Small businesses are the lifeblood of the UK’s economy, being responsible for £1.6 trillion in annual turnover and over 48% of total employment. But despite the crucial place they hold in the economy, times are getting harder. External market factors are making industry fields more competitive than ever, with growth the only alternative to business failure.
One of the foundational elements to positive external growth is the administration of winning customer service. Without positive customer service, client or user numbers cannot increase organically. But how can you approach your customer service to make your business stand out?
Investment in Experience
Customer service is about much more than providing a polite and amenable interpersonal encounter. Customer service concerns every public-facing aspect of your business, from the staff on hand to the equipment and processes with which your customers engage.
For a simple example, take a local beauty salon. Customer service is enhanced not only by the personality and skill of the beauty specialist, but also by the level of comfort afforded by the premises. A comfortable pedicure chair ensures customers are not punished for their patience, and instead allowed to enjoy their time all the more. By investing shrewdly in tangible aspects of your customer experience, you increase satisfaction accordingly.
Equality and Equity
A customer’s experience should be as smooth and frictionless as possible, not just in the provision of your product or service but also in your method of engagement. Your customers should naturally be treated with a base level of politeness and respect, but you as a business can go further in your customer service by actively catering to potential customer needs.
Equality is a basic and essential standard to institute for customer communication and complaint, but you can go one further and institute equitable access to customer support. This might be done through an on-premises induction loop for the hard-of-hearing, or accessible alternatives for communication with deaf and blind customers.
An Earnest Approach
Above all, any customer interaction should be conducted with earnestness. Customer complaints, in particular, can be difficult to manage properly – especially when emotions run high or a customer has made a simple misunderstanding. But taking the old adage ‘the customer is always right’ into consideration, your support staff should be coming to each ticket or support call with a singular motivation: to help, whatever the problem.
Long-Term Customer Care
Customer service is often treated as a reactive process: something you undertake to secure a sale, or in the event of a customer query or complaint. But by treating customer as a proactive process instead, you can elevate the level of your customer care and outclass your competition completely.
Simply put, customer service does not stop with a sale. Keeping contact with your customers after they make use of your products or services enables you to check in with their experience, whether for feedback purposes or to offer them a new deal as a returning customer. Either way, your brand integrity is secured.