How can a company deliver an unmatched level of service to its customers?
To help your company deliver an unmatched level of service, we asked business leaders and entrepreneurs this question for their best advice. From utilizing technology to understanding your customer journey, there are several things that may help your business deliver exceptional service.
Here are eight ways a company can deliver a level of service to customers that is unmatched:
- Use Technology to Your Benefit
- Follow the Platinum Rule
- Actively Listen to Your Clients
- Stay on Top of Orders
- Empower Employees to Make Decisions
- Acknowledge Mistakes and Apologize
- Know Your Customer Journey
- Leverage Common Pain Points
Use Technology to Your Benefit
We feel that by combining the latest in technology with our decades of industry experience, we can deliver a service to our customers that is unmatched. We are always looking for new technology that can speed up timelines, perform jobs more efficiently, and of course, provide an even better experience for our customers. In other words, if you never stop looking for ways to improve, you too can deliver top-tier customer service!
Noah Downs, American Pipeline Solutions
Follow the Platinum Rule
The platinum rule says to treat others the way they want to be treated. In order to do this effectively, you need to know what your customers’ needs are. As an experienced professional denturist company, our friendly customer care team is dedicated to meeting our patient’s needs with short wait times, a knowledgeable staff, and overall quality service.
Henry Babichenko, Eurodenture
Actively Listen to Your Clients
The key to offering an unmatched level of customer service is to simply listen to your clients! Take the time to listen to their pain points and think about the experience from their point of view. Oftentimes, you’ll be able to find the holes in your process and improve the overall customer experience by simply listening. Throughout my years as an account manager, I have found the most success by employing this tactic, and I would encourage everyone to employ it.
Nikitha Lokareddy, Markitors
Stay on Top of Orders
Since we are an online retail business, we deal a lot with shipping. Whenever there is a shipping issue, we immediately go out of our way to reship the product and expedite the shipping process. We keep our customers updated every step of the way. By communicating with our customers, we allow them to understand that while we cannot always control shipping mishaps, we do absolutely all that we can to ensure that their orders arrive as promptly as possible. Just showing this amount of care and concern goes a long way. Our customers appreciate it.
Mike Pasley, Famous IRL
Empower Employees to Make Decisions
I think what makes customer service great is when companies empower their representatives to take ownership of each call’s experience and give employees management-level decision-making power. When a customer support specialist has the authority to accept special-case returns, offer partial or full refunds, and generally offer tailored solutions that wow the customer in a manner they deem appropriate, that’s when you know you’ve struck customer service that’s worth its weight in gold.
Max Woolf, ResumeLab
Acknowledge Mistakes and Apologize
A personal apology when a customer’s experience with your company or product has been less than stellar or really bad. When you personalize the apology and acknowledge the customer’s feelings, it makes the customer feel like you truly do feel empathetic for what happened. In addition to the personal apology, it also helps if you give them their money back as well a coupon for a percentage off their next purchase.
Scott Rosenberg, MaryRuth’s Organics
Know Your Customer Journey
Today’s customers are bombarded with numerous options when they’re out looking for solutions. Here at Avontage.com, we place our highest focus on the customer journey — what we call “D -1 to D 100 customer journey.” We believe the journey starts one day before finding us, during onboarding, when transacting, and it continues until the following 100 days. This is where the small things matter most — such as frictionless interactions to find what they’re looking for and delivering results to surpass their expectations.
The more you know about your customers’ journey, the better you can serve them and a better chance of turning them into repeat clients. One of the ways to accomplish this is to use data to anticipate what makes a delightful interaction. Companies that focus on delighting their customers in every interaction will create trust and loyalty. After all, it is a lot cheaper to turn an existing customer into a happy and repeat client than acquiring new ones.
Sean Sarram, Avontage
Leverage Common Pain Points
Companies can deliver the best service by making sure they understand everything they can about their customer’s experiences. Know common pain points for your industry and customers, and do everything you can to alleviate and avoid these frustrations altogether. Set time to get regular feedback for your clients as well!
Loren Howard, Prime Plus Mortgages
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