s going to completely turn them off. Instead, great customer service is all about being flexible and being able to adapt your approach to fit in with the other person.
If the other person is talking quite loud, you might want to do the same as well. However, if they’re a bit more centered and talking quite slowly, then you might want to do the same as well.
Remember, people like people like themselves. You need to extend your range and to use the other person as a guide and be flexible in your approach.
Discuss Constantly
Probably you’ve been in a lot of business meetings with other companies and really does the topic of customer service come up? It’s always how’s your marketing plan or what’s everyone’s sales targets for the month.
Sure, all those things are important. However, the topic of customer service should be mandatory at every business meeting.
As a business owner, you can ask people to share what’s been their best customer service experience of the week.
Be warned the first time you do this, you’re probably going to get a lot of blank looks. However, keep asking the question because staff will soon become more conscious of their interactions.
Over time, this is going to lead to a lot of positive stories to share.
Recognize Effort
What gets recognized gets done. To further expand on the point mentioned above, consider introducing some new awards for your staff.
Now, you might already have Staff Member of the Month. That’s pretty standard for most companies.
But you should also have an award called Customer Service Champion or something along those lines. Call it whatever you like.
If you make people feel special, your staff will soon start competing and strive to achieve that award. More importantly, it’ll help people be more focused and more conscious of getting customer feedback.
Achieve Exceptional Customer Service
Once you have all of these stories, then you might be able to know what is exceptional customer service. You can turn a whole lot of those into testimonials for your business as well.
That will drive even further sales and more success. These five powerful principles will take your customer service to even greater heights.
It’s true that business is a juggling act. However, exceptional customer service is one ball you just can’t afford to drop.
For more information, contact us.
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