How you approach customers will directly reflect on the business’ success. Many marketers, business owners, and customer service experts talk about the importance of customer service excellence and innovations in this department. But what is customer service excellence?
Knowing how to provide great customer service experience is essential. That is why in the following rows you can find clarification on what falls under customer service excellence and how to achieve it.
Defining Customer Service Excellence
Can you define excellence? When we’re talking about customer service you can.
Customer service is providing customers with assistance. However, customer service excellence is when you have a personalized, respectful, and smooth approach in that department.
Entrepreneur also tackled defining customer service excellence and this is what they have concluded, “Excellent customer service is more than what you say or do for your customers. It also means giving customers a chance to make their feelings known.”
With customer service excellence you will provide customers with all the assistance for perfect customer experience. This approach needs to be applied before, during, and after the purchase.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
What Makes an Excellent Customer Service?
The definition of customer service excellence is stated but what about characteristics that explain it? Here is what excellent customer service consists of:
- Meeting customer’s expectations
- Exceeding customer’s expectations
- Personalizing customer service to your target audience’s needs
- Timely solving any problems
- Fast responses
- Responding to any inquiry
- Recognizing when the customer needs help (using chatbots and triggers are useful for this part)
- Showing a positive attitude even when some complaints come up
- Being creative with problem-solving
To give you an example of excellent customer service powered by creativity we’ll mention Zappos. Zappos is known for their amazing relationship with customers. One time a man's shoes were sent to the wrong address. It was the delivery company's fault but Zappos is the one who found a perfect solution. Since the man needed those shoes urgently since he was the best man, they’d sent him free shoes and that came the night before the wedding.
This type of problem-solving exemplifies how you need to think fast and get creative to earn the status of a company with excellent customer service.
How to Achieve Customer Service Excellence?
If you want to step up your customer service game and reach excellence, here are some tips that can help you with that:
- Know your brand and your product – Customer service agents need to be educated about the company and the product. Extensive knowledge is a must. That is the only way to ensure that customers will receive acceptable answers.
- Have a noticeable “Common Questions” page – Create a page with the most common questions to offer customers with a quick solution. Customers will be thankful for that as 71% of them want the ability to solve customer service issues on their own. The page should be put on a visible page. The answers need to be well-written so check out top writers list and choose a writing service that can help you with writing.
- Treat customers as individuals – This can be achieved by personalizing your approach. With the introduction of AI and chatbots, customer service can seem cold. 40% of customers expressed that they want better human service. Customers want to interact with humans and you should provide them with that option.
- Stay true to your promises – If you want customers to see your business as reliable and credible you need to deliver everything you promise. Don’t tell customers that they will get a refund if that isn’t a certainty. Simply don’t make promises that you can’t keep.
- Anticipate customer’s needs – Sometimes customers aren’t sure what they need. That is when you need to recognize their needs and direct them accordingly. For example, you can give them a rare discount or offer a special price for that item that has been sitting in their cart for a while.
Retaining the status of excellent customer service isn't an unachievable mission. It is a goal that demands some work and dedication. Now that you know what characterizes customer service excellence you can navigate your efforts towards that objective.
About the author: Daniela McVicker is a blogger with rich experience writing about customer experience, content planning, and digital marketing. Currently, she is the content editor for AllTopReviews, a website for best online essay writing services reviews. She helps individuals and organizations improve their web content writing, design, and planning skills. Her posts are always packed with examples and actionable content that readers can put straight into the action.