B2C Customer Experience: How to Excel in Customer Service in 2018

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Excel in the Customer Service

Photo by Pixabay, CC0 1.0

It’s not a secret that the level of customer experience your company offers is directly proportional to profit margins and business growth.

What isn’t clear, especially for B2C companies, are the strategies that an entrepreneur can implement in his business to improve customer experience. In today’s competitive market, you cannot afford to fail at providing a positive customer experience since unhappy customers will quickly go to one of your competitors and buy from them.

Here are six ways you can improve customer service in your B2C business, and in turn provide a better experience for your customers.

1. Use technology to improve efficiency

Technology is a vital part of any business, and customer support teams stand to gain a lot by using customer service software.

While it would be easy to leave all work to your workers, science has shown us that software makes work faster and reduces the human effort needed.

A good example of software that could increase your customer service efficiency is customer relationship management software (CRM.) CRMs help you create better relationships with your customers by integrating all marketing data you collect from multiple sources into one easy-to-use screen.

By using CRM, customer service agents know your customers better and can address your customers in a personalized manner that fosters customer loyalty and builds trust.

2. Train your team to avoid mistakes

Your choice of customer service agents can make or break your customer experience.

Given that your team is the backbone of your customer support, you need to equip them with everything they need to help your customers well.

After screening and hiring some employees, they aren’t ready yet. They may have all the knowledge and experience of what it takes to serve customers, but they still don’t know your company and products well enough to help your customers solve their problems.

Customers aren’t very patient. If you want to succeed, you cannot afford to have poorly skilled employees sitting at the end of the line. Train all your employees on every issue that a potential customer could contact them with, so that they are well equipped to handle all customer problems that come their way.

3. Personalize interactions with customers

In the early days of customer support, pre-written scripts were the norm. Every time a customer made a call, they would listen to line-by-line scripts and get help with very little personalization of their interactions.

Times have now changed. Customers value personalization more than in the earlier days, and few businesses can survive without personalizing their communication. In a recent consumer survey, 69% of customers felt that their experience with customer service agents was improved if the agents didn’t sound like they were reading from a script.

Given the delicate nature of business-customer relationships, you will have a considerably lower churn rate by improving your relationships with your customers through personalizing their experiences. You can start by referring to them by their names, then use more of their personal data that you’ve collected to show that you know them and care about them.

4. Make your website user-friendly

Most aspects of an online business rely on the usability of its website.

A good website should load fast and display a clean interphase on all devices – mobile, tablets and PCs.

However, these are only the basics. Your website should be easily navigable for you to win at providing exceptional customer experience.

To understand the effect of a website’s user-friendliness to a business, SalesForce conducted a consumer survey that revealed that around 50% of online shoppers abandon their carts if they cannot find a quick answer to their questions.

To be on the safe side, use content marketing to answer frequently asked questions about your products and services on your website. Then make your FAQs page and Blog page easily locatable on your website. It will make helping customers with their problems easier and take most of the load off of your employees’ shoulders.

5. Hire freelancers to increase your overall productivity

To improve the productivity of your team, you need to either hire more workers or outsource some tasks to freelancers. While the former is too expensive for most small and growing businesses, outsourcing has helped many companies get more work done at a fraction of the costs.

Always keep in mind that you cannot delegate all tasks to freelancers. You have to find a midpoint between the tasks that are essential to growth and those that require freelancers to have access to sensitive areas of your business. Tasks like bookkeeping, responding to support tickets and content writing can and should be outsourced.

When hiring freelancers, be vigilant in your screening of applicants to ensure that you are getting the best value for your money. Only employ experienced freelancers with a track record of happy customers, and avoid freelancers who have missed too many deadlines.

6. Send follow-up messages after each interaction

Customer success is a critical aspect of excellent customer service and is the reason why you should go above and beyond to ensure your customers get the best support.

Even after talking to your support agents, never assume that your customers are satisfied. Customers want to feel valued, and checking up on their progress in solving their problems or checking whether they have additional issues can help you make customers love your business.

Customer trust and loyalty are an expensive gift that only businesses with a great customer experience enjoyable. A simple follow-up email a few minutes or hours after interacting with your customers goes a long way in enhancing customer success and boosting your customer experience.

Wrapping up

How customers feel about your business is key to customer loyalty and business growth.

Marketers now agree that buying decisions are now mostly emotional and not logical. This means that how your customers perceive your business is key to making sales and making profits. Don’t lose any more customers due to poor customer service. Invest more resources in customer support, and you will boost your customer retention and business profitability.

Hassan Mansoor
Hassan Mansoor is the Founder and Director at Technical Minds Web. After completing Masters in Business Administration, he established a small digital marketing agency with the primary focus to help the small business owners to grow their online businesses. Being a small entrepreneur, he has learned from project management, and day to day staff management and staff productivity. He's a regular contributor on Business.com.

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