Ecommerce Tips: How to provide excellent customer service

12 December 2018
Hub Box
Although it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day activity of running a business, whether that’s because you’re focused on acquiring the next client, planning a new marketing strategy or launching a new website, it’s vital to remember how important your customers are to the success of your business.

All of your efforts will prove pointless unless customers are satisfied with your product or service. As your company grows so does your customer base and it is of utmost importance that you are constantly striving to provide the best service for them.There are many things you can do to improve customer satisfaction and by focusing on the culture of your company, asking your customers for feedback, providing multichannel support and by becoming a customer of your top competitor, you will be well on your way to a happier customer.

First and foremost, the culture of your company and how it is expressed to your employees is something that can make or break the customer experience. Happy employees lead to happier customers and this starts by creating a healthy and happy, as well as cohesive, culture within your office. Even little things like encouraging creativity, rewarding or recognizing your employees for their accomplishments and increasing employee engagement can make big differences in the end. It’s been found that companies with high employee engagement, where employees are motivated and committed to their company’s goals, outperform those with low employee engagement by 202%. When your employees feel valued your customers feel valued, so put a focus on your work environment and you won’t only get satisfied employees but you will, in turn, get a more satisfied customer-It’s a win-win!

Another easy and almost obvious step to improve upon customer satisfaction is to ask your customers for feedback. Most customers know what they want in a product or a service so why not ask them how you could make yours better? A few examples of ways you can ask for your customer’s feedback are: Create a short, thought out survey using a tool like Qualaroo that pops up on your website as customers browse. If you are looking to receive more details from your customers, then the use of a tool similar to SurveyMonkey will be a great help in creating longer surveys. Other than website or email surveys, an easy place to get feedback from customers is on your social media platforms. Whether it be Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, it is easy to create short polls and questioners for people to answer as they scroll through their feeds. Asking for the help of your customers to improve your company’s customer satisfaction levels may seem obvious, but without this simple step you could be missing out on the small things that make a big difference to customers.

In today’s technology obsessed world it’s important to take an omnichannel approach to your company’s customer service. The easier it is for the customer to reach your customer service team the better. Now that there are so many different platforms people use to communicate on, it’s key to provide customer service options on multiple channels to ensure your customers can contact you on their preferred platforms. Though providing customer service on multiple platforms is very efficient for the customer, it is important to remember to be consistent with the quality of service you are providing across the board. It’s been found that 67% of customers receive conflicting answers from different support agents when they ask the same questions-causing many to lose confidence in the help they’re receiving. To combat this problem, make certain that all of the service platforms you provide are cohesive so customers aren’t jumping around from platform to platform to find what they are looking for. It may be easier to focus customer service efforts on phone calls, texts and emails but don’t forget about your social media channels, as many consumers are beginning to become more and more dependent on these platforms.

Another thing you can do to help improve customer satisfaction is to become a customer of one of your top competitors. This may sound like a crazy idea but it’s a really smart way to not only get one step ahead of your competitors but to also improve upon your company’s customer satisfaction. By doing this you put yourself into the customers shoes and it becomes a lot easier to pin point what you like and dislike about a company, especially since it’s a company that’s not your own. Partaking in the customer experience of a business similar to yours will give you a lot of insight. It will allow you to see what customers think could be done better and more efficiently and will also help you get a step up on the competition when it comes to customer service and satisfaction.