Customer service lies at the heart of every business including at PureComms. Keeping your customers and clients informed and happy will ensure they value your business, the products or services that it offers and the overall experience of working with you. However, if your business fails to deliver this, a reputation you’ve spent years developing can be destroyed in minutes, through poor customer service that leaves people feeling disengaged and unsatisfied.
For smaller businesses, the business owner or those doing multiple roles may be accountable for customer facing tasks and service, while larger businesses may have a whole team dedicated to customer service. Depending on the type of business you run, the way you structure your customer service may vary.
Customer service skills such as patience, attentiveness, good communication and a keen interest in the customer are all key elements that will help your business see happier customers. Those employees who are engaging with customers must ensure they have such skills to make customers feel welcomed and listened to.
But as well as these soft skills, what can businesses do to improve their customer service?
We’ve looked at 3 powerful ways businesses can deliver superior customer service through adopting simple technology and telecommunication solutions.
Essential Steps to Keeping Your Customers Happy
- Connectivity
Connectivity and access to the internet allows customer facing employees to help with any issues or requests much quicker and easier. Unreliable or limited internet access will only lead to more complications and an unprofessional appearance in front of customers. Downtime can leave customer service members helpless in trying to resolve a problem so reliable internet is a must for any business.
This means investing in a network infrastructure that meets the demands of your business operations. This network needs to be able to cope under busy periods and allow businesses to develop without suffering from growing pains.
For shops and physical buildings, having a WiFi connection that customers can log into may help them demonstrate the problem they are having. For example, perhaps they ordered a product online and it hasn’t arrived instore to collect. The customer may be able to show emails and proof of purchase by logging into the shop’s WiFi. This may help the business decide what is the relevant next step. Similarly, if the business has a reliable internet connection, an employee can access documents, CRMs and other tools that may help resolve a customer request.
We also recently wrote about how businesses in the tourism sector can flourish and please their customers by ensuring there is a reliable internet connection that they can access. From products to services to experiences, all businesses can impress customers by having quick and reliable access to the internet.
- Communication Equipment & Software
Customers expect a certain level of communication from businesses. The way customers want to communicate with businesses may vary depending on the type of customer and the type of business. Millennials are more likely to use email, online chats or social media to report problems, while older customers may still prefer to use the phone. Similarly, for higher end products, customers may expect to be able to talk to an individual, as opposed to just leaving a message. This means businesses need to leverage different channels to ensure their customer service offering reflects the wants of their audience.
Great customer service should be built around the customer and what the customer wants, as opposed to want works best for the business.
This means businesses need to invest in commercial grade telephone systems, as well as potentially looking to have someone monitor social media/website for customer requests. From fixed lines to VoIP options, businesses can leverage a variety of telecommunication equipment and software.
It’s useful to think about how your employee’s days are structured and ensuring the communication infrastructure reflects this. For example, if team members are always on the road, having mobiles and remote access to the CRM, will mean customer service is easier to manage for your business. Cloud storage and networks are great for being able to deliver a professional service from any location. This means customers can expect a great service, regardless of whether certain employees are on the road, in a different office that day, or even on the other side of the world.
Being quick to respond and show that you are taking a customer’s request seriously will ensure that customer feels supported by the business. This means businesses must ensure they are extremely responsive and utilise technologies that offer instant communication.
Setting expectations, such as office hours, as well as preferred communication channels, will also help customers feel confident about the level of support they can get from your business.
- Personal
Customers don’t want to feel just like a number, they want to feel a part of something and feel understood by your business. Having processes and systems in place that allow you to deliver a very personal service will help create a much more unique customer experience.
This concept starts to blur the line between customer service, and customer experience, whereby businesses want to create a truly remarkable experience for their customers. The product or service is just one aspect of a larger experience that helps that customer feel special and valued.
This means utilising a comprehensive network infrastructure that allows customer facing employees to easily access customer records and other data to help offer a great service. This also means having the set up and ability to integrate machine learning and data handling to help offer predictive customer solutions before the customer even requests for something is the future of businesses that will win at customer service.
IT networks and leveraging the latest in technology will become a key component to customer service going forward.
Customer Service and PureComms
We truly believe that having reliable and powerful IT networks and connectivity is what allows businesses to operate smoothly and effectively, leading to sustainable growth. This needs to be supported by world-class customer service which can help businesses to grow through referrals and recommendations, as ours has done.
If you’d like you learn more about how PureComms can help your business get more from connectivity and telecommunications, get in touch with our friendly team today.
