Providing a great customer experience

Focusing on a great experience can have a profound impact on your business. It doesn’t come easy, but offering a great customer experience begins with putting the customer first. In this post, we look at some of the things you can do to provide your customers a great experience.

Always Be Respectful

Providing excellent customer service often means dealing with customer emotions. That’s why it’s important to ensure that all employees deal with customers courteously and with the utmost respect. In customer service, the general rule is that the customer is always right – even if they are wrong. Correcting a customer politely and calmly is always the best approach. It is extremely important that employees do not let their own emotions affect their interaction with clients. The goal is to see a customer walk away completely satisfied.

Be Responsive

The worst experience a customer can have is an interaction with a non-responsive employee. Customers dealing with an issue, trying to get help or searching for an answer must be met with an employee that responds quickly and appropriately. Sometimes, employees do not have the answer or cannot help the customer with a particular issue. In these cases, it’s best for the employee to immediately indicate they will look into the issue. A sympathetic response is always better than no response, which may leave the customer feeling ignored.

Train Staff Properly

Your employees are usually the first people that interact with customers. For this reason, it’s vital that all staff members are trained to provide excellent customer service. Employees must understand how to talk with customers, offering guidance and help while working to solve any problems or questions the customer has. Proper training empowers employees with the skills and tools they will need to provide a great customer experience.

Listen to Customers

Employees are usually busy completing tasks and may not always listen to customers. Listening is an easy and vital part of providing great service to customers. It is important for employees to be fully present and attentive when interacting with customers. Listening to a customer means hearing everything that a customer speaks out loud, however, it also means watching for non-verbal communications, such as posture and facial expressions.

Get Customer Feedback

Understanding customers’ opinions, thoughts, feelings, preferences and needs is one of the best ways a business can improve when seeking to offer a great customer experience. Setting up a place for feedback on a company website is a good way to generate information from customers. This allows them to rate and discuss their thoughts and opinions on the products and services offered and their impression of the business as a whole. Surveys and questionnaires are also good options for generating customer feedback. It is also great to ask customers for feedback face-to-face as when possible.

Make Use of the Feedback

Collecting feedback from customers is a great first step. The next step, is for the business to utilize that feedback. Management should regularly review customer feedback and adjust products and services accordingly to offer customers the best possible experience. Making these changes will also let customers know that their thoughts and opinions have been heard. Knowing that what they say matters to a business will undoubtedly build up a business’ repeat customer pool and draw in more customers.

Excellent customer service impacts not only current or regular customers. Surveys conducted recently indicate that nearly 70% of customers react to a bad experience by sharing it on a social network. The present age of technology means that customer reactions to experiences with a business – specifically bad experiences – can spread to thousands of potential customers.

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