IMPROVE CUSTOMER SERVICE

The following article lists some simple, informative tips that will help you have a better understanding on how to improve customer service


Any effort to Improve Customer Service, is a step in the right direction to keeping your customers and ensuring a steady flow of referrals from them. In today’s world of marketing, growing your business extends beyond netting mega sales. A critical part of that growth is meeting and exceeding your customer’s expectations and providing services that creates customers for life.


Planning to Improve Customer Service? you must know that it is all about the customer’s perception .It isn’t what you perceive as valuable but what the customers see from their eyes. In achieving your dream to Improve Customer Service, you must deliver on all the things (big and small) that affect your relationship with your customers.


Consider creating an “Improve Customer Service Focus Group” by inviting 5 to 15 loyal customers to meet regularly. Alternatively, send out a monthly survey to this group asking for ideas and input on how you can Improve Customer Service. Give them a reward or incentive or better still, send them a free product.




Critical to your plan to Improve Customer Service is having mechanism in place to ensure flow of communication with the customers at every stage of the relationship, from the sales negotiations through the closing of deal. Being clear about where you’re at, what’s been completed, what’s coming up next, who’s responsible, what results to expect, etc? Has the customer ever had to ask you for these things? Then, it’s time to Improve Customer Service.


Don’t ever underestimate the power of all the little things to Improve Customer Service. Together they can separate you from competition. Having a website that is user friendly, adding a frequently asked question “FAQ” page and explain anything that might confuse your customers. Improve Customer Service by returning calls and emails in a timely manner showing appreciation for your customers through things like thank you notes and gifts, greeting cards on holidays and birthdays, exclusive customer-only briefings etc.


Recommendations to Improve Customer Service is not exhaustive, stay in contact with customers on a regular basis. Just as it is bad news to send out too many emails to customers. It is just as bad to not stay in contact with them. Don’t make customers or visitors hunt for your contact information. Offer as many contact information as possible. Hyperlink all your email addresses so they don’t have to find it. Offer a toll free number.


Your project, ''Improve Customer Service'' is not a one off thing. There must be periodic review of the process to inject fresh ideas, remove irrelevant ones in order to align the business with prevailing trends in the industry. It must be an all inclusive project involving the management, customer service department and other departments.



You can see that there's practical value in learning more about how to improve customer service. Can you think of ways to apply what's been covered so far?

CALL CENTER: TIPS TO TELEPHONE ANSWERING

Phone answering skills are critical for businesses. The telephone is still most business’s primary point of contact with customers. The way the calls are answered forms the customer’s first impression of your business. These phone answering tips will ensure that callers know they’re dealing with a winning business.


1. Answer all incoming phone calls before the 3rd ring.

2. When you answer the phone, be warm and enthusiastic. Your voice at the end of the telephone line is sometimes the only impression of your company the caller will get.

3. Enunciate clearly, keep your voice volume moderate and speak slowly and clearly when answering the phone so your caller can understand you easily.

4. When answering the phone, welcome callers courteously and identify yourself and your organization. Say for instance, “Good morning, IHEMS OVASEES LIMITED, Linda speaking: How may I help you? No one should ever have to ask if they’ve reached such and such a business.

5. Train your voice and vocabulary to be positive when answering phone, even on a “down” day. For example, rather than saying, “I don’t know, say let me find out about that for you.”

6. Control your language when answering the phone. Don’t use slang or jargon. Train yourself carefully not to use fillers such as “uh huh”, “um” or “you know” when you speak.

7. Take telephone messages completely and accurately. If there is something you don’t understand or can’t spell, such as the person’s surname, ask the caller to repeat it for you. Then make sure the message get to the intended recipient.

8. Don’t use a speaker phone unless absolutely necessary. Speaker phones give the caller the impression that you’re not fully concentrating on his call and make him think that his call isn’t private.


9. Train everyone else who answers the phone to answer the same way, including other family members if you’re running a home-based business. Check on how your business’s phone is being answered by calling in and seeing if the phone is being answered in a professional manner. If they don’t pass the test, go over this telephone answering tips list with them.