If you’re planning on surviving and thriving in this day and age, you’re company must have a customer-first approach. Having said that, your staff must understand what it is to provide good service. You can ask 10 people what it means to offer good customer service and you will get 10 completely different answers.
In this article, I hope to shed light on what I feel are 7 must-haves to provide amazing customer service.
I had a problem once with Godaddy who charged my credit card over 10,000$ for domains at an auction. The only problem was that I never purchased them. The fraudsters end up getting access to my account and added 2-step verification. I could no longer access my account because it kept asking for the authenticator code which I didn’t have. I called Godaddy immediately. They were quick to recognize they already flagged it and reversed the charges right away. They followed up with me and made sure this would never happened again. They confirmed that charges had been reversed. When problems occur, companies have an opportunity to shine.
Communication is a skill that requires patience and self-control on the part of the customer service agent. Customers are not always right and can distort facts. However, to be successful with customer service, a corporation must train their employees how to stay calm and problem solve when clients are frustrated.
If the customer is feeling duped, they will often become demanding and impatient. When clients are dissatisfied, they are expecting solutions. Customers must be left feeling that whatever is being done to resolve the problem is being put into action.
If you need to reach out to clients, I strongly believe text messaging is the best communication channel. Text messages are read 99% of the time. We’ve all missed important emails here and there. Text messages are rarely ever missed. It’s a great way of having conversations with prospects and clients.
Your staff must be like an encyclopedia on two feet. Every time your staff hesitates on giving an answer is a sales person getting closer to a no. And rightfully so! People are reaching out because they have a problem to solve and you’re the expert to solve this problem for them. Be sure your staff is very knowledgeable and have answers to the majority of questions. It’s ok not to have the answer but to build trust, you need to have good answers to the most commonly asked questions. An agent who hesitates causes doubt and that’s the enemy of trust. You can’t know everything and sometimes, a prospect throws you a curve ball. If you don’t know the answer, ask to put them on hold and get the answer.
With Textodog’s SMS Marketing feature, you can have text messages that are sent to your staff on a daily basis for them to read and keep learning. You can create mini courses they can read while they’re on the subway. I remember meeting the founder of Pizza Pizza and he told me that he kept stopping in at every one of his pizza stores to be sure they remembered how to make a Pizza Pizza pizza. People often forget what they did yesterday and sending tidbits of knowledge about your products and services keeps them sharp.
Ever walk into a store and the person in back of the counter looks bored and can’t wait until their shift is over. Maybe they’re talking about their weekend to another person while you’re waiting to get information.
When a customer has a problem, you’re there to solve it. Be available and be enthusiastic about your products and services.
Silence is golden. One of the best sales advice I ever received was in form of a question. “Are you listening or are you just waiting for your turn to talk?” If you want to create a great experience during the sales process, make it easy for your clients to voice their concerns and explain the problem they’re having. Take notes and email them to your prospects to show that you were listening. You will then be able to offer a solution and build trust with your recommendations.
When customers reach out to you, they’re often confused about your offers and need clarification before they can make a purchase.
If the customers are confused, you lose. Knowing this, it’s critical to make your offer clear as mud when customers reach out to you. Provide a good customer experience is to educate your audience to the point where they fully understand your product and your offer.
We send out text messages to educate our market on SMS marketing best practices. It helps our clients generate ideas on how they can use our product to meet their goals. Since text message are read at almost 100% of the time, sending a quick text message about your products and services to prospects that are interested is key.
It takes all kinds of people to create a world. Having said that, it’s important to pick up on the type of person reaching out to you.
Right brainers are people who buy with emotion. With these prospects, it’s important to discuss “the new you” to allow them to make a decision based on emotions. My wife is the perfect example of a right brain. She will buy based on emotion and how she will feel during this transformation, the relationships she will
Left brainers are people who buy based on analysis, data and logic. With these prospects, it’s important to discuss benefits to allow them to make a logical decision. Every purchase decision is well calculated. That’s me! While my wife can easily be influenced by the hotel room with an amazing view large enough to host our friends, I’ll be perfectly happy with the smaller room and meet our friends at a restaurant.
When listening, quickly figure out how they buy. This will help you determine if your prospect buys with their right or left brain.
Give good news and bad news. All you should care about when selling your products and services is one thing: customer success.
In this day and age, you must focus on creating fans of your brand. The only way to do this, it to focus on your customers having success because they found you. Be sure to follow up often and make yourself available to have conversations with customers. If you keep making your customers successful, they will never leave you.
