There is no substitute for great customer service in the business world. People remember when they are treated well. They tend to reward this good treatment by forming a loyal bond with the company that was nice to them. This is why you should make every effort to give your customers an experience they will not soon forget. People tend to talk to their friends and family about the way they were treated by various businesses.
Ways to Improve Site’s Customer Service
This means that providing great customer service could eventually result in more customers down the road. On the other hand, repeatedly ignoring the needs of your customers could have the exact opposite result. Here are a few of the most effective ways to improve your site’s customer service.
1. Make it your top priority
There is absolutely nothing that is more important than the satisfaction of your customers. You will not be able to keep your lights on, pay your rent or stay in business without their loyal support. This means that you need to make their needs come first.
The only time you should put the happiness of your customers on hold is if there is a huge problem with your site that you must address so it will be able to function properly.
2. Set up a call center
People will need to be able to get in touch with you for many different reasons. Some of these calls will have to do with orders they have placed or returns they have made.
Whatever the case may be, you should have a call center set up so your customers will instantly be able to talk to a live operator who can answer their questions and solve their problems. There are certain issues that are time-sensitive and need to be dealt with right away. This means that simply sending an email that may not be replied to for a day or two will not be sufficient.
A call center is operated by an outside company that specializes in taking customer service calls for a wide variety of companies. They will be able to answer the questions of your customers. This will allow you to devote your time to running your site and making it better. It would be wise to do some research and compare prices for call center plus services.
3. Offer gifts or store credit
There will be times when you make big mistakes that inconvenience your customers. Hopefully, this will not happen very often. However, mistakes are going to happen if you are in business long enough.
These mistakes will vary in their severity. You will need to give your customers something nice to retain their business if your mistake was particularly bad. For example, you can give away some merchandise.
You might also want to consider giving the customer a gift certificate for your store. This gesture of goodwill will score points with the customer. With any luck, he or she will keep shopping with you. This person might also tell their friends about the gift they received. 🙂
Join 25,000+ smart readers—don’t miss out!
1 Comment
I think this is a greatly written article. I think you’ve touched on a bunch of great strategies for improving customer service but am curious what you think about Surveying customers to measure satisfaction? Where do you feel this fits into your model?